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TESTIMONY

Ari S, Structural Engineer, on concerns about City of Yes for Housing Opportunity's impact on affordability and neighborhood-specific needs

14:38:28

·

3 min

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Ari S, a lifelong New Yorker and structural engineer, expresses concerns about the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity proposal, particularly its potential impact on housing affordability and neighborhood-specific needs. Based on personal experience, Ari argues that similar development initiatives have not resulted in more affordable housing in New York City.

  • Questions the proposal's ability to guarantee affordable housing, citing examples of neighborhoods that became less affordable after increased development
  • Advocates for neighborhood-specific studies and consultations to address varying needs across different areas of the city
  • Raises concerns about the potential reduction of green spaces, sunlight, and shared community spaces, as well as the strain on existing infrastructure and resources
  • The proposal does not guarantee affordable housing
  • Neighborhoods with increased development have become less affordable
  • Neighborhoods with individual homeowners and 2-3 family homes are more affordable
  • Concerns about one-size-fits-all approach without considering neighborhood-specific needs
  • Lack of access to public transportation in some neighborhoods leads to parking issues
  • Concerns about reduction in green spaces, sunlight, and shared community spaces
  • Need for infrastructure and resource updates before introducing new housing
  • Suggestion to explore other means of addressing housing affordability, such as not increasing rent stabilization

[EXPERIMENTAL]

Which elements of City of Yes for Housing Opportunity were discussed in this testimony?

  • Parking Mandates

The following are AI-extracted quotes and reasoning about which elements of the proposal were discussed in this testimony.

This is a quick, close approximation. Occasionally, the connection between a testimony's transcript and specific elements of City Planning's proposal is tenuous.

Read about this AI-generated analysis here.

Parking Mandates

"I live in a neighborhood where most people do not have access to the train. So A lot of the buildings that have gone up have eliminated parking, and people in my neighborhood drive around for 1 hour trying to find parking and a parking space in some of these new buildings. Sells for $90,000."

This quote directly addresses the issue of removing parking mandates. The speaker is discussing how the elimination of parking in new buildings has affected their neighborhood, which is related to the proposal's aim to end parking mandates for new housing.


About this analysis:

This analysis is done by AI that reasons whether or not a quote from the testimony discusses a particular element of the proposal.

All the prompts and data are open and available on Github.

You can search for testimonies that mentioned a specific element in the table on the main meeting page.

When an element is explicitly stated in the testimony (e.g. "Universal Affordability Preference" or "UAP"), the analysis is accurate.

But the connection between a quote from the testimony and an element of the proposal is sometimes implicit.

In these cases, the AI might eagerly label a testimony as discussing a proposal when the connection is tenuous, or it might omit it entirely.

↗ Why are there transcription and diarization errors?
Ari S
14:38:28
Okay.
14:38:29
Great.
14:38:29
Hi.
14:38:29
Good evening.
14:38:30
I know it's super late, so I'll try to be quick, and I think I'll be trying to skip a lot of things that other people have said, but I will echo that I agree that this proposal as I've read it and as I understand it.
14:38:44
Does not guarantee affordable housing, and I've lived in New York my entire life.
14:38:48
I was born and raised in New York and have only left for school and grad school.
14:38:53
And I work as a structural engineer with existing buildings, preserving and adaptive reuse for existing buildings.
14:39:00
So I think I have little bit of sense of, like, what's going on in New York in terms of buildings.
14:39:07
Yeah.
14:39:08
So I'd like to echo other people when they say, I don't see from my lived experience that changes like this have brought about affordable housing.
14:39:16
In fact, I see the opposite where neighborhoods where a lot of development has been encouraged like Williamsburg, Bedstuy, Long Island City has actually become extremely unaffordable, whereas neighborhoods that don't have these same pushes, are the most affordable neighborhoods with individual homeowners being the most affordable option.
14:39:38
If you have 2 family, 3 family homes.
14:39:41
So that's my experience in New York, and that's what I see, and I fear that pushing a lot of these changes at this large one size fits all scale is just gonna create more housing that is unaffordable.
14:39:55
And as a young person in New York, I don't see it means in a pathway for me to live an affordable life through some of these expensive luxury apartments, and I don't see a pathway to ownership.
14:40:07
I'd also like to say that I agree that on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis, these things have different levels of impacts and should be studied specifically 2 neighborhoods, and I know that that's a large undertaking, but this is a large ask.
14:40:21
So I think it's worth putting the time and care and consulting different neighborhoods to see where their needs can be.
14:40:27
I live in a neighborhood where most people do not have access to the train.
14:40:32
So A lot of the buildings that have gone up have eliminated parking, and people in my neighborhood drive around for 1 hour trying to find parking and a parking space in some of these new buildings.
14:40:42
Sells for $90,000.
14:40:44
So I also, again, don't see that correlation where we say that developers will just put it in where it's needed because I've not experienced that in my neighborhood.
14:40:54
And at the same time, I don't see the same increases to infra structure and resources in green spaces.
14:40:59
And I also read that in the environmental impact statement that they anticipate a deduction to green spaces sunlight and shared community spaces.
14:41:09
So I think that should be addressed before we introduce all of this new housing.
14:41:14
We should figure out how we're gonna update infrastructure and the resources and the green spaces to the community.
14:41:22
Yeah.
14:41:23
And I think there are other means, like, not voting up rent stabilization increases, which was recently passed, that we can figure this out.
14:41:32
Yeah.

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