IN REZONING, A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Nov 6, 2016 | All News, Economic Dignity

IN REZONING, A TALE OF TWO CITIES: POORER, BLACK AND LATINO NEIGHBORHOODS
AND WEALTHIER, PREDOMINANTLY WHITE ONES STILL GET TREATED VERY
DIFFERENTLY BY THE CITY
NYC PAPERS OUT.

Photo: James Keivom/New York Daily News

BY: ONLEILOVE ALSTON

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, September 12, 2016, 5:00 AM

Ever since Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez rejected a proposed rezoning in the Inwood section of
Manhattan that, in the name of supposedly creating affordable housing, would have increased
the value of the site — owned by private equity developer Acadia Realty Trust — by millions of
dollars overnight, council member opposition to local rezonings is growing.Jimmy Van Bramer
has announced his plans to vote no on a rezoning in Sunnyside Queens. And a few weeks ago,
Corey Johnson hinted he would reject a rezoning in Tribeca unless it “adequately serves” the
community he represents. Last fall, Brad Lander announced his opposition to a rezoning of the
Long Island College Hospital site in Brooklyn.Mayor de Blasio wants these rezonings to sail
through, claiming they are vital to his plans to create more affordable housing.
That’s deeply misleading.
While it is encouraging to see council members respond to community opposition and stand up
to profit-hungry real estate developers in their districts, racial disparities continue to exist in how
zoning tools are applied across our diverse city.

In white communities, rezonings are typically used to protect neighborhoods from new
development, while black communities have rezonings — characterized by housing branded as
“affordable” but is in fact unaffordable to most residents — forced upon them. Protest from
communities of color goes unheard.

In most of the districts where rezonings are being rejected, a majority of residents are white.
According to Census data, the neighborhood surrounding the Sunnyside project is nearly 50%
white; Tribeca is over 80% white. Cobble Hill, home to the LICH site, is 61% white.

East New York, on the other hand, is just 1.6% white, and despite widespread local opposition,
a community-wide rezoning measure sailed through the City Council this spring. Because the
thousands of new housing units would be unaffordable for most East New York residents, not a
single local community organization supported the change.
This disturbing trend is not surprising. Some of the country’s first zoning laws were designed to
keep families of color out of white suburban enclaves. This historical trend continued through
the 120 rezonings done by the Bloomberg administration.

An analysis by NYU’s Furman found that these rezonings had little to no impact on the city’s
buildable area. In fact, most were downzonings or contextual zonings in the city’s white
homeowner neighborhoods. Lots that were upzoned, however — allowing for taller buildings
and more density — tended to be in less white and less wealthy neighborhoods.

To Vishnu Mahadeo, executive director of the Richmond Hill Economic Development

Corporation, the motivation for downzoning in his neighborhood was clear.

“The whole genesis of that last downgrade was because the immigrant community was not
viewed in a positive way by the establishment,” Mahadeo told Politico in 2014. “The concept
was . . . if you reduce the size of the house, less of them will be here.”

In other words, white neighborhoods have been able to use rezoning to protect their property
interests and keep their neighborhoods looking more or less the same. Meanwhile, areas with a
higher share of minority households are forced to absorb new development that is often only
affordable to the whiter, wealthier residents who move in.

This appears to be in line with racist housing policies such as redlining, predatory lending and
housing discrimination that have kept people of color housing insecure for generations.

It is disappointing to see this pattern continue, especially in Mayor de Blasio’s New York.
Communities of color who stand up to real estate interests deserve to be heard. Faced with a
tremendous housing burden, their voices are rarely the shrill NIMBY voices that the
pro-development forces of the government and media portray them to be.

In East New York, community members were clear in their willingness to accept increased
density — so long as the new housing was affordable to them. However, despite this willingness
to negotiate, residents’ concerns fell on deaf ears.

We are not anti-development; we are anti-development-that-we-can’t-afford.

Building new housing is most certainly part of solving our housing crisis, but it must be applied
with a fair-share approach and at income levels that the lowest-income New Yorkers can afford
— in every rezoning.

We need to shift the existing paradigm and use rezoning as a tool to benefit low-income New
Yorkers of color who have been ignored or willfully excluded so far. The city should pause
rezonings until the tools to get these communities what they deserve — deeply affordable
housing — are available.
Otherwise, the city’s efforts will continue to fail and the diversity that has made our city great will
slip away.

Alston is the executive director of Faith in New York, an interfaith, multicultural federation of
congregations.

Original Article Link:

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/onleilove-alston-rezoning-tale-cities-article-1.2786081