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Q&A
Charter solutions for homelessness and clarifying the CPC override proposal
1:18:46
·
4 min
Commissioner Shams DaBaron asks Jessica Katz what charter changes could help the housing crisis, and asks Howard Slatkin if his proposal regarding a City Planning Commission (CPC) supermajority override is akin to eminent domain.
Katz reiterates that homelessness is a citywide crisis requiring urgent, potentially less localized, action, framing housing as a human right.
Slatkin clarifies his proposal is a procedural rebalancing to ensure citywide interests temper local deference within ULURP, arguing the 1989 charter revisions effectively made the council act locally on land use, which needs correction.
Shams DaBaron
1:18:46
So I have one for you.
1:18:49
For Jessica, I I think you might have said something, but I was gonna ask, is there something that the charter can do to help address the housing crisis?
1:19:02
And I think you were speaking to that to staff.
1:20:07
And for for how thank you.
1:20:09
Thank you.
1:20:09
And for Howard, so when I'm listening to your statement and I heard you mention this in the previous testimony, you were talking, it sounded like towards the issue of member deference, and you was associated with where there is a need and with the planning and I just fair share.
1:20:33
So I wanted to kinda like find out from you if what you were speaking to because it sounds to me a little like eminent domain.
1:20:42
Is it that or is it something something else?
1:20:52
Were saying that the supermajority.
Jessica Katz
1:19:05
Yeah.
1:19:05
I mean, I think homelessness in particular, that's the kind of narrow lens that I've taken here.
1:19:11
It's just not a hyperlocal issue.
1:19:14
And we have many, many ways in the existing land use process to address those hyperlocal issues and not a lot of other ways to address a citywide immediate crisis.
1:19:24
So, you know, when hurricane Sandy hit, we sheltered tens of thousands of people who are homeless like it was our number one priority, and it was our job.
1:19:31
Meanwhile, we've been living with tens of thousands of homeless people and not truly treated it like it was much of an emergency prior to that.
1:19:39
If you're strictly looking at a human rights perspective, you would never do a show of hands and a public opinion poll about whether or not we should have a roof over people's heads.
1:19:48
Failing that kind of radical change, there's plenty of ways that have been suggested by some of the experts on these panels and by this body in terms of looking at a broader citywide approach that is not necessarily treating every single project individually and kind of treating the housing crisis with the urgency that it's gonna require.
Howard Slatkin
1:20:46
The I'm sorry.
1:20:47
The the which which part of it?
1:20:50
The sounds like that.
1:20:57
Okay.
1:20:57
Yeah.
1:20:58
And I I it has, I I think I I hope it doesn't, and it's not intended to.
1:21:03
So let me see if I can, clarify that.
1:21:07
It is just a matter of providing a procedural rebalancing of the way that decisions are arrived at through the process that we already have for EULIP.
1:21:17
The same types of land use decisions would be made through that process.
1:21:21
But in the event one of the things that, we highlighted in the our report, the elephant in the room, is that land use and zoning is the only arena in which the city council effectively votes on things that are strictly local in nature.
1:21:36
Everything else local laws are general in nature.
1:21:39
They affect the city.
1:21:40
The policies may affect different parts of the city in different ways, and, of course, there's a lot of texture to that.
1:21:45
But there's no such thing as member deference in the other arenas of the council's authority.
1:21:51
The, the the issue here is to try to create a process by which the other actors in the EULAR process, the other officials, officials at the borough wide or the city wide level, have an opportunity to articulate, actually, there's a broader interest at stake here, and this decision needs to be considered in that light.
1:22:11
It's, as as other speakers have said tonight, there's not a way to say your thou shalt not have member deference.
1:22:18
It's it's inherent in the nature of a deliberative body where, you know, members elected from a district allow each member to look after the the issues that are specific to their district.
1:22:30
The idea is to introduce in a level on which that then gets reintroduced to the citywide or borough wide level.
1:22:37
The the original Euler process in 1975, you know, the idea was give voice to community concerns as the first step of the process.
1:22:47
Begin the process with hearing what the local community has to say, then you gradually proceed to higher levels of geography.
1:22:55
And at the citywide level, then it was the aptly derided board of estimate.
1:23:00
But the idea was that the decision happened at some broader level where all those perspectives could be integrated.
1:23:06
The effect of member deference in the 1989 charter revisions was to short circuit that and basically take the city council, which is a citywide body, and turn it into effectively a local body on local actions, which returns you to the first part of the process.
1:23:22
And that was, I would say, a bug and not a feature.
1:23:26
It does not mean that the council and that local perspectives are not important to bring into the process of the council.
1:23:32
It just means that the last vote in the process shouldn't be local in nature.