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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Moses Gates from the Regional Plan Association on rebalancing local and citywide land use interests
2:37:08
·
3 min
Moses Gates from the Regional Plan Association (RPA) testifies on the need for land use reform to better meet citywide needs, currently housing, but potentially others in the future.
He argues the current process is imbalanced, too deferential to individual council members.
RPA suggests rebalancing local and citywide interests through mechanisms like an appeals process (e.g., allowing the BSA to overrule applications based on citywide interest) to ensure successful approaches aren't limited to cooperative districts or become generational undertakings.
Moses Gates
2:37:08
Thank you.
2:37:09
I'm glad to know that Gale Brewer story didn't come into my time.
2:37:13
My name is Moses Gates.
2:37:14
I'm vice president of housing at Regional Plan Association.
2:37:18
We do research planning and advocacy in the greater New York, New Jersey, Connecticut metropolitan region.
2:37:24
I wanted to testify today on more of the overarching goals we believe that the commission should consider with respect to land use and housing, And we have more specifics that we'll submit kind of in our written in more written testimony.
2:37:37
It's evident we have a problem meeting citywide needs.
2:37:41
Right now, that need is housing.
2:37:43
That need has not always been housing, and it won't be housing in the future.
2:37:47
And we need to think about reforming the land use process in ways where we're able to meet both our current, present, and future needs.
2:37:55
And it should be noted there is no one land use process.
2:37:57
We have ULURP.
2:37:58
Some things are subject to ULURP.
2:38:00
Many things are not subject to ULURP.
2:38:02
And in much of the testimony from city council members and others, we, I feel like, have a thematic consensus.
2:38:10
And the thematic consensus is different levels of government should work together to produce the things that New York City needs.
2:38:17
And I think everybody in the commission and everybody we've heard testimony is aligned with that.
2:38:22
There are different ways to meet that.
2:38:24
The school construction authority is not subject to ULURP, and nobody is saying that it should be, and nobody says that the way we build schools in New York City is a crisis of democracy.
2:38:35
So there are different ways of going about this.
2:38:37
We wanted to highlight a few different ways that we think the process should be balanced in terms of local and citywide interests and voices.
2:38:49
So first of all, having when it comes to individual land use applications, we, like many others who have testified, believe the process is, imbalanced and, too deferential to the individual council member.
2:39:06
There are many ways to change this, one of which is to have some kind of appeals process using existing institutions like the Bureau of Standards and Appeals, which is able to overrule land use applications on the basis of the interests of the individual developer, but currently not able to overrule that same land use application in terms of the interests of the people of New York City.
2:39:32
So that is something that we think, the commission should examine as ways to better rebalance that process and make sure that the process that all the council members described, and I wanna really commend the three who testified for, the projects they did in their district as well as the council as a whole for doing City of Yes.
2:39:52
I thought these were all excellent things that should not be generational undertakings, as they are right now and should be expanded to, as the commission members have pointed out, those districts that have less impetus to go forward.
2:40:11
With that, I'll stop.