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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Barbara Blair, President of Garment District Alliance, on the need for fair share reform to prevent neighborhood sacrifice zones
1:46:55
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111 sec
Barbara Blair, President of the Garment District Alliance and a Brooklynite, testifies about the need to address the concept of "fair share" in the city charter. She argues that the current system lacks a mechanism to codify fair share in planning or approval processes, leading to some neighborhoods, like the Garment District where she works, becoming "sacrifice zones."
Blair explains that these areas see a clustering of locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) like methadone clinics, needle exchanges, and shelters, often because there's less residential pushback. She states these uses should be distributed across all boroughs and districts, not concentrated in specific areas.
Barbara Blair
1:46:55
Hello.
1:46:56
My name is Barbara Blair.
1:46:57
I work in Midtown Manhattan for a neighborhood development organization, but I'm a Brooklynite, which is why I'm here this evening.
1:47:04
Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to us, and I never like to miss an opportunity to speak to New York City's brain trust.
1:47:12
So we're counting on you.
1:47:14
I'm here about a topic that the council member actually spoke about.
1:47:18
It's fair share.
1:47:19
And we have the concept of fair share right now in the city charter, but we do not have a mechanism for either codifying it in a planning process, a EULIP process, some sort of approval process at a community board level.
1:47:35
And so what's happened is their neighborhoods in the city, and the Garment District where I work is one of them, are sacrifice zones.
1:47:43
And they're sacrifice zones because we have allowed state and city government to place uses, LULUs, locally unwanted land uses, in neighborhoods, cluster them in neighborhoods where either there's not a lot of pushback.
1:47:58
In our case, we don't have residents, so there's nobody to vote against them.
1:48:02
They're not part of the public process.
1:48:04
So I have colleagues also, for example, in Harlem that are in the same situation I'm in.
1:48:09
We have methadone clinics, needle exchanges, supportive housing, you know, shelters.
1:48:16
Not to say that these uses should not be in the city Of New York.
1:48:20
They should be in every borough, in every district, not in sacrifice zones where you don't have a strong, counternarrative to having them all dumped in one place.
1:48:32
So that's why I'm here.
1:48:33
This is an easy problem to fix.
1:48:36
The council members spoke about it with reference to housing.
1:48:39
The whole concept of fair share goes across almost everything that we do in our communities, and I look to you to solve it.