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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Kirk Goodrich from Monadnock Development on reforming ULURP to expedite affordable housing
0:30:38
·
5 min
Kirk Goodrich, President of Monadnock Development, testifies about the failures of the current Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), arguing it is too slow, costly, and susceptible to political obstruction, particularly through member deference.
He calls for significant reforms, including an expedited or eliminated ULURP for 100% affordable housing projects, potentially centering approval power with the City Planning Commission.
Goodrich stresses the human cost of delays and the moral necessity of creating a functional housing market that supports working families and allows for upward mobility, urging the commission to take bold action.
- Goodrich criticizes ULURP for delays (citing 5-15 year timelines) and lack of accountability, harming those waiting for housing.
- He advocates for eliminating ULURP for 100% affordable projects on city land and an abbreviated process for others, focusing on City Planning Commission approval.
- Member deference is identified as a "toxic" practice concentrating affordable housing in low-income areas and preventing equitable distribution.
- He argues the current system prevents the kind of economic mobility his own immigrant parents experienced.
- Goodrich emphasizes the need to treat the housing shortage as a crisis requiring urgent, decisive action.
Kirk Goodrich
0:30:38
So good evening to all of you, and thank you for the invitation to talk.
0:30:44
So my name is Kirk Goodrich.
0:30:45
I'm President of Mononoc Development.
0:30:47
I've been a developer for the last fifteen years.
0:30:49
Before that, I financed housing and also studied it as an undergrad.
0:30:54
And I'm co host of the Housing Problem podcast.
0:30:56
I think the Charter Revision Commission has an opportunity that's really unique.
0:31:03
And my focus, of course, is on reform of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, EULERP.
0:31:11
And I want to echo what former council member Marjorie Velasquez just said and just applaud her courage and what it cost her.
0:31:23
And at a fundamental level, I've spent so much of my time engaging communities beginning when I was 24, which is now thirty two years ago and now.
0:31:34
And so no one I know would value community engagement as much as I do.
0:31:39
But the last five years have been a real eye opening experience for me.
0:31:47
We had four rezonings going simultaneously.
0:31:50
And the degree of disappointment I have with elected officials and community boards and so called activists and stakeholders is really problematic.
0:32:01
And the reality is that we have a process that doesn't incentivize projects moving quickly, doesn't recognize the pain and suffering working people and poor and vulnerable populations are going through.
0:32:18
And if we take a vacation and we check into a hotel with our family and we don't like it, we get them out of there.
0:32:28
We won't even allow our families to spend a single night in a hotel that we don't like.
0:32:35
But we're Okay in the name of community engagement, having people wait five, six years or longer, some public rezonings fifteen years or more, while we deliberate whether affordable housing should be built and how affordable it should be.
0:32:51
And I just think that's an abomination.
0:32:54
And so we need a fast track disposition, no ULURP disposition for city owned properties that are for affordable housing.
0:33:03
If it's 100% affordable housing, we need an abbreviated process that, in my mind is built around City Planning Commission approval.
0:33:13
And then as the council member just said, the member deference is a toxic thing.
0:33:18
It allows a single individual to disrupt our housing market and creates a situation where affordable housing is concentrated in East New York and Brownsville and The Bronx, and huge swaths of the city don't do their fair share.
0:33:33
And I think that's problematic.
0:33:35
My audience, whether it was when I was 19 and took my first affordable housing class or today, is the community of working people who are barely scraping by.
0:33:46
My mother spent thirty two years busting trays in a hospital kitchen with poor working people.
0:33:53
And those kinds of people across The United States who are earning minimum wages can't afford to rent a typical one bedroom in the 50 largest cities in the country.
0:34:03
Those people there's not a city, state, or county in the country where a full time minimum wage worker can afford a typical one bedroom a two bedroom apartment in their market.
0:34:15
That's a catastrophe.
0:34:17
It's bad housing policy.
0:34:18
It's bad social policy.
0:34:20
It's bad economic development policy.
0:34:22
We have forsaken working people in a catastrophic way in this country.
0:34:27
My vision is simple.
0:34:29
My parents came here from Belize in 1962.
0:34:33
My father was a plumber.
0:34:34
My mother worked in a hospital kitchen.
0:34:37
They rented a room.
0:34:38
Then they rented a slightly bigger apartment and then our bigger apartment.
0:34:42
And by 1974, they owned a home.
0:34:44
That path is no longer possible.
0:34:46
We have a dysfunctional, nonfunctional housing market, and we have to fix it.
0:34:52
And we laugh at communities and suburbs across The United States, but they've figured out something that we've long forgotten.
0:34:59
You create a job, you need a housing unit.
0:35:02
And I spent two years as an intern in the city of Champaign, Illinois Planning Department.
0:35:10
And when an employer came in with 100 new jobs, they had to figure out where they were going to put 100 households.
0:35:17
And we just have given up on that.
0:35:19
And we can't because the lives of working people are at stake.
0:35:24
And there are people whose names we don't know, who don't know our names, who need us to wake up every morning and be the best version of ourselves.
0:35:31
And they're counting on you folks and folks like us.
0:35:34
And we can't let them down and disappoint them like we have the last twenty years.
0:35:38
Thank you.
0:35:40
I got nine seconds.
Richard R. Buery Jr.
0:35:40
Thank you both for incredibly powerful testimony.