Keynote Address for Newman Institute Affordable Housing Conference, 10/21/05

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Thanks also to Speaker Miller and all the members of the City Council, who had the foresight and initiative to fund this study and take the discussion of affordable housing development in New York City to the next level.

Because clearly that’s what’s happening. I had planned to begin this speech by calling on the City to take heed of the Newman Institute’s findings and make a major new commitment to affordable housing development.

But earlier this week, Mayor Bloomberg let us know that he’s already getting the message. His ten-year affordable housing plan seems to take a cue or two from the Newman Institute’s recommendations. For instance, you heard today from John Kelly about reviving the Mitchell Lama program. The Mayor’s plan would create a new City agency along the lines of Mitchell Lama.

The Mayor’s opponent, Fernando Ferrer, also has an ambitious housing plan that seeks to address the city’s long-term needs. The bottom line is that no matter who is mayor in January, 2005, affordable housing will take its rightful place alongside crime and education among the City’s top priorities.

Not since the Koch years, when the City invested $5.1 billion in affordable housing development and created 150,000 units over a ten-year period, have we seen such a strong will to tackle our affordable housing crisis head-on. And I firmly believe that the efforts of the Newman Institute and all of you who work so hard on this issue played a major role in making that happen.

But the Mayor’s announcement doesn’t mean our work is done. On the contrary, our work is just beginning. If we’re serious about meeting New York’s urgent affordable housing need, we are going to have to face a multitude of complex issues. You’ve heard about a number of those issues today. You probably noticed some points of contention among the speakers and heard some things you disagree with yourself.

There is nothing wrong with a little disagreement. Disagreement may be inevitable when it comes to a problem as multi-faceted and difficult as the affordable housing crisis we face.

But no matter what our differences are, we should be able to agree on the basics. No matter who’s sitting at the table, the terms of the discussion should be the same. That’s why I commissioned the Newman Institute to conduct the affordable housing study you’ve been hearing about today.

Now more than ever, it is crucial that lawmakers, developers, advocates, and academics have a common reference point, an objective resource for understanding the cause and effect relationship between government policy and affordable housing development.

Yes, a major new commitment of resources is the first and most important step. Commitment matters, good intentions matter, but how we go about meeting that commitment, fulfilling those good intentions, matters, too. Resources are only as valuable as our ability to use them intelligently and efficiently. That brings me to the first of two concepts I’d like to talk about: the City needs to replace its piecemeal approach to affordable housing development with a comprehensive, citywide agenda.

First, let’s give credit where credit is due: This week, Mayor Bloomberg demonstrated a willingness to focus on the city’s long-term housing needs. And in his first term, he has not been shy about undertaking major rezonings that have the potential to change the landscape of the city for a long time to come.

But to me, the key words in the concept I just articulated are “comprehensive” and “citywide.” We need to regulate, we need to rezone. But the way we choose to rezone has consequences.

Taking a piecemeal approach, tinkering with the make-up of a given neighborhood without keeping the big picture front and center—that just won’t work.

And yet that is exactly what’s going on in New York City today. The City Planning Commission and the Department of City Planning have acknowledged as much, saying that the administration’s approach to rezoning is “block by block, street by street.”

It is commendable that the administration has committed to paying careful attention to the special needs of each community it rezones. Unfortunately, the “block by block, street by street” approach has serious unintended consequences for the future of this city. It is a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees, the city for the streets.

Different communities have different concerns, and the concerns of one community are bound to conflict with the concerns of another. When the City attends to the concerns of each community in a bubble, it is essentially saying that neighborhood rezonings don’t have citywide consequences. And that just isn’t the case.

The administration can point to the rezonings in Greenpoint-Williamsburg and the West Side and say that they will produce a significant number of new affordable units in the years to come. But advocates can point to just as many neighborhoods, or more, where the opportunity for substantial affordable housing development has been stymied by new regulation.

For decades, the City’s unspoken policy has been that it’s okay to satisfy community demand for downzoning in some neighborhoods because we can always upzone other neighborhoods when the opportunity presents itself.

My point here is not to criticize individual downzonings. Residents have every reason to defend themselves against an invasion of out-of-scale development. And in the absence of more creative solutions, downzoning sometimes appears to be the only option on the table.

My point is that the piecemeal approach to rezoning puts the administration in the position of constantly shifting affordable housing to the backburner while it prioritizes community concerns that may not be in the long-term interests of the City as a whole.

The more strictly you regulate density in neighborhoods throughout the city, the less affordable housing you can build. That’s just simple cause and effect. But without a comprehensive, citywide agenda to remind us of the simple truth, affordable housing too often gets lost in the shuffle of competing interests.

The piecemeal approach also means that neighborhoods share the burden of affordable housing development unequally. As long as one neighborhood’s downzoning begets another neighborhood’s upzoning, we are in very treacherous waters where issues that no one wants to confront—issues of race and class—are liable to rise to the surface.

This is where the much-used phrase “community character” comes into play. On the basis of the evidence, the City’s position seems to be that some neighborhoods have a character that must be preserved even at the expense of affordable housing development, while other neighborhoods lack character and therefore should take on the burden of higher densities on behalf of all the rest.

The second concept I bring to you today is that affordable housing and preservation of community character should be treated as compatible goals. I have visited neighborhoods in every corner of every borough, and as near as I can tell, every community in New York City has character. I am uncomfortable with this administration, or any administration, playing favorites when it comes to community character. The potential for inconsistency and unfairness is troublingly high.

Let’s start with inconsistency: The administration made a point of retaining the manufacturing designation on the midblocks in Chelsea so that galleries would be able to keep the large, industrial spaces they depend on.

Meanwhile, in Greenpoint-Williamsburg, the administration’s initial plan, prior to negotiation and compromise, was to eliminate most of the industrial space. Why the double-standard? The only explanation that I can come up with is that, in the administration’s view, Chelsea has a character worth preserving, a character dependent on industrial space, while Greenpoint-Williamsburg does not.

But Chelsea’s character took years to develop. Who’s to say that Greenpoint-Williamsburg won’t develop along similar lines in years to come? Who’s to say that it isn’t already developing a unique character of its own, that the preservation of industrial space isn’t just as important to the residents and businesses of Greenpoint-Williamsburg as it is to the residents and businesses of Chelsea?

The consequence of inconsistency is unfairness. I am not making an accusation when I say that the majority of neighborhoods that have been downzoned are predominantly white and relatively affluent, while the majority that have been upzoned are not. I’m simply stating a fact.

And rather than speculate about the pressures dictating the pick-and-choose approach to community character, I will just quote the president of a civic group that has successfully pushed for downzonings in a number of Queens neighborhoods: “We seem to be more successful in the election cycle than in the nonelection cycle,” he told the New York Times. “Because I think you need votes and you try to appease or please people in the neighborhoods.”

Now, the intrusion of politics is an undeniable reality of civic life. And the remedy for the inconsistency and unfairness in the rezoning process is not to stop trying to please people in the neighborhoods.

The remedy is to stop casting density as the villain and start dealing with affordable housing development and preservation of community character as compatible parts of the same agenda. We need to show communities that we can do both.

In its study, the Newman Institute explores the possibility of concentrating new development along major commercial corridors in order to preserve community character while at the same time allowing for significant new development. The redevelopment of Fourth Avenue in Park Slope could serve as a model for this approach.

But the reconciliation of community character and affordable housing development will take more than a nuanced approach to rezoning. In some cases, the best solution will be a design-based solution.

In Seattle, Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen recently designed a series of graceful, butterfly-roof modern houses that were built by a local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, an organization mostly known for vinyl-sided tract-style houses. In England, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has launched a competition for houses that can be built for approximately $108,000. The winners will be manufactured by a government-funded program. The Boston Society of Architects is about to announce the winners of a new national competition for affordable housing.

These examples do not deal specifically with the problems associated with high-density development. But they do point the way towards creative, designed-based ways of reconciling aesthetic issues like community character and the need to build affordable housing. Design programs at architecture schools across the country are turning out graduates eager to work on this very issue.

We live in a time when the potential rewards for thinking big are higher than ever. Now is not the time for a scattershot approach that is susceptible to political pressure, aesthetic prejudice, and unintended consequences.

Now is a time for vision, for a dedication to concepts that do not change from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Concept one: The City needs to replace its piecemeal approach to rezoning with a comprehensive, citywide agenda that puts affordable housing first.

Concept two: The preservation of community character and the development of affordable housing must be treated as compatible rather than conflicting goals. Every single community in New York City has a character that can be preserved without resorting to the most extreme forms of regulation.

As we work to build consensus around these concepts, it will help if we have a common starting point, a resource to ensure that when we talk about the parameters of affordable housing development we are all talking about the same thing. Which brings us back to the affordable housing study the Newman Institute has prepared.

This study is not a substitute for a plan. It is a compilation of data that everyone with a stake in affordable housing development can refer to as a basis for discussions.

How much does a unit of affordable housing cost? How many affordable units can the City reasonably expect to be built in a given neighborhood at a given density? These are the kind of essential, brass-tacks questions this study was designed to address.

Now, when the administration announces a proposed rezoning, advocates, opinion makers, and elected officials will be able to objectively evaluate it against the full range of available options. Which is not to say that this study is meant to trip up a Mayor who has given the affordable housing crisis far more attention than his predecessor. It is not an ideological instrument, a blunt object that the opposing sides in this debate can use to beat each other over the heads. It’s much too big and heavy for that.

No, this study is meant to serve as common ground, a neutral zone around which the people who care about the future of this city can come together, transcend politics and fixed ideologies, and talk about the realities that dictate our ability to build affordable housing.

In the coming months, I hope to facilitate discussions among advocates, community groups, academics, and my colleagues in government. I want all our best minds hard at work on this issue. We do not know yet what a comprehensive, citywide affordable housing agenda will look like in every detail, but we do know that it will rely on innovative thinking, cutting-edge solutions to the problems that have held New York City back for too long.

Beyond its considerable practical value, this study is a sign of hope. We are here today to let New Yorkers know that we understand how hard it is to find a home in this city, and how difficult it is to pay for it once you do.

We know that there is a better way, and we’re committed to articulating it and making it a reality. We understand that we will have to work together to accomplish our goals.

That’s what this day has been about: taking a crucial first step towards a more affordable New York. May it be the first of many.

Thank you.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the members of the team that worked so hard to prepare this study:

Henry Wollman
John Shapiro
Petr Vancura
Frank Braconi
Amie Gross
William Traylor
Robert Burchell
Frank Uffen
Stephen Johnston
Frank Fish
Marcie Kesner
Michael Kwartler
Sean Ahearn
Mark Strauss
Costas Kondylis
Pablo Vengoechea
Jeffrey Levine
Marta Rudzki
Ad A.F. Hereijgers
Marcie Cohen
Glenn Erikson
Patricia Neumann
Barry Hersh
John Kelly
Stanley Moses
Tricia Solsaa
Sandra Vega

These individuals deserve a round of applause.