REMARKS
Council Member Christopher Marte opposes the City of Yes plan, citing concerns about displacement and developer influence
1:01:12
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107 sec
Council Member Christopher Marte delivers a speech against the City of Yes plan, arguing that it favors real estate developers over working people and immigrant communities. He expresses concerns about displacement, unchecked market-rate development, and the plan's potential negative impact on neighborhoods like the Lower East Side and Chinatown.
- Marte criticizes the plan for prioritizing market-rate housing and developer interests over community needs
- He argues that the plan will lead to further gentrification and displacement of long-standing immigrant communities
- Marte calls for continued community organizing and support for alternative plans like the Chinatown Working Group Plan
Christopher Marte
1:01:12
The real estate industry shouldn't run this city.
1:01:14
Working people should.
1:01:16
I represent neighborhoods like the Lower East Side in Chinatown where unchecked market rate development has led to skyscrapers that sit empty, drive up speculation, and causes rent to sky rise and displace immigrant communities that have been rooted there for generations.
1:01:32
The city of Yaz is a yes to only the real estate developers.
1:01:36
It's a plan to put our trust in developers, the same ones that evict us, destroy us, and displace our communities.
1:01:42
We are now giving them the green light saying that, yes, their market value matters more than immigrant communities.
1:01:49
Yes.
1:01:50
People don't need to see the sky when they leave their house.
1:01:53
Yes.
1:01:53
The real estate of board of New York can be better planners than the community who have lived there and bit built those community.
1:02:01
Yes.
1:02:01
We can build market rate housing to alleviate alleviate our affordable crisis, which I don't believe in trickle down economics.
1:02:09
Yes.
1:02:09
Because an immigrant community is trendy now, and, yes, because developer only sees that as a profit to make it on the backs of those people who live there.
1:02:19
We are saying yes to a plan that the mayor created, a mayor who's embedded with corruption scandals.
1:02:26
We are saying yes to what he wants to do to our city.
1:02:30
The shadows of this plan will cast over our city and it isn't just literally.
1:02:35
Today, they darken the future of our most risk neighborhoods.
1:02:40
But tomorrow, the fight against displacement will continue.
1:02:43
Working people will continue to light their way, to organize against eviction, to unify around community plans like the Chinatown Working Group Plan.
1:02:50
Just as there has always been backdoor deals broken in darkness, there will always be neighbors organizing to fight for a brighter future.
1:02:58
Thank you.
