City’s Affordable Housing Program Faces Trouble Finding Buyers

clipped from www.nytimes.com City’s Affordable Housing Program Faces Trouble Finding Buyers By CARA BUCKLEY For all the booms and busts he has lived through, Vincent Riso never thought it would come to this: Offering free 42-inch, flat-screen televisions to lure buyers into government-subsidized homes. Historically, such homes have sold quickly. But not at Waters Edge at Arverne, a stretch of 130 town house condominiums Mr. Riso’s company, the Briarwood Organization, built between Far Rockaway’s boardwalk and the A train’s rust-streaked overpass in Queens. So last spring, Briarwood, which got $12.8 million in city and state subsidies for Waters Edge, began throwing in as much as seven months’ free maintenance on some units, along with the TV. Still, as of mid-February, roughly three years after the units began arriving on the market, 22 of them had yet to sell.