Jeffrey Levine

Jeff Levine is doing his part to alleviate the New York area’s affordable housing crisis.

The housing developer has spent more than four decades building and renovating thousands of properties across the region, with a focus on the outer boroughs. 

His firm had a hand in Edge Community Apartments, the affordable component of The Edge’s waterfront project in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Rialto West, a Hell’s Kitchen complex offering housing and rehearsal space for artists; and Crossroads Plaza, a 425-unit mixed-use Bronx property. The company is also redeveloping two former hospital campuses — Seaview Hospital on Staten Island and the Kingsboro Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn — into supportive and below-market-rate housing.

Levine might be most proud of his work last year renovating 2,000 units at Brooklyn’s Linden, a place where he lived a portion of his childhood, through the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration program. “It was fulfilling for me personally to bring housing to an area in dire need of improvement,” he said. “All the units were completely modernized, and people are now going to have a much more desirable place to live.”

But Douglaston’s 695-foot tower in West Chelsea, known as 3Eleven, has been getting the most attention. Levine has been familiar with Manhattan’s Far West Side, having built a luxury apartment rental there a decade ago. 

“People found it attractive,” he said. “Our properties are within walking distance from 20 million square feet of office space. You have an art gallery district, fashion, Hudson River Park, and all kinds of attractions. Living in a community like that is appealing to young people today.”

The company opened leasing last August for 938 units at 601 West 29th Street, its largest mixed-income project. Work is wrapping up on the site this spring. “It’s being occupied and renting up as we speak,” Levine said.

The project is taking advantage of a now-expired tax abatement program that has enabled the inclusion of 235 below-market-rate units. Levine hopes state lawmakers can reach an agreement to revive an incentive to stimulate other projects.

“We’re really at a turning point in the real estate industry,” he said. “It’s going to take a herculean effort to get the Senate and Assembly on board with a housing program that satisfies tenant groups and the development industry. We cannot build if it does not make economic sense, if the banks will not lend us money.”