Affordable Housing Lottery Opens for Seniors in Prospect Lefferts Gardens

An affordable housing lottery has opened for seniors on Prospect Lefferts Gardens’ Winthrop Street in a new eight-story development that has taken the place of an old wood frame house with a large yard.

The complex at 250 Winthrop Street has a total of 49 units and 27 are included in the lottery. All are set aside for households of one to three people earning an average of 80 percent of Area Median Income, or between $53,589 and $111,840 a year. Each household must include someone 62 years or older, according to the listing.

Twelve of the 27 units are studio apartments for $1,483 a month and 15 are one-bedrooms for $1,552.

The building, designed by P. Georgopouls Architects PC, includes bike storage lockers, a rooftop terrace, elevator, laundry room, air conditioning, and package lockers. (Some of the amenities require an extra fee.) The building is smoke free and tenants have to pay for electricity, which includes the heat, hot water, and stove.

While renderings show the building with a dark blue facade and white framed windows, photos on PropertyShark and StreetEasy show the facade is off-white with yellow-framed windows. The ground floor, which also contains apartments and a vehicle entryway, contrasts with the building with a black corrugated finish.

The boxy dwelling steps down from eight stories on the western side to six stories on the eastern one. Next door at 254 Winthrop Street is a matching four-story building designed by the same architect and owned by the same developer. That building contains seven market rate units, according to permits, with two-bedrooms listed from $2,695 a month on StreetEasy.

The units in both buildings appear to have light gray walls with black baseboards and doors. Throughout the apartment, finishes are in white and black with some contrasting yellow details, such as in shelving and panels.

Prior to housing the two new developments, the sites at 250 and 254 Winthrop Street (formerly 248 Winthrop Street) held a two-story wood and brick house that was surrounded by a large outdoor space. The house was purchased by Virginia R Jones and Estefan Stephans in 1984, city records show, and Jones is listed as the manager behind the LLC that still owns the site. The property was transferred from Jones to Bless Winthrop LLC in 2021.

In 2021, the city issued a demolition permit for the wood-framed house. The same year it issued permits for the eight-story and four-story new buildings.

Bless Winthrop LLC applied for the city’s Privately Financed Senior Housing Program, which allows additional building height if a percentage of units are designated to seniors earning 80 percent of AMI, which is why the 27 units are included in the housing lottery. Without the additional height granted through the program, the building could have reached around four or five stories.

According to the listing, the building is also expected to qualify for the city’s recently extended 421-a tax abatement.

The Weeksville Place lottery closes December 17. To apply, visit the listing on New York City’s Housing Connect website.

[Photos from NYC Housing Connect unless noted otherwise]

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