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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Jessica Katz on ULURP, housing rights, and term limits
1:07:24
·
3 min
Jessica Katz, a former housing official, testifies about her experience with the ULURP process, particularly regarding supportive housing.
While valuing ULURP for community engagement, she argues it's fundamentally unfair to vulnerable populations like the homeless, whose right to housing shouldn't be subject to community votes.
She contends that term limits have exacerbated the problem, as short-term elected officials have less incentive to approve housing that faces initial opposition but yields long-term benefits, necessitating structural changes to the land use process.
Jessica Katz
1:07:24
Sure.
1:07:25
Thank you.
1:07:26
Hi, and thank you for inviting me to testify here today.
1:07:29
My name is Jessica Katz.
1:07:30
I'm a lifelong Hauser and a former government official.
1:07:33
Thank you for your service to this commission.
1:07:36
After more than twenty years in the housing industry, both inside and outside government, I strongly believe it's time to change the rules of the road for how housing gets built.
1:07:44
You might not hear this a lot during this process, but I'm actually a huge fan of ULIP.
1:07:48
For more than a decade, it was my job, my honor and privilege, really, to go before community boards and make the pitch for supportive housing projects for chronically homeless New Yorkers.
1:07:58
I've stood in school auditoriums and senior center cafeterias in every borough, a couple of times pregnant and in heels, answering questions and hearing community concerns, sorting out fact from fiction.
1:08:09
I've been called every name in the book.
1:08:11
I've been shouted at in every neighborhood in this city.
1:08:14
And I truly appreciated those moments where things got heated in those meetings because it gave me the opportunity to set the record straight about the challenges faced by New Yorkers experiencing homelessness, to build some empathy and understanding in the hopes that when the building opened, the community would welcome their new neighbors.
1:08:31
For every project that had a small but vocal army of opponents, it was my job to help build a base of support.
1:08:37
And I knew that if the opponents would just meet some supportive housing tenants, they would see that their fears were unfounded.
1:08:43
But I always had my misgivings about this strategy.
1:08:45
It was effective, but it was a lot to ask of formerly homeless New Yorkers who had just achieved a measure of stability.
1:08:51
I'd be asking them to appear publicly before an angry crowd to tell their traumatic stories and how they overcame the worst times in their lives in an effort to win a little grace for the next homeless New Yorker who desperately needed a place to live.
1:09:04
In those moments, it felt like the rules of the game were rigged in favor of stably housed New Yorkers.
1:09:10
Housing is a human right is a really lovely phrase, But how do you make it more than a bumper sticker?
1:09:15
First of all, you need to build some housing for housing to be a human right.
1:09:19
And also legally, a human right is something that's even more important than democracy.
1:09:23
We elevate certain rights, and we put them on a higher plane because those rights are so fundamental that they're not subject to the whims of public opinion.
1:09:31
So housing as a human right means we shouldn't be asking for a show of hands to determine whether our homeless neighbors live stable lives or die in the street.
1:09:41
Another change that has had a huge impact on housing development has been term limits.
1:09:45
When the current EULAR process was designed, we were typically working with local elected officials who'd been office a long time and who would continue to hold their seats long after the controversy about any particular project had died down.
1:09:57
So the players in the project would be around to see a project go from idea to implementation, from an angry community board meeting to a round of applause at a ribbon cutting.
1:10:06
Today, term limits means that council members who are skeptical of new housing have little reason to take into account their future constituents who may need housing.
1:10:15
And even the most pro housing council members will likely not be in office to see a project come to fruition.
1:10:22
This combination of short term limits and long development timelines is a structural problem that inhibits new housing that was not the case when our current land use rules were first created.
1:10:32
So I'm so grateful to this commission for finding new ways to build more housing.
1:10:36
This is necessary because the affordable ability crisis is worse than ever before, because it's not fair to ask our homeless neighbors to fight for their lives in a EULAR process that is stacked against them, and because term limits has fundamentally changed the rules of the road.
1:10:49
Thank you.