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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Catherine Vaughn, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director from Abundance New York on reforming ULURP's purview, process, and participants
2:16:52
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3 min
Catherine Vaughn, representing Abundance New York and speaking as a Community Board 6 member, argues for significant reforms to ULURP's purview, process, and participants to address the housing crisis. She suggests setting housing targets, fast-tracking certain projects, streamlining reviews under Borough President oversight, and making community boards more representative or replacing them with alternative models.
- Vaughn represents Abundance New York, a pro-growth group.
- Proposals focus on changing ULURP's:
- Purview: Housing targets, fast-tracking, exempting minor projects.
- Process: Streamlining CB/BP review under BP, potentially reversing BP/Council order.
- Participants: Mandating CB representativeness or using models like citizen assemblies.
Catherine Vaughn
2:16:52
Hi.
2:16:53
I have a much less of an audience now.
2:16:55
My name is Catherine Vaughn.
2:16:56
I'm the cofounder and co executive director of Abundance New York.
2:16:59
We Abundance New York, we're a community of 2,000 New Yorkers who believe that our city's superpowers are growth and change.
2:17:07
We want to see New York that can build enough housing for the extreme demand and build transit and climate infrastructure as well for the twenty first century.
2:17:14
And we represent what Howard Slott can refer to as a quiet majority of people, who hope to be a counterweight to what we see as undue and and, just too much NIMBY influence in a lot of these processes.
2:17:28
And in addition to running Abundance New York, I'm a member of Brooklyn's Community Board six, and I'm a mother of two young children and a renter.
2:17:33
So it's a personal issue for me as well.
2:17:36
Our housing crisis is undeniable.
2:17:37
Rents are rising at seven times seven times faster than wages and hit a record high of $3,500, median rent in Brooklyn last year.
2:17:46
55% of households are rent burdened, and we have the lowest, rental we have the lowest rental vacancy rate that we've seen in fifty years.
2:17:53
And yet as speaker after speaker has described, the processes for approving new housing are broken, from the EULIR process to member deference, which gives individual members a veto over citywide housing priorities, to specific participants in the EULIRP process that are not representative of their communities, namely community boards.
2:18:13
So as we think about some of these process changes, I I have three p's here.
2:18:17
Can the purview of EULIRP change?
2:18:19
Can the process change?
2:18:20
And the and can the participants change?
2:18:22
So in terms of the purview, you know, we had speakers like, borough president Reynoso talk about comprehensive planning and more goal driven processes.
2:18:30
You know, can we set goals and targets by district about how much housing should be built with an eye toward discrepancies and inequities that have happened in the past and think about what is appropriate for each district, and then fast track process projects through the alert process.
2:18:45
You know, can we think about the disposition of public land differently as as Anne Marie Gray from Open New York mentioned, thinking about fast tracking processes for building affordable housing on public on city owned land.
2:18:57
And then finally, not housing related, but, all sorts of land use projects are required and subject to ULIERP like bus shelters.
2:19:05
And that doesn't seem like a good use of time.
2:19:07
So thinking about what can be removed or exempt from ULIERP.
2:19:10
Can the process change?
2:19:12
Reynoso suggested switching the order of borough presidents and council members.
2:19:16
And, you know, Open New York has recommended a streamlined process that combines the community board and borough president steps.
2:19:23
Since borough presidents have oversight of community boards already, that could be a a good consolidation of processes where the BP would ultimately oversee and kind of coordinate, community board input.
2:19:34
And finally, speaking of community boards, thinking about the participants in this process, community boards play an important if advisory role in ULearn, and yet they're not representative of their communities.
2:19:44
They tend to be older, whiter, wealthier, more likely to own homes and cars.
2:19:48
The charter could require community boards to be more representative of their communities or reimagine them entirely through random selection citizen assembly processes or just other innovative ways of, getting community input.