Queens residents demand affordable housing on site of old psych hospital
Hundreds of Queens residents say the state-owned campus of an old psychiatric hospital presents a once-in-a-lifetime chance to build 3,000 new affordable homes — if New York officials allow it.
The residents are organizing with a coalition of church and nonprofit groups known as Queens Power to demand affordable housing on the grounds of Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, a swath of state-owned land best known for the towering hospital visible from the Grand Central Parkway. They rallied for the proposal near the Creedmoor campus on Sunday.
Queens Power Co-Chair Ben Thomases, who leads the nonprofit Queens Community House, said the state-owned land provides the perfect opportunity to build around 3,000 new income-restricted apartments, along with homes available to purchase, during a deepening housing crisis.
“Where are you gonna find something like that in Queens or anywhere in the five boroughs?” Thomases said. “We need 100% real affordability because this is a housing emergency and in an emergency, we need the state to use every tool at its disposal to respond.”
So far, Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York’s quasi-governmental agency, Empire State Development, have resisted the 100% affordable housing idea, according to Queens Power members. State officials will hold two public forums on the project next month as part of a planning process on what to do with the 55 acres south of the main hospital, which would remain a psychiatric facility.
The call for new affordable housing comes as rents continue to rise in Queens, and throughout New York City. Median rents reached $2,700 in Queens in April, the highest number on record, according to prices analyzed by the real estate listings firm StreetEasy. The site is located in Queens Community District 13, where nearly half of low-income tenants spent at least 50% of their earnings on rent last year, an arrangement that leaves them “severely rent-burdened“ under federal guidelines, data from the Furman Center shows.
Empire State Development did not comment on the affordable housing proposal when contacted by email Monday.
Instead, Empire State Development spokesperson Emily Mijatovic said the agency is continuing to seek input from local residents and community groups, including over 600 participants at previous public meetings.
“Governor Hochul’s highest priority is increasing the state’s housing supply, and ESD will continue working with the community to incorporate their collective vision into the Creedmoor Masterplan,” Mijatovic said.
Hochul has set a goal of 800,000 new units of housing over the next decade to ease the statewide housing crisis, but her target was complicated by inaction during budget negotiations and the failure to pass any major housing measures during the recent legislative session.
New housing on the Creedmoor site would mark the latest evolution of the property, located between large Alley Pond Park and a collection of low-rise Northeast Queens neighborhoods like Bellerose and Glen Oaks.
The property was once home to a shooting range owned by the National Rifle Association before being turned into a psychiatric “farm colony” in 1912. It grew to become Creedmoor State Hospital in 1935, and housed roughly 7,000 people in its psychiatric inpatient facilities at its peak in 1959.
Many of the buildings emptied out as New York “deinstitutionalized” most people with mental health disorders in favor of outpatient treatment within communities. Today, some buildings on the grounds are still used for psychiatric inpatient treatment, but much of the property sits dormant.
Attendees at previous planning sessions have made their own recommendations for the grounds, with a collection of local civic groups calling for buildings to be no more than three stories high “in harmony with the surrounding area.”
Other participants have called for larger structures in the interior of the grounds, while several people recommended the creation of affordable homeownership opportunities for first-time buyers.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards has embraced the planning process. He said the site is critical for meeting the borough’s housing needs and that a “new, mixed-income community at Creedmoor will be a blueprint for the rest of the city to follow.”
“Queens and New York City are in the throes of a housing crisis,” Richards said. “We must move with the urgency of now to build our way out of it, and the approximately 50 vacant acres of land on the Creedmoor campus represent a massive opportunity to not only do just that, but to invest in Eastern Queens as a whole.”
Clarification: This story was updated to note that the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center hospital building will remain a psychiatric facility. Any housing will be built on undeveloped parts of the hospital campus.
