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One of the angriest community board meetings I ever attended concerned a policy whose name seemed designed to evoke bureaucratic boredom: mandatory inclusionary housing.
The policy was a signature effort from former Mayor Bill de Blasio requiring developers to set aside a certain amount of residential units as affordable in any project that required a rezoning. And despite its name, many who showed up to the South Bronx meeting to discuss it were anything but bored by it. They passionately railed against the proposal, a process that repeated itself at most of the other community boards across the city. Virtually all of them voted against it, citing concerns ranging from gentrification to socialism.
And then, a few months later and with a few changes, the city passed the policy. It remains on the books to this day.
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration is now gearing up for a comparable fight with its signature housing policy, known as City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. The proposed changes similarly seek to boost housing production, a goal that almost always faces pushback at the community board level. But the mandatory inclusionary housing experience offers a good reminder that all the fireworks and arguments likely to erupt about City of Yes at community board meetings in the coming months may not amount to much more than group therapy for its opponents.
Community boards have been in the news more than usual lately, thanks largely to the bizarre sequence of events still unfolding at Manhattan Community Board 5 in Midtown. Members of the pro-housing group Open New York took control of the board in March and upset several of its volunteer members in the process by not disclosing their connection with the organization. Open New York campaign coordinator Samir Lavingia remains the board’s new chairman but faces accusations of duplicity and an ongoing effort to push him out.
The drama is interesting and raises important questions about who should be allowed on community boards and what members seeking leadership positions should reveal about themselves. But it also obscures an important point that is worth emphasizing: The real estate decisions community boards make are not binding.
This does not mean they are powerless, as elected officials who do make binding decisions pay attention to their recommendations, but it does put a hard limit on how much power they actually have. An extremely pro-housing board, for example, could approve every project that comes its way, and an extremely anti-housing board could reject every project that comes its way (which isn’t too far off from our current reality), but all that really matters is whether the local council member agrees.
The Adams administration would certainly still prefer to get these groups on board with City of Yes, if only to help smooth its passage through the City Council. And it may have better luck on that front than the de Blasio administration did, as there seems to be much broader agreement that the city needs more housing now than there was during the mandatory inclusionary housing push almost 10 years ago.
But given what some of the new regulations target, such as the removal of parking mandates and the legalization of small backyard apartments, at least some Community Board rejections are borderline inevitable. If and when their vehement denunciations come rolling in, though—most of which will include some form of the phrase “We support new housing, but …”—keep in mind that the key decisions won’t happen until the plan reaches the City Council. Members will keep the community boards’ opinions in mind, sure, but that doesn’t mean they’ll follow their lead. Just ask all the mandatory inclusionary housing opponents.
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Eddie Small , 2024-05-08 18:48:26
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