REMARKS
Public Advocate's concerns about gentrification risks and recommendations for the City of Yes proposal
1:59:27
·
5 min
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams expresses concerns about the City of Yes proposal and offers recommendations for improvement.
- Williams acknowledges the proposal's good intentions but highlights potential challenges, including gentrification risks and the possibility of not producing enough affordable housing units.
- He emphasizes the need for mandatory affordability requirements rather than voluntary ones.
- Recommendations include: ensuring early and frequent community engagement, incorporating sustainable design, implementing phased development, guaranteeing affordability, strengthening tenant protections, and making infrastructure investments.
- Williams stresses the importance of addressing parking needs in areas with limited public transit access.
- He encourages the City Council to adjust the City of Yes Plan based on public feedback and concerns while recognizing the necessity of urban development for the future.
Jumaane Williams
1:59:27
Thank you, Mister Jay.
1:59:28
I am just going to probably just make some statements and not a question, so thank you so much for that.
1:59:33
I really appreciate it.
1:59:35
As mentioned, my name is Shivani was public advocate of City of New York, and I I did want to start off just some statements questions that I normally ask people all across the city, which is, 1, how many people think about homelessness and housing is the number 1, number 2 issue for some, anybody race in the hand.
1:59:51
How many people think that the answer is housing, at a price point if people can afford everybody raising their hand and how many people would like to live next to a toilet building and no one raises their hand.
2:00:01
And those questions are answered the same.
2:00:03
Anywhere I go in the city, socioeconomic, race, religion political affiliation, which I always used to show that we sometimes know what the answer is, but it's difficult to still get it done.
2:00:15
And I think it's up to us to walk people through it.
2:00:18
And it's not lost to me that downstairs.
2:00:21
We're talking about how zoning really prevented certain communities to not be succeeding the way they are in housing.
2:00:29
So it's also not lost to me that we're talking about zoning as a way to try to fix it.
2:00:33
It was the only that caused a lot of the issues to begin with.
2:00:37
And although the city of yes, I think the city of yes for housing opportunity is the right lens to try to build particularly framing and is well intentioned, in the current form of this now, I think there's some challenges and potential negative impact setting, include possible unification in the risk of this proposal, not producing a lot of affordable housing units.
2:01:00
So you did address some of it in the deck, which I appreciate it.
2:01:04
We are going to actually all as well put a fuller comment in the record.
2:01:09
But just some things I wanted to highlight was the gentrification risk.
2:01:13
And when market rate housing units are built and went to the higher rates, The residents pay property buyers can sometimes rise in causing displacement.
2:01:21
We definitely know we need some market rate housing, but we also need some affordability as well.
2:01:26
You did address that the city v s will comply with local law 78.
2:01:30
We are also concerned about the lack of affordable units.
2:01:33
You did mention that the UAP will be considered.
2:01:37
I just want to make more of a mandatory and not voluntary.
2:01:40
That was one of the major problems I had with mandatory inclusion in housing housing.
2:01:45
A lot of it wasn't mandatory, particularly the lower income as for some recommendations.
2:01:52
We have a full one in the that's gonna be put in the on the record, but I did wanna mention a few I'm sorry.
2:01:58
Before that, community engagement wanna make sure the community are engaged early and often and get giving them a chance to really be heard even though some of it some of it is a display of individual customers understanding individual leaders protecting their own districts, sometimes at the cost of the entire city.
2:02:16
But we do want to make sure folks are heard.
2:02:17
We want to make sure that a sustainable design.
2:02:20
We want to make sure that face development is able to occur.
2:02:25
We want to, as I mentioned, affordability, guarantee, tenant protections, infrastructure investments that I heard the chair speak about.
2:02:33
It does I'm still trying to figure out even though it's modest to why that means, there won't be more people flushing or more showers in certain areas.
2:02:41
It still seems to me that that that might be a thing we wanna speak about.
2:02:45
You did talk about removing the parking mandates, which I'm glad you explained here, but I wanna hear more about because I know there are some areas that definitely need the parking, and we may wanna talk about some municipal parking places or something because every place doesn't have the type of access to our parking that folks would have.
2:03:06
And lastly, I I I really wanna make sure that the public sees the city council, what they're doing here, which is really important, really taking the feedback that folks have been hearing, really having an opportunity to hopefully adjust the City of Yes Plan right now to address as many as the concerns that we've heard on the trail.
2:03:26
And we'll continue to hurt because people are really, really concerned.
2:03:30
I know if we looked the way we did a 100 years ago, we would not be here now.
2:03:34
We were able to look this way because of building up and our subway system.
2:03:39
If we look the same way we do in a 100 years, we would have failed our children's children.
2:03:43
It's just just just the nowhere around it.
2:03:45
So we have to do this.
2:03:46
We have to do it correctly, but I like the way you put it there.
2:03:49
We don't need to have enablement extension events.
2:03:52
For this to occur.
2:03:53
We just wanna make sure we're answering all these questions and moving it forward as as much as possible with addressing concerns of individual.
2:04:00
The way I support is if we can maybe preserve some of the fabric of the neighborhood, We can actually enable it in other places to give up some density, but we do wanna make sure that they're giving it out.
2:04:09
They're actually getting back the housing that the city needs.
2:04:11
And so that's the commitment to chair.
2:04:13
I really appreciate it.
2:04:13
Thank you so much, and let's let's do a win to do for the people who need the most assistance.
2:04:17
Thank you.
Kevin C. Riley
2:04:18
Thank you, public advocate.
2:04:19
Do you wanna respond to?
2:04:21
Or
Daniel Garodnick
2:04:23
There were there were a lot of points in there.
2:04:24
I could I I think I'll probably why don't we
Kevin C. Riley
2:04:26
Let's see.
Daniel Garodnick
2:04:27
To your point from before, I'll Yeah.
2:04:29
We'll let let follow-up with the last word on that, and we'll I'm sure we'll we'll cover all those topics.
Jumaane Williams
2:04:34
No problem, ma'am.
2:04:35
Thank you.
2:04:35
Congratulations, Liberty.
Kevin C. Riley
2:04:37
Yes.
2:04:39
Congratulations to Liberty.
2:04:40
Thank you.
2:04:41
Cheers, Salamanca.
