A newly built apartment building at the corner of Clinton Avenue and Fulton Street in Clinton Hill has opened a lottery for four affordable apartments, with one-bedrooms listed at $1,656 a month and two-bedrooms at $1,894 a month. The six-story, 17-unit building sits just blocks from where market-rate renters are paying thousands more for comparable space, and applications for the discounted units close on November 10.
Income Limits and Who Can Apply
The affordable units at 486 Clinton Avenue Apartments, also addressed as 899 Fulton Street, are rent stabilized and subject to income limits, according to Brownstoner. Eligibility is open to households of one to five people earning 60 percent of area median income, with qualifying incomes ranging from $65,418 to $109,920 a year, per the listing cited by the outlet. The city’s own Housing Connect page describes the property as an exceptional affordable housing opportunity at the corner of Clinton Avenue and Fulton Street, according to housingconnect.nyc.gov.
The math behind the discount is steep. A market-rate two-bedroom in Clinton Hill runs around $6,720 a month, per StreetEasy figures cited in the report, compared to $1,894 for the affordable two-bedroom units in the same building. The affordable apartments exist because of the new 485x tax break, and are further supported by the City of Yes universal affordability preference program, the report notes.
Inside the New Building
Clinton Garden Partners LLC developed the property, which was designed by Studio Gallos and received its certificate of occupancy on October 16. The building’s facade features white paneling, red brick accents and black trim, with a ground-floor storefront featuring floor-to-ceiling glass windows and awnings. Apartments include dishwashers, washers and dryers, stainless steel appliances and hardwood floors, and some units have private balconies, the outlet’s report states.
The building is smoke-free and allows one pet per apartment weighing up to 35 pounds. Tenants pay for their own electricity, which covers the stove, heat and hot water. Market-rate listings for the building went live in June, with one-bedrooms that started at $3,600 and rose to $3,925 a month, and two-bedrooms that started at $5,100 and climbed to $6,500 a month — though StreetEasy currently shows no market-rate apartments available there.
A Site With a Colorful Past
The new building replaced an early-20th-century two-story Renaissance/Romanesque Revival red-brick row of stores, according to the Brownstoner report. That earlier structure, built in the early 1900s, cycled through a string of tenants with notable history: the Clinton Art Gallery occupied a storefront in 1908, and the second floor opened as a pool hall in 1911 — one that served as a front for an illegal gambling den until police raided and permanently shut it down that same year.
In the years that followed, the building housed the Colored Republican Club from 1912 to 1917, offices for the Colored Branch of the YMCA in 1918, and the Colored Democratic Club, which occupied the Clinton Hall event area from 1927 to 1932. A wholesale grocer became a tenant in the 1920s. Writing in 2015, local historian Suzanne Spellen described the building as remaining a good-looking row and expressed hope it would be preserved rather than replaced by a taller apartment tower, per the Brownstoner account.
That preservation did not happen. City records show the longtime owner sold the property to Clinton Garden Partners LLC for $6.5 million in 2022. Moses Karpen, who signed on behalf of the LLC and is associated with other Brooklyn developments, filed in April 2022 to convert the existing building into a six-story apartment structure; the conversion permit was issued in November 2024.
Part of a Citywide Push
The Clinton Hill lottery lands amid a broader, citywide effort to expand affordable housing stock. New York City financed the creation and preservation of 12,491 affordable homes in the first half of 2026, according to City Limits, a total that included 6,632 newly created units, 4,951 preserved units, and 908 public housing units preserved through NYCHA’s PACT program. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s housing plan calls for 200,000 new affordable units over the next decade, along with preservation of another 200,000, the outlet reported.
Similar lotteries have recently opened elsewhere in Brooklyn. A newly constructed residential building in Greenpoint opened its own affordable housing lottery with units offered for as low as $751, according to PIX11. That building’s amenities included a gymnasium, in-unit dishwashers and a shared laundry room, with rent covering heat, cooling and hot water, the station reported.
