Why Do 56,000 People Want to Move Next to the Gowanus Cesspool?

Brooklyn’s polluted Gowanus Canal elicits some strong reactions. The federal Superfund site has been described as fetid, poop-filled, black mayonnaise. If you drink its water, you could maybe even get dysentery, cancer, or arsenic poisoning. And swimming through it feels “just like swimming through a dirty diaper,” Christopher Swain, a man who took a dip in the canal on Earth Day in 2015, told reporters right after. It’s prone to flooding during heavy rainfall, and in 2014, people who lived around it observed a smelly brown goo frothing from their drains.

And yet, upwards of 56,000 people are hoping to live right next to the stinky cesspool, DNAinfo’s Leslie Albrecht reports. That’s the number of applicants who participated in an online lottery for affordable units in the super-fancy apartment building set to open on the banks of the canal. There are only 86 such units, including 20 studios that are going for as cheap as $833 per month for “individuals or households who meet the income and household size requirements,” according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.