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Q&A
Addressing housing production disparities and community-led planning
2:29:42
·
5 min
Commissioner Leila Bozorg asks former Council Member Benjamin Kallos for solutions regarding districts that build little housing, challenging his assertion about his own district's production using New York Housing Conference (NYHC) data.
Kallos argues net unit counts are misleading due to loss of rent-regulated units and lack of family apartments, and proposes funding community-led upzoning plans.
When pressed on unwilling districts, Kallos questions the premise and data, suggesting city inaction blocked his own proposals; Bozorg refers him to the NYHC report, whose data source Cheney confirms.
Leila Bozorg
2:29:42
Thanks for your testimony.
2:29:43
Brendan, first, thanks so much for New York Housing Conferences.
2:29:46
Great advocacy all across the city for housing and the report you guys do on the distribution of development, I think, has been a really helpful tool for folks to really understand the distribution of where housing is getting built and where it's not.
2:30:00
Former councilmember, I'm curious to hear a little bit more about your perspective on what the city can be doing.
2:30:06
It sounds like you have all these great housing ideas.
2:30:09
We can't bring all of them to voters, which is what the charter revision process requires.
2:30:16
And some of them could be put in a housing plan.
2:30:18
But for these districts that build little to no housing, partly because there's really no way to compel and there's a process that really does put the final vote in a local council member's hands and acknowledging that, you know, over sixteen, it's been sixteen years since we've had a housing project go through without the local council members' vote.
2:30:38
Curious what you think the city should do to create more housing in neighborhoods that have not done very much.
2:30:44
According to the Housing Conferences' report, too, I think in your district, I think only four eighty eight units got built between 2014 and 2023.
2:30:55
So I'm not sure where the thousand is you're coming from.
2:30:57
But but I but Sure.
2:30:58
Just curious to get your ideas on what we can do in neighborhoods and districts where little to no housing has been getting built.
Benjamin Kallos
2:31:05
So so I might might ask some of my colleagues who served at city planning.
2:31:09
So what's detailed in my testimony is a issue, which is in order to put up new housing in a city that is largely built, they have to tear down buildings.
2:31:20
And so in my district, there's four, five, and six story buildings that are old and therefore often rent regulated.
2:31:27
So you're losing 80 rent regulated apartments where the rents are anywhere between $80 a month.
2:31:34
I have tenants who are rent controlled who are paying $80 a month to live in this great city, which is amazing, and people paying a thousand.
2:31:42
And then they those, they get moved out, they get pushed out, they get bought out, and then we get a 20 story building or 30 story building with luxury development starting at a million dollars a unit.
2:31:55
Sometimes they have affordable housing in them, so we might get if it's got 40 units, 20% will get eight units of affordable housing.
2:32:03
The city will pay several hundred thousand or a million dollars per unit of subsidized affordable housing.
2:32:09
And so the number issue that you're talking about is between that and the fact that there aren't enough two, three, or four bedrooms in my district, between the loss of the regulated housing and people combining units, that's why you have that number 400 when we had more housing starts than anywhere else.
2:32:28
But in terms of how to help people get more units of affordable housing in their districts, later in my testimony, I suggest doing real honest to goodness community planning.
2:32:40
In Melissa Marcos of Rideau District, who represented more of East Harlem than I did, she funded a group to a community based group to do honest to goodness community planning, and they put forward a community based up zoning.
2:32:56
That up zoning, I think that the speaker at the time felt that city planning did not listen to that, and they came back with their own plan.
Leila Bozorg
2:33:05
That plan but that's a neighborhood that's produced a lot of housing.
2:33:08
I'm asking about neighborhoods where very little housing has gotten built.
Benjamin Kallos
2:33:11
So so I think what I where I'm going with this is if for districts that don't have a speaker who can fund a community group to do it, And in my district, I actually raised money to do my own rezoning, which the city planning did accept.
2:33:29
So I think one of the solutions I'm proposing is for you to create a fund to support communities that want to have organizations that work with community members to do a community led upzoning and then pair them with urban planners and the land use professionals to actually put forward community plans.
2:33:49
Because right now, residents can say, let's do an up zoning.
2:33:52
The community board can pass a resolution, but it's up to city planning whether or not they do anything with it.
2:33:58
And so I would really push strongly for giving those urban planners to the community board so that they can come back with their plans.
Leila Bozorg
2:34:05
Do you have any ideas for neighborhoods that don't want to do community planning and are saying they don't want new housing, but we're saying we have a citywide crisis and every neighborhood should be evaluated for where it can be building housing?
Benjamin Kallos
2:34:16
I honestly was curious as I heard the commissioners talking about neighborhoods because, I think there might be a conception it was the Upper East Side, but we were fighting to get affordable housing and homeless shelters, and we voted for them.
2:34:30
So I'm not sure where those neighborhoods are.
2:34:33
In the council, we were all trying to push for more affordability.
2:34:37
And I'll I'll be honest.
2:34:38
There's a memo I gave to the DiBlasio administration with, I think, several sites to upzone to build homeless beds.
2:34:45
I asked the mayor if we could please just upzone a block so that a church could put homeless home beds for homeless, either permanent housing or shelter beds above the church.
2:34:56
And they came back and said, we don't have the money.
2:34:58
Your district's too expensive.
2:35:00
And two, we're we don't wanna go through the EULIP process even if you're on board.
2:35:05
Senator Kruger's on board, and your borough president Gail Brewer's on board.
2:35:09
So Okay.
2:35:10
My point
Leila Bozorg
2:35:11
point you to housing conferences report if you wanna know the districts that have not been producing any housing.
2:35:15
You said you don't know where they are, and I know you're data driven, so I think you should take a look at their report.
Benjamin Kallos
2:35:19
That data may not reflect.
2:35:23
I I was looking at some of the data on my way on as I was drafting the testimony, and I'm concerned that it's not I'm happy to go over
Richard R. Buery Jr.
2:35:30
the data with you.
2:35:31
I'd be interested.
Brendan Cheney
2:35:32
Yes, please.
2:35:32
The data is from the Department of Housing and Preservation Development and the diversity planning.