Next City, July 30, 2018: Raising the bar for local economic impact of affordable housing
“It has helped [the neighborhood’s] economy because these guys were well-paid,” says Williams, who moved to the U.S. from Grenada nearly 35 years ago and has worked as an electrician for close to three decades.
After 27 months of construction, CAMBA Gardens II celebrated its grand opening earlier this year. The 100-percent below-market rate housing project includes nearly 300 studio, one, two, and three-bedroom affordable apartments, all designated for households making between about $30,000 and $59,000 a year. The LEED-Gold certified property includes over 60,000 square feet of open space, including a nicely manicured front lawn, and a “butterfly garden” that also nurtures bees.
CAMBA Housing Ventures, the local nonprofit developer that built the CAMBA Gardens II, partners with the Horticultural Society of New York to offer guided planting activities as well as cooking and nutrition classes to its residents. Sculptures, imported from artists in Zimbabwe, accent the public spaces in and around the central Brooklyn housing complex.
From both inside and outside, the development is a vast transformation for a site that, up until 2009, housed the neighboring Kings County Hospital’s former psychiatric center (made obsolete by the hospital’s new behavioral health center).
