It’s a Satmar Hasidic family’s dream: a four-bedroom apartment, with a double sink to help separate meat and dairy, in a building with stroller rooms, all for as low as $1,024 a month.

That dream is close to coming true now that the housing lottery has launched for Throop Corners, a housing development in the Broadway Triangle, a section of Brooklyn where Hasidic Williamsburg meets with historically Black Bed-Stuy and historically Latino Bushwick.

But the development owes its final shape to a lawsuit against the city, which owns the land: In 2009, opponents said initial plans for the development favored Hasidic Jewish families at the expense of their Black and Latino neighbors, at a time when rapid population growth has pressed Williamsburg’s Hasidic community to expand southward into Bed-Stuy.

Plaintiffs claimed that the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn, a social services organization serving the neighborhood’s Hasidic community, became a developer for the land without an open bidding process. They also wanted the building to be taller so that it could fit more affordable units, even if that meant a longer walk upstairs for Haredim observing Shabbat and other holidays.

As part of the settlement for that lawsuit, a group of community organizations in North Brooklyn, including the UJO and non-Hasidic organizations, came together to serve collectively as the developer of the property. Funded largely by government grants and bonds, the new development will seek to preserve the area’s diverse ethnic character against the continued threat of gentrification.

The resulting building, 88 Throop Avenue features not only double sinks, stroller rooms, and other Hasidic-friendly features: it also has elements that might appeal to other communities such as studio apartments, bike rooms, solar energy power, outdoor green spaces, and units set aside for formerly homeless people, according to the NYC Housing Connect listing and a press release form St. Nicks Alliance, a nonprofit community organization in North Williamsburg.

UJO and St. Nicks Alliance are two of the four organizations developing the property, along with RiseBoro Community Partnership and Southside United Housing Development Fund Corporation – Los Sures.

It has other Hasidic-friendly features too, like sensors that are turned off for Shabbat and designated space for sukkahs, according to an article in the Satmar newspaper Der Yid. 

There are 120 units up for grabs, ranging in size from studios to 4-bedrooms. While the citywide affordable housing program has been criticized for favoring the financially better-off, Throop Corners has several units set aside for people with incomes as low as $21,566. Preference for half of the units will go to residents of community boards 1 and 3, which cover Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy.

88 Throop Avenue is the first of five buildings of its kind to be developed in community partnership in the Broadway Triangle. When all five buildings are completed, community leaders say there will be nearly 400 affordable units.

In an email to community members, the UJO said it was offering assistance for local residents to apply for the housing lottery, which will close on Aug. 20.