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Q&A
Craig Gurian assesses the Fair Housing Framework and compares local control issues
1:32:42
·
5 min
Commissioner Leila Bozorg asks Craig Gurian about the effectiveness of the City Council Speaker's Fair Housing Framework and its comparison to Chicago's aldermanic privilege system.
Gurian views the Framework as a useful analytical tool with its housing targets but criticizes its lack of enforcement mechanisms and failure to adequately address historical segregation patterns.
He reiterates his call for stronger measures like weighted targets for exclusionary neighborhoods and argues that highly localized control systems, like member deference or aldermanic privilege, inherently favor parochial interests and resist equitable development.
- The Fair Housing Framework provides useful data and targets but lacks enforcement power.
- Gurian argues it doesn't sufficiently address historical segregation and proposes adding mechanisms like multipliers for targets in exclusionary zones.
- He sees parallels between NYC's member deference and Chicago's aldermanic privilege, where hyper-local control obstructs broader city needs and fair housing goals.
Leila Bozorg
1:32:42
First, Pascal, thanks for all your work and Shinny's work and all your members' work in advocacy.
1:32:46
It's really impactful.
1:32:48
Craig, good to see you.
1:32:49
Last time we met, you were deposing me.
Craig Gurian
1:32:55
It's amazing.
1:32:57
There are so many people on the commission who I have not deposed.
Leila Bozorg
1:33:02
That's right.
1:33:04
Was wondering, Craig, if you could reflect share a little bit.
1:33:08
I know it's in your written testimony.
1:33:10
I'm looking forward to reading it.
1:33:11
Your thoughts on the speaker's fair housing framework and how that helps us move the needle and what more we can do to ensure it has teeth.
1:33:23
And and as a second question, if you could tell us a little bit of what you know about HUD's complaints around Chicago's aldermanic privileges practices and what similarities you see to to practices in in New York or differences.
Craig Gurian
1:33:37
To take the second one first, I'm really not versed on the complaint itself.
1:33:42
But I've followed quite a bit of the sort of informal complaints about that system.
1:33:51
And that exists in Boston as well.
1:33:56
And it's it's pretty simple.
1:34:01
It's a very localized lens that lends itself to louder voices.
1:34:11
Sometimes it lends itself to pernicious influences.
1:34:18
And it's just not designed to be asking the question, what do all of us need?
1:34:29
Nor contemplating the idea that neighborhoods can be dynamic.
1:34:37
It's much more someone with constituency who is happy with that constituency, has issues of choice as HPD is putting it or mobility, the furthest thing from his or her mind.
1:34:59
And I think it works very similarly.
1:35:02
So I don't know the answer to that.
1:35:04
What was the oh, yeah.
1:35:08
I mean, as an analytical tool, I think helpful.
1:35:19
I think it's fantastic to have citywide targets that are identified.
1:35:26
I think that it will be very helpful for residents generally and perhaps advocates even more to understand that the deeply affordable housing doesn't all have to be in one place, that if the city is handling it and not reducing the amount of that housing, that's something to keep your eye on.
1:35:55
It's excellent that there are the community board targets, but there are really these two issues, that there is no enforcement mechanism whatsoever and that the issues that have to do with historic segregation are not taken into account.
1:36:22
And they're not really highlighted if you look through the law, which is why one of the things that I do think would be useful, and I think it does need for legal protection for there to be a combination provision where the city acknowledges its own historic role.
1:36:47
The preamble to the charter as it exists now talks very nicely about national issues but doesn't say anything about what New York has done in the past.
1:37:01
So that gives you the opportunity to do things that are race based, ethnicity based, and really responding very specifically and saying, you do not make up for this disparity by saying, well, we're going to leave it or we're not going to make it worse.
1:37:24
But like ten years on, you still have the disparity.
1:37:28
You have to do more if you're going to be remedying.
1:37:32
And so that's why identifying it doesn't have to be 10.
1:37:35
It could be eight.
1:37:36
It could be 12.
1:37:38
You want to have mechanism so that the worst performers on the scale that I've talked about, most segregated, least public housing, least production have the target that would otherwise be established but have a multiplier that I mean, I'd be happy to talk about it more if this is something that moves forward at all a multiplier so that there really can be progress towards remedy, not just a keeping things the way they are.