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Q&A
Citizens' assemblies as a tool for building consensus on housing plans
1:43:19
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127 sec
Commissioner Dr. Lisette Nieves asks Annie Levers for examples of successful citizens' assemblies, concerned it might add bureaucracy.
Levers explains the goal is to build political consensus citywide, citing Ireland's use for abortion rights reform.
She argues the assembly, using the fair housing framework and expert input, would create neighborhood plans efficiently to address critiques that comprehensive planning takes too long, ultimately strengthening democracy.
Dr. Lisette Nieves
1:43:19
Can you cite an example where you whenever I hear a citizens assembly
Michelle de la Uz
1:43:24
Indeed.
1:43:25
Yeah.
1:43:26
Some could
Dr. Lisette Nieves
1:43:27
view that as adding another layer and wanna reject it outright.
1:43:32
Can you give me an example where that has been one where it's actually encouraged greater buy in versus created more tension?
Annie Levers
1:43:40
Sure.
1:43:41
Well, I'll start first by just making clear that the point of the comprehensive plan itself and the way it's used in other cities has always been to develop buy in and build political consensus citywide on these individual neighborhood level issues.
1:43:54
So that's why it works in other jurisdictions.
1:43:57
You bring the plan to the council, and the council has to agree to to address the crisis, right, citywide.
1:44:03
Each council member is forced to take a little bit.
1:44:05
They've already taken leadership in this area by passing the fair housing framework.
1:44:09
So there's clearly some buy in to this concept that there is a need to deliver citywide housing in every neighborhood.
1:44:16
A comprehensive plan does exact exactly that.
1:44:18
I think a big critique of comprehensive planning has been that it takes too long, and it sits on a shelf and never gets implemented.
1:44:26
And what this proposal is designed to do is address those two critiques.
1:44:30
We would create a citizens' assembly, which has been used I mean, my favorite example is it's actually used in legislative areas.
1:44:36
So it was used in Ireland to dramatically expand abortion rights in a country that would not otherwise actually be inclined to do so through this sort of diverse body of people that were randomly selected jury duty style to actually just learn about the issue and and vote on what they really saw was the right thing to do.
1:44:53
So that's an example of where it's been used previously.
1:44:57
But the idea is that it would take the fair housing framework.
1:45:00
It would get information from city agencies and independent experts, many of whom are in this room on on sort of where the crisis is, you know, hitting hardest in communities and build a land use plan for each district so that council members have a a somewhat clearer sense of where in their district growth is going to go, and that that could help build some consensus.
1:45:21
They would then adopt that plan, and then they would forgo their review from there.