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Affordable Housing to Replace KCH Psych Ward

A former psychiatric ward at Crown Heights’ Kings County Hospital will soon be torn down and replaced with an affordable housing complex.

Nonprofit developer CAMBA recently announced plans to demolish the Crown Heights hospital’s former G-building at 560 Winthrop St. — which was a psychiatric ward until 2009 — and build a state-of-the-art apartment building in its place. The project will be the second phase of a development called CAMBA Gardens, which already occupies the site of other former hospital buildings at 690 and 738 Albany Ave.

“Growing up in this neighborhood, the biggest threat in our community was if you didn’t behave, you were going to be sent to the G-building,” joked City Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, who expressed her support for the development at Community Board 9’s January meeting.

Despite the site’s storied past, developers said they’re confident that the project will draw renters.

“For the 209 units [in CAMBA Gardens I], we’ve received 7,000 applications,” said CAMBA President Joanne Oplustil. “It’s the tip of the iceberg. It was astounding how many applicants came in.”

In CAMBA Gardens I, a one-bedroom rented for $810, with couples limited to $41,280 in annual income, while three-bedrooms rented for $1,127, with a maximum household income of $59,820.

CAMBA Gardens II will be even larger than its neighbor, with 293 units spread across 97,000 square feet. The nonprofit has not yet announced the rents or income requirements.

“For us and for CAMBA, design is a really, really important thing,” explained lead architect John Woelfling of Dattner Architects. “We looked at potentially reusing this building, but the floor plan wasn’t right for adapting it. We needed to start with a clean slate and really maximize some of the advantages the site has.”

Developers expect the project to be completed in 2016.

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12 Comments

  • Wandering the Streets

    Great. Now that they closed the G building all the psychos are wandering the streets.

    • Anonymous

      GOOOD GOOD!LOL!

      BUT SERIOUSLY, WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO PPL TOO DANGEROUS TO BE OUT WHO WERE THERE, AND WHAT HAPPENS TO PPL. LIKE THAT NOW??

  • ashamed

    Do any of the affordable housing projects around CH have yiddin living there???? i dont believe so!
    more great work from CHJCC…..

  • reply to Anonymous

    the former residents of the G building will be moved to other Psyciatric Hospitals in New Yorkl City.

  • Citizen Berel

    K. So they tear down a loony bin and install a housing project … Progress.

    What this has to do with our community, I do not know because Jews are sorta, kinda not welcome in housing projects.

    I can’t afford a house either but prefer gentrification to housing projects, honestly.

    What we honestly need to do, and it’s a shame we don’t learn Nach anymore cause it’s a perspective, is arrange a public assifa and maybe fast and daven to Hashem to provide more rain.

    Government doesn’t make rain and ‘flippers’ don’t steal all the rain. We need to do teshuva and pray and learn.

    The whole economic system is sorta kinda outdated, because it’s based on getting from the system the value of your input into it, and increasingly for most people there is less and less demand for their input, because labor tends to mechanize and intellectual input tends to scale and to persist. It isn’t really the flippers. It’s actually a good thing because G-d made a complete world that serves its purpose and gives of its bounty, it’s just that it sorta, kinda got cursed, and we have had to roll up our sleeves for like thousands of years to fix and mivarer it, but we are nearing the end.

    But these threads railing against the flippers are kinda sad.

  • no money

    what is wrong with applying for one of those apartment? i would live there if i can get in.

  • FYI

    The ‘G’ building has not treated patients (not residents) since 2009 so nobody needs to be, ‘transferred.’ A brand new building (‘R’) was built down the street and is now one of the largest psychiatric facilities in the country. And these, ‘psychos’ are human beings afflicted with an illness. Read more at http://www.nami.org

  • jewish dude

    Family’s who are frum with children should get first choice at these apartments. They need it the most since they suffer more then any one from a lack of affordable housing.