PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Yiatin Chu, President of Asian Wave Alliance
12:01:44
·
121 sec
Yiatin Chu, representing Asian Wave Alliance, strongly opposes the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity proposal. She argues that the plan would negatively impact homeowners, particularly in Asian communities in outer boroughs, and degrade quality of life without necessarily improving affordability.
- Chu emphasizes that building more housing won't address the root causes of high housing costs, such as mortgages, taxes, and maintenance.
- She criticizes the elimination of parking requirements, stating it would exacerbate existing parking issues in areas with poor public transportation.
- Chu expresses concerns about the legalization of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), arguing it would worsen problems with illegal dwellings.
Yiatin Chu
12:01:44
Good evening.
12:01:45
My name is Yiarton Shoe.
12:01:46
I'm a homeowner in Whitestone, Eastern Queens, and I'm the president of Asian Wave Alliance.
12:01:52
AWA represents the interests of thousands of residents, property owners, and voters throughout New York City.
12:01:58
Asian New Yorkers have the highest rate of homeownership and were settled in Outer Burrows of Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island.
12:02:05
Many of us are immigrants who poured our life savings into our home to put down roots in our communities.
12:02:11
A nest egg for retirement, and maybe pass it down to our children, the American dream and building generational wealth.
12:02:18
This aggressive plan will replace homeownership with market rate rental properties, making developers richer, Building more does not necessarily make housing more affordable for New Yorkers.
12:02:30
Property owners have to pay mortgages, property taxes, utility and water bills, energy costs, maintenance, AKA labor costs, which all factor into the high cost of housing.
12:02:42
Building more will not lower these costs.
12:02:45
Instead sorry.
12:02:49
Instead, the city of yes would destroy our neighborhoods and degrade our quality of life.
12:02:53
It's absurd that the city of yes will eliminate parking requirements from new residential housing.
12:02:58
We are already stressed with the lack of parking everywhere in Queens and Brooklyn.
12:03:02
These areas lack efficient public transportation and rely on cars to get around.
12:03:07
In Queens, we cannot support more development around our LIR stations.
12:03:12
The parking is near impossible to find now.
12:03:14
Many people drive and park near the stations, but still need to drive to pick up their kids from schools and to our food shopping.
12:03:22
We oppose the dangerous legalization of ADUs.illegal ADUs are already a huge problem for many residential areas.
12:03:29
There are thousands of unchecked illegal dwellings already, and the passing of city of yes will further make this problem worse.
12:03:37
Asian Wave Alliance opposes the city of yes.
12:03:40
We urge the city council to reject the entirety of this harmful package of proposals from there.
UNKNOWN
12:03:45
Thank you.
