PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by William Matheson, President of Gerritsen Beach Property Owners Association
12:52:07
·
120 sec
William Matheson, representing the Gerritsen Beach Property Owners Association and Community Board 15, strongly opposes the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity (CHO) proposal. He argues that the program is a "land grab" that primarily benefits developers and won't actually improve housing affordability for residents.
- Matheson claims the proposal wasn't fully explained to the community board, hiding important details in a longer document.
- He suggests that to truly address affordability, new developments should be required to include 60% affordable housing.
- Matheson warns that the proposal could lead to displacement of current residents, potentially increasing homelessness.
William Matheson
12:52:07
Can you hear me now?
Kevin C. Riley
12:52:08
Yes.
12:52:08
We can.
William Matheson
12:52:09
I'm sorry.
12:52:09
Had some technical issues.
12:52:11
Good evening.
12:52:11
How are you doing, Doug?
12:52:12
If you're hanging in there.
12:52:14
I'm 3rd generation resident Garrison Beach.
12:52:17
I'm the president of Garrison Beach, probably on his representing over 5000 fan people in our neighborhood.
12:52:24
I'm also a board member of Community Board 15.
12:52:28
The CDS program was presented to us in a in a 10 page little pamphlet, but they didn't go over all the little hidden stuff that was in the 13 page document.
12:52:39
This is a land grid, and it doesn't help the residential.
12:52:44
Wanna help affordability.
12:52:46
Put restrictions on building all these new locations.
12:52:51
Make them put in 60% affordable housing.
12:52:56
It's all about these guys wanna become millionaires and and billionaires.
12:53:01
And it's not anybody tells you that they care the developers care about the city.
12:53:05
It's all about the money.
12:53:07
So and we have we have building cones that are in place that work very fine and well, and we should maintain it.
12:53:16
It's a big node to city a yes because it's just a land grab, and nobody's gonna get any benefit of it other than the builders.
12:53:25
And if the developers.
12:53:26
They're holding real estate now until this goes into effect, and then they're gonna be ripping houses down, and they're gonna be displacing people, which gonna increase the homeless problem.
12:53:37
Because the people they displace are not gonna be able to afford the building units they're putting up.
12:53:42
It it's it's it's not unfair to the city because a lot of people think that they're gonna get affordable housing on it, and it's not gonna happen.
12:53:50
We we have a 400 plus unit proposed in our in that close to our neighborhood, and only about 15 or 20 80 apartments are really gonna be affordable to anybody.
12:54:03
Everything else is market value and nobody can be able to afford market
