PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Pilar DeJesus, Vice President of East Harlem Preservation, on City of Yes for Housing Opportunity
7:44:10
·
3 min
Pilar DeJesus, Vice President of East Harlem Preservation, testifies against the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity proposal. She criticizes the city's approach to housing policy, emphasizing the need to address existing vacant units and protect current residents from eviction rather than focusing on building new housing.
- DeJesus highlights her background as a Latino from El Barrio, her experience in housing advocacy, and her various roles in community organizations.
- She argues that there are thousands of vacant rent-stabilized units that should be addressed before building new housing.
- DeJesus expresses concern about pending eviction cases and calls for more focus on protecting and preserving existing housing.
Pilar DeJesus
7:44:10
Hello.
7:44:11
Alright.
7:44:11
Good afternoon, almost good evening, everyone.
7:44:14
We we held out really long.
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I'm Gillette De Jesus.
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I am a Latino born and raised in El Bario.
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I'm a evict eviction prevention specialist.
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I'm an advocate.
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I'm an organizer.
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I'm a I I sit on a few coalitions.
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I sit on a few boards.
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I'm the vice president of East Holland preservation.
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I've been in this in this chambers a few times to talk about rezoning, to talk about warehousing, and talk about housing in general, I spend a lot of time in housing court as a paralegal for a legal service provider.
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Many of you depend on us for your constituents to give them legal advice and to represent them in housing court when they are being faced with eviction, around for office twice.
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I ran against Melissa Margaritivo at one point.
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I also have been in central bookings a few times, and I spent some times on Rutgers Island.
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I'm all I'm saying all that to say because I'm here to say that I'm a New York or born and raised, and I've experienced a lot of different types of harms by policies, different legislators, policies, and agencies.
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I'm also here to tell you that to say no to the city of yes and have a few a few points to to say why to make to onto why I say that.
7:45:24
You know, 1, I would also like to ask the legislators and the agencies to stop acting as if you are business partners with the real estate industry.
7:45:34
Stop acting like you're the silent investors because you're using a lot of our money to help them make profit in a business.
7:45:41
The the real estate industry is a business, and I don't think we talk about that enough.
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I'm I'm I'm also really tired of the word manipulation used in these hearings, especially by Dan, where here's a little bit of housing because it actually, you know, it it conditions brains to think a certain way, including the word affordable because I don't know how you guys revise the definition of re affordable in your your packet.
7:46:06
I'm here to say what that PowerPoint did not say.
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That seventy nine page PowerPoint did not address the 100 of 1000 vacant rent stabilized units, and I'm just and I took to a lot of time, rent stabilized units that are currently vacant.
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I know this because I work in a building where there's a 150 units, and there's only 7 units being utilized, and the landlord's lawyer literally told me they're not gonna rent them out.
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Because they have great lawyers to continue the predatory violating the laws in a predatory way with loopholes and all these.
7:46:39
You're not counting all the vacant units that are still vacant from the last rezoning in these affordable buildings.
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We don't need more units.
Kevin C. Riley
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We have
Pilar DeJesus
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a 106 the eviction cases pending right now.
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Those are people who currently have homes, but are at risk.
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So our what are developers and what are counsel doing?
Kevin C. Riley
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Thank you.
Pilar DeJesus
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To protect that, I think we need to stop talking about building more housing.
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I'm an advocate.
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I want housing, but I want us to protect and preserve
Roxanne Delgado
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the housing
Kevin C. Riley
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environment.
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To make sure everyone else could testify.
Pilar DeJesus
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We And, also, really quickly, the real estate industry is also violating the law with illicit
Kevin C. Riley
7:47:18
Thank you.
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We wanna make sure everyone could be able to testify.
7:47:21
You could put all of that in testimony and cement to land use testimony at counsel.diamondc.gov.
7:47:26
Thank you.
7:47:27
Next, we're going to ask David Lawrence to go.
