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Q&A
Discussion on enforcing housing targets and appeals processes
0:18:30
·
3 min
Commissioner Sharon Greenberger questions Barika Williams and Howard Slatkin on their respective testimonies regarding housing targets and appeals processes.
Williams elaborates on incentivizing housing targets rather than penalizing, suggesting accelerated timelines for 100% affordable and certain mixed-income projects in underperforming areas, while allowing community boards to prioritize specific needs like family-sized units. Slatkin explains his proposal for an objective, data-driven appeals process for inadequate housing production, suggesting using a threshold like the lowest 25% of community districts in new affordable housing production to avoid manipulation of targets by those involved in the land use review process (ULURP).
Sharon Greenberger
0:18:30
I have a quick question for each of you.
0:18:32
First, Breeka, on yours, do you have specific ways to enforce meeting those targets in addition to expediting potentially plans that help meet those targets?
0:18:45
Any other specific mechanisms?
Barika Williams
0:18:47
Yes.
0:18:47
So we went more with the incentive side than the penalty side.
0:18:53
Right?
0:18:53
Also thinking about some of the things and pushback and feedback we've seen in the statewide housing proposals and other things, it feels like that is has been better received.
0:19:06
So it would be that a 100% affordable moves through.
0:19:10
If you haven't met your five year targets, you are now open to a much wider swath moving through on an accelerated timeline.
0:19:18
So now your mixed income affordable projects can move in the same accelerated timeline as you're a 100% affordable.
0:19:25
So now we've kind of, like, doubled the pool of what can move more quickly with the understanding, and this is where one of the feedbacks we also heard from our membership was the desire and need, and Howard talked about this as well, to not eliminate community voice in this process.
0:19:41
So to appreciate that some community boards might be like, everything that's getting developed is a studio, and we are families that need three and four buildings.
0:19:50
What we wanna do is set our plan to say, we want affordable that is four family sized units and to give that the acceleration, but maybe not say that everything has to be accelerated.
Sharon Greenberger
0:20:02
Thank you.
0:20:03
And, Howard, you mentioned an appeals process.
0:20:06
I can't remember if your exact words were automated or objective criteria.
0:20:10
Do you want to elaborate on what those are?
Howard Slatkin
0:20:13
Sure.
0:20:14
And I think the and this is a, I think, a same set of issues that Barika was talking about in a somewhat different, take on it, which is that this is the idea that for whichever provisions are triggered by some measure of inadequate housing production, and we've suggested some in our proposal, at CHPC.
0:20:34
Others have suggested other mechanisms triggered by that.
0:20:37
But the challenge with any mechanism that any mechanism in which the the measure determines who participates in the Euler process, the people who are participants in the Euler process should not be participants in setting that target because it creates an incentive to gain targets to either include or exclude people from the Euler process in a way that's, you know, not related to what the actual housing target underlying that should be.
0:21:12
A much simpler, cleaner, less controversial, subjective, and manipulable, version of that would be to just take the lowest 25%.
0:21:22
For instance, if the issue, that I'm suggesting, this that the, lack of production of new affordable housing in a district over a period of time, you know, is is the the the threshold question.
0:21:36
If that if you take the lowest 25 of community districts in that category, then, know, that is going to capture the districts that are producing the least affordable housing Yeah.
0:21:49
Overall, and it doesn't involve subjective determinations about, you know, who should or who shouldn't have a vote in which part of the process.
Sharon Greenberger
0:21:59
Understood.
0:21:59
Thank you.