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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Barika Williams, Executive Director of Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD), on fair housing and land use
0:15:07
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3 min
Barika Williams, Executive Director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD), testifies on aligning land use and budget for fair housing.
She emphasizes the need to codify and create consideration for how certain discretionary housing proposals can proceed on an expedited timeline, rooted in equitable planning and outcomes.
- Williams proposes requiring the City Council to vote on housing targets to codify them and move political discussions to an earlier stage.
- She suggests empowering community boards to create their own plans to address local housing needs, such as prioritizing senior housing.
- The proposal includes expediting 100% affordable housing projects and, in certain underperforming neighborhoods, mixed-income projects that meet specific criteria.
Barika Williams
0:15:07
Good evening, everybody.
0:15:08
My name is Barika Williams.
0:15:09
I'm the executive director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development or ANHD, and pleasure to be here vice chair and here in The Bronx, specifically.
0:15:19
A and HG is a member ownership organization with more than 80 plus neighborhood based nonprofits across the city, including many of the nonprofit affordable housing developers and managers that you were mentioning in your opening.
0:15:31
And we also convened the Thriving Communities Coalition, a citywide movement of grassroots advocacy and policy and technical assistance groups working across the city on equitable land use, planning and really fighting our current ad hoc approach to planning and land use in the city.
0:15:47
So coming back to you all after previously testifying in February, and really wanting to focus, Howard queued it up perfectly on that last piece of understanding where we are given the current existing fair housing plans and how, in light of the report, the commission could potentially be maybe not prepared to advance comprehensive planning overall, which is what we've been pushing for, but we still believe that this is a key opportunity to advance one of the key components and outcomes of fair housing by better allow aligning land use and budget pieces.
0:16:22
So in this, a crucial goal would be to sort of codify and and create some consideration around how certain discretionary housing proposals can move on a different and faster timeline than others.
0:16:35
So the key thing to stress here is we understand that the desire is to expedite and reduce bottlenecks for affordable housing development, but has to be done in a way that follows a plan that ensures that we're maintaining, equitable, planning and outcomes across the city, and that those plans are rooted in equity.
0:16:54
So our proposal and what we're bringing back to you all is requiring, first and foremost, the city council to vote on the targets.
0:17:01
The goal here is to codify the targets by city council.
0:17:06
And while you can never take the politics out of the process, in theory, to move the politics to a single moment in time upfront.
0:17:15
Think of it, in my mind, vis a vis the, like, big ugly up in Albany.
0:17:18
Like, everybody's gotta have vegetables and some dessert at the same time.
0:17:21
We make that decision together as opposed to right now, we're doing that one by one at the end of each EULIP process.
0:17:28
Right?
0:17:29
Part two would be to empower community boards to create some of these plans themselves, hopefully in good faith to say, like, we have an idea of how we want to advance some of the things that we see as issues.
0:17:43
So for example, communities like, we really need to prioritize senior housing, and all we're seeing is one bedroom units or all we're seeing is units that don't feel like they're ADA ex or, you know, as accessible.
0:17:55
Right?
0:17:56
And then to expedite housing that meets the targets.
0:18:00
So what we propose here is that a 100% affordable housing projects go through an expedited timeline and process, also creating some additional predictability for the cost of those projects, and that mixed income and affordable, mixed income, affordable housing projects that meet certain criteria and in certain neighborhoods could also be accelerated sort of in a understanding that certain neighborhoods won't be meeting their five year targets.
0:18:27
And I know my time is up, so I will stop there.