For those with little, a chance to own a home

“Affordable housing is one of the largest challenges facing New York City today,” said Daniel Moritz, a principal at The Arker Companies. “ … We are pleased to be able to contribute to the development of clean, safe and affordable housing for New York City’s working families.”

Units in the Richmond Hill Senior Living Residences will be available for elderly residents with incomes below 60 percent of the area’s median income.

The state Homes and Community Renewal and the Bank of America are helping to fund the six-story, 62,500 -square-foot project, which is expected to cost a total of $20 million.

Richmond Place will also serve families with incomes below 60 percent of the area median income. The seven-story, 136,300 square-foot development will include 13 studio, 28 one-bedroom, 68 two-bedroom and seven three-bedroom units. About one-fifth of these units will be set aside for formerly homeless families.

The Richmond Place project is expected to cost about $33.9 million, much of which will come from the city. It is being developed under Mayor Bloomberg’s New Housing Marketplace Plan, an $8.4 billion initiative to finance 165,000 units of affordable housing for half a million city residents by 2014. So far, a little more than 125,000 units of affordable housing have been created or preserved throughout the five boroughs.

Both developments are located on a long-vacant plot that the state designated a brownfield cleanup site.

“The availability of affordable housing has decreased over the years as more high rises and luxury apartments are built across New York City,” state Sen. Shirley Huntley (D-Jamaica) said. “The Richmond Place and Richmond Hill Senior Living Residences will help remedy this issue and provide low-income residents and seniors in southeast Queens an affordable place to live. It is especially important to increase the availability of affordable housing to underserved populations such as seniors, who often live on a fixed income.”