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TESTIMONY

Rachel Simpson, architect and Brooklyn CB6 resident, on supporting City of Yes for Housing Opportunity and its zoning changes

10:51:55

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3 min

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Rachel Simpson, an architect specializing in affordable housing and a resident of Brooklyn CB6, speaks in support of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity initiative. She emphasizes the acute housing crisis in New York City and the need for every available tool to address it, including zoning changes.

  • Highlights the importance of minor but impactful zoning changes proposed, such as relief on setbacks, alignments, yards, and building heights
  • Supports the Universal Affordability Preference (UAP) proposal, particularly for its benefits to nonprofit housing developers
  • Advocates for eliminating parking mandates, arguing that the high cost of parking construction could be better used for housing
  • Support for City of Yes for Housing Opportunity
  • Acute housing crisis with rising rents and low vacancy rates
  • Not enough housing, especially affordable housing, being built
  • Zoning changes are necessary but not sufficient to solve the crisis
  • Proposal offers various tools to increase housing
  • Minor zoning changes can have significant cumulative impact
  • Support for UAP (Unified Affordable Proposal) benefiting nonprofit housing developers
  • Encouragement for deeper affordability and stronger guardrails
  • Importance of eliminating parking mandates to encourage more housing
  • Parking is expensive and values should prioritize people over cars
  • Urges approval of the proposal in its strongest form

[EXPERIMENTAL]

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

  • UAP
  • 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.

UAP

"I do champion the UAP proposal, which I think will mostly on its own standalone as a zoning thing will mostly benefit the nonprofit housing developers that we work with who are already working really hard to keep their neighborhoods affordable."

The speaker directly mentions and supports the UAP proposal, which is part of the City of Yes For Housing Opportunity plan.

"I do encourage PPC to investigate deeper affordability and strengthen the guardrails on this so that we can maybe not make it a carrot, but like a chocolate cake, even more enticing to developers."

The speaker suggests improvements to the UAP proposal, indicating they are discussing this element of the City of Yes plan.

Parking Mandates

"And lastly, eliminating the parking mandate is incredibly important for encouraging more housing. This aspect should not be watered down."

The speaker directly addresses the removal of parking mandates, which is a key element of the City of Yes For Housing Opportunity proposal.

"As Mark Ginsburg noted earlier, parking is incredibly expensive from between 75,000 to upwards of a 150,000 for sub grade structured parking. That's comparable to the per unit subsidy or more that HPD currently has on their alert term sheets."

The speaker discusses the high cost of parking, which supports the argument for removing parking mandates.

"They say we build what we value, and I would hope that we value our neighbors more than our cars. People should always come before parking."

This quote further emphasizes the speaker's support for removing parking mandates in favor of 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?
Rachel Simpson
10:51:55
Thanks.
10:51:57
My voice my voice got a wonky because I haven't spoken in, like, 9 hours.
10:52:03
My name is Rachel Simpson.
10:52:05
I'm an architect for in affordable housing and a resident of Brooklyn CB6.
10:52:10
I'm here to speak in support of the city of yes for housing opportunity.
10:52:13
As so many have already noted, We are in an acute housing crisis with rising rents and record low vacancy rates.
10:52:21
We're simply not building enough housing and specifically not enough affordable housing Some neighborhoods are even losing housing, like my own neighborhood where there are 4 construction projects just on my block that will result in the elimination of 8 units of living.
Agnes Vendina
10:52:36
Every New Yorker does deserve
Rachel Simpson
10:52:38
to be able to find quality affordable housing in their neighborhood, but that's simply not possible.
10:52:43
In most neighborhoods at this time.
10:52:45
And zoning didn't specifically create this or cause this.
10:52:49
And zoning alone won't solve this.
10:52:53
Zoning is a blunt tool, but we need every single tool possible to confront this crisis.
10:52:58
And when a tool is proffered, even an imperfect one, we should take it seriously.
10:53:03
So this proposal in fact offers a variety of tools to increase housing.
10:53:07
The most significant of these to me is actually the least sexy and least talked about except for my solo architect Amy Gross who talked about it quite elegantly already.
10:53:17
The proposal does include a series of minor, very rational, but very impactful changes like small relief on setbacks or alignments, on yards, on building height along wide streets, simplified dormer calculations, and streamlined floor area deductions, all of these things add up incrementally tiny over each zoning lot, but they make it easier to build the available SAR on a site especially very difficult sites without even increasing SAR.
10:53:47
And in ways that are likely not even very perceptible or perceivable to the typical pedestrian on the sidewalk.
10:53:54
They simply won't notice these changes.
10:53:56
Oh, thank you.
10:53:58
I do champion the UAP proposal, which I
10:54:00
think will mostly on its own standalone as a zoning thing will mostly benefit the nonprofit housing developers that we work with who are already working really hard to keep their neighborhoods affordable.
10:54:10
And when they do develop, they do 100% affordable development.
10:54:13
That will really benefit them.
10:54:15
I do encourage PPC to investigate deeper affordability and strengthen the guardrails on this so that we can maybe not make it a carrot, but like a chocolate cake, even more enticing to developers.
10:54:30
And lastly, eliminating the parking mandate is incredibly important for encouraging more housing.
10:54:36
This aspect should not be watered down.
10:54:37
As Mark Ginsburg noted earlier, parking is incredibly expensive from between 75,000 to upwards of a 150,000 for sub grade structured parking.
10:54:45
That's comparable to the per unit subsidy or more that HPD currently has on their alert term sheets.
10:54:52
They say we build what we value, and I would hope that we value our neighbors more than our cars.
10:54:57
People should always come before parking.
10:54:59
So I think the commission for their unflagging patients today.
10:55:04
And I urge you to approve this proposal in its strongest form with modifications sorry.
10:55:09
Only as required
Agnes Vendina
10:55:11
to support the goals of
Rachel Simpson
10:55:12
the proposal and to ensure further ending affordability.

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