TRS's Worthwhile Investment

The use of Teachers' Retirement System funds to provide affordable housing to educators in the Melrose section of The Bronx is one of those situations where pensioners reap a dual benefit.

The system expects a worthwhile return of 6 percent on the investment, and at least a couple hundred of its members will get good housing at reasonable rates. They will also form a kind of community that United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten likened to Electchester, the 58-year-old housing complex in Flushing funded by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for its own members.

It is on a much smaller scale than that 38-building development: just two buildings containing 234 apartments, from studios to three-bedrooms. But it is the start of something that could expand, and as City Comptroller Bill Thompson Jr. noted, it might inspire the Police and Fire Pension Funds to launch similar initiatives to allow their own members to find affordable housing alongside their colleagues.

The TRS-funded development, which will be part of a larger complex called Boricua Village, has the added potential to further stabilize a neighborhood that survived the ravages of the 1970s, when white flight and arson damaged much of the South Bronx.

Melrose is not a neighborhood that realtors describe as "hot." On the other hand, a dozen years ago neither were Williamsburg or Boerum Hill - two Brooklyn neighborhoods viewed then as iffy because of fears about crime - and concerns about the neighborhood near Yankee Stadium led many people to believe George Steinbrenner was setting the bar prohibitively high when he said he'd rethink moving the Yankees to New Jersey if the team could draw four million patrons in The Bronx.