A 16-story all-affordable senior housing tower is climbing skyward at 145 Broome Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side, with construction now nearly halfway complete on a $176 million project that will eventually house 190 residents in studio to two-bedroom apartments. Crews are currently assembling rebar and formwork as a boom crane and concrete pump work the site, building out a reinforced concrete superstructure where a one-story structure once stood before being cleared in 2022.
The project, known as Ridge Street Apartments, is being developed by Grand Street Guild, Catholic Homes of New York, and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, according to New York YIMBY, whose reporters Matt Pruznick and Michael Young detailed the site's progress. The building sits near the corner of Broome and Attorney Streets, close to the F, M, J, and Z trains at the Delancey Street–Essex Street station, and was designed by Handel Architects, the same firm behind the neighboring Attorney Street Apartments. That 232-unit building at 165 Broome Street, located one block east, opened in fall 2024 as the first phase of a broader campus expansion, according to the New York Housing Conference.
A Deeply Subsidized Build in a High-Cost Neighborhood
The $176 million price tag works out to roughly $921,000 per unit, a figure that reflects the capital intensity of building deeply affordable senior housing in core Manhattan, as The Real Deal reported. Financing includes $19.5 million from HPD under the Senior Affordable Rental Apartments (SARA) program, $12.5 million from the Housing Development Corporation, $105 million in HDC tax-exempt and taxable bonds, and $11.3 million from Richman Housing Resources through Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. Additional funding sources named in the project include federal HOME funds and Citibank, per New York YIMBY's reporting.
The site itself is a 26,795-square-foot irregular lot zoned R8 with a 6.02 Floor Area Ratio limit, and it held 150,855 square feet of available air rights before construction began, according to property records cited by PincusCo. HPD completed an environmental review in March 2025 that resulted in a Finding of No Significant Impact, clearing the way for federal HUD Project-Based Section 8 Vouchers to cover all 190 residential apartments, administered jointly through NYCHA and HPD.
Who Gets to Live There
Under SARA program rules, the building must reserve all units for low-income seniors aged 62 and older, with a mandatory 30 percent set aside for formerly homeless seniors aged 55 and older who are referred by municipal agencies, according to the National Council of State Housing Agencies. Ridge Street Apartments will offer housing to residents earning up to 50 percent of area median income, and its mix of studio to two-bedroom layouts follows SARA policy reforms announced by Mayor Eric Adams and HPD in July 2025, which required new developments in high-demand neighborhoods to include 20 percent two-bedroom units to support multigenerational senior families, as reported by City Limits.
Once complete, the building will include an outdoor seating area and an on-site superintendent unit. Catholic Charities Community Services will provide social services to residents, while Wavecrest Management will handle leasing and property operations. Forsyth Street Affordable Housing is serving as financial consultant on the deal.
Green Building Standards and a Fall 2027 Target
The tower is being engineered to Passive House standards and will run fully on electric power once finished. Those green features earned the project a Future Housing Initiative Award from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which recognized the development for its environmental design. Based on the current pace of work, the building could top out before the end of fall, with completion anticipated in 2027.
Ridge Street Apartments marks the second phase of a long-running expansion by Grand Street Guild, a developer established in the 1970s by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York that already manages a Lower East Side campus housing more than 1,500 residents across 832 units in three 26-story towers and one 15-story tower. Co-developer Catholic Homes of New York, which operates under Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, oversees a statewide portfolio exceeding 2,790 affordable housing units, according to The Real Deal's reporting.
What's Next Door
The construction comes as the neighborhood undergoes its own preservation debate. In spring 2026, the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the neighboring St. Mary's Church as an individual landmark but excluded the church's adjacent vacant rectory building and parking lot from that historic designation, according to The Lo-Down. That carve-out leaves the door open for potential future redevelopment on the parcels immediately adjacent to the Ridge Street site, though no specific plans for those lots have been announced.
The project is part of a broader citywide financing push. New York City issued $460 million in General Obligation Social Bonds in October 2025 to reimburse affordable housing programs including SARA, bringing total social bond sales under the Adams administration to $2.38 billion to finance more than 14,300 housing units, Hoodline previously reported. Ridge Street Apartments joins other SARA-funded projects moving through construction citywide, including an 84-unit senior building that recently broke ground on the Upper West Side.
