Despite his opposition to the City of Yes/Housing plan, Mr. Marte believes, “there are still roadmaps for moving forward. Our primary focus will be on community-based plans, such as those coming from the Chinatown Working Group and the Community First Development Coalition in Tribeca.” This was a reference to so-called 197-A Plans, which are zoning revisions created at the community level, and later given the force of law. Since 1992, 13 community-initiated 197-A plans have been adopted by the City Planning Commission, in communities like East Midtown and Chelsea in Manhattan, and Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Red Hook, and Sunset Park in Brooklyn.
“Rezoning from the ground up, rather than the top down, takes organizing,” Mr. Marte says. “It has to be done at the community level, and within the City Council, and in negotiations with City Hall. But it can be done.”
In the meantime, Mr. Marte observes, “we have a mayor who doesn’t have a great track record about development and affordability, and is now faced with allegations of corruption. This process gave everything to developers and offered nothing in return. A typical rezoning involves give and take – developers win more height or bulk in exchange for more affordability. It was a red flag for me that City Hall did not want even to have that discussion. This should raise some eyebrows.”
John Low-Beer, an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School and a member of the executive committee of the City Club of New York (which lobbies for sound urban policy and to protect the City’s essential character), said, “I agree with Council member Marte that the increase in construction of luxury and market-rate housing encouraged by City of Yes will do little or nothing to alleviate the lack of housing affordable to those earning below the median income, who are the ones urgently needing relief.”
“In Manhattan,” he continued, “which is already the most densely populated county in the United States, the effects of this up-zoning on urban design will be very negative – including, for example, the gutting of contextual height limits enacted by the Bloomberg administration – and not offset by any benefit. Research on the Bloomberg-era up-zonings shows that while the effects differed from by neighborhood, overall they led to gentrification and displacement. Although much new housing was built, demand increased and prices did not come down. There is no reason to think that the results will be different now.”
A spokesman for the Adams administration countered, “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity is the most pro-housing zoning proposal in New York City history. As the city confronts a generational housing crisis with a 1.4 percent rental vacancy rate, the City of Yes proposal alone exceeds all the housing created from re-zonings during any mayoral administration of the last 50 years, including all 12 years of the Bloomberg administration and all eight years of the de Blasio administration.”
Asked what might have convinced him to vote in favor of the plan, Mr. Marte cites three priorities. “First, in addition to expanding MIH, I wanted to create a working group committed to retooling the program to provide more affordable housing per site. Second, as the City looks at developing vacant land within New York City Housing Authority sites, I wanted a commitment to 100 percent affordability on those publicly owned properties. And third, I was seeking affordability mandates as part of large-scale conversions from commercial to residential use.” That last priority would have been especially relevant for Lower Manhattan, where a recent analysis suggests that between 11 and 25 million square feet of office buildings in the Financial District and Tribeca would lend themselves to conversion for residential use, raising the possibility of between 12,000 and 40,000 new homes coming to the community in the years ahead.
“When the Mayor refused to address any of these priorities,” Mr. Marte says, “I felt I had to vote ‘no.’”
Matthew Fenton
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