Queens blasts City of Yes at Borough Hall hearing
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Queens Borough President Donovan Richards held the first boroughwide hearing for City of Yes for Housing Opportunity on Thursday, and heard locals’ thoughts on the wide-reaching proposal. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
Queens locals and elected officials blasted the mayor’s City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan at a Borough Hall hearing on Thursday.
The hearing was intended to gauge the borough’s feelings about the ambitious yet controversial housing plan set to come to a vote before the City Council in the fall. The meeting was also designed to help inform Queens Borough President Donovan Richards’ recommendation on the proposal. However, Richards may have got more than he bargained for with person after person expressing various degrees of disdain for the massive citywide initiative on Thursday.
The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, one third of the Adams Administration’s City of Yes platform, intends to rework city zoning laws in order to develop “a little more housing in every neighborhood” to address housing shortages and increase affordability.
The plan has, however, received consistent condemnation from community boards and civic groups across the city and in Queens, in particular, where locals have expressed worries that the plan will compromise the quiet, suburban-esqe lifestyles that drew them to their neighborhoods in the first place.
Though Richards has largely urged development as a means to address the city’s housing crisis and has issued support for some elements of the City of Yes plan, he shared a number of concerns about the proposal on Thursday.
The hearing was the first of its kind for the borough as well as the city — though other BPs have issued their recommendations on the proposal, none held a public hearing beforehand.
“We are doing this hearing because we believe in being transparent and hearing from all sides, no matter where we arrive at this decision,” Richards said.
Despite the intention, most of the meeting consisted of thoughts from one side. Specifically, the side that has for months argued that the City of Yes will be counterproductive and will eventually inundate suburban Queens communities with high-density housing.
The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity is not a single proposal for housing growth but is instead split into a handful of proposals meant to change city zoning to make building housing less bureaucratic and burdensome.
It includes provisions like legalizing Accessory Dwelling Units – or ADUs – which allow homeowners to build additional housing on their property in the form of a backyard cottage or a basement unit.
Other key aspects of the plan includes building 3-5 story buildings in communities close to transit, building more apartments on top of commercial space — as was the norm in the mid-20th century — to build more “town centers” and eliminate parking mandates for new developments.
While there are other aspects of the plan, these have been the subject of the most concern from locals, who sounded off at Borough Hall on Thursday.
A large amount of the criticism, on top of feeling like the proposals will bring too much development, focused on the belief that the plan’s one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t meet the needs of individual neighborhoods.
“Our residents believe that the proposals put forth by the City of Yes are far too broad and do not adequately address the uniqueness of all the many communities in our city, and particularly in our borough,” said Betty Bratton, the longtime chair of Queens Community Board 10. “They do not desire to see the essential character of those communities altered. They believe this proposal does not provide adequate pathways for them to participate in the processes to review future development. This city and our borough are not, as other speakers have said, ‘one-size-fits-all’.”
Detractors to the City of Yes often use the term “cookie cutter” to describe the alleged broad reaching approach of the plan.
“In a place as vibrant and diverse as New York City, taking a cookie-cutter-approach and application of zoning regulations could really be a recipe for disaster,” said Councilmember Joann Ariola, who represents suburban communities in Rockaway and Howard Beach.
“Pushing potentially thousands of new people into an area through accessory dwelling units or newly zoned high rise residential units would guarantee the floundering infrastructure collapsing outright,” she added.
A hearing was held at Borough Hall on Thursday where locals weighed in on the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan. Screenshot via Queens Borough President/Youtube
The most diehard detractors of the plan firmly believe that it would be catastrophic to the way of life for suburban New Yorkers.
“Our community boards devoted hours to rezoning, protecting communities from irresponsible over development, and the City of Yes is a gift to developers that will undo those efforts,” said Queens Civic Congress President Warren Schreiber. “The diverse home owning population of Queens, including Northeast Queens and Southeast Queens, worked harder and longer to achieve the American dream. The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity proposal is a direct threat to this dream and the generational wealth it represents.”
Amidst those repeated criticisms, the city and the Department of City Planning, who oversee the proposal, have tried to push back against them. DCP Commissioner Dan Garodnick has defended the plan, saying that the proposals seek to match individual communities and their character.
“Our low-density areas in New York City are not a monolith,” he told the Eagle in an interview in July. “They have different housing types. They have different contexts. This proposal very carefully matches what is already there.”
“In many cases, our low-density districts, or even multifamily low-density districts, are not able to produce the housing that they are technically allowed to produce under our zoning resolution,” he added. “So, we want to open the door to enable a little bit more of that housing that already exists and to re-legalize a type of housing that exists throughout New York City.”
Garodnick said in a statement to the Eagle on Thursday that inaction is not an option when it comes to housing in the city.
“These proposals were carefully crafted to address the lack of housing options that harm all New Yorkers every day, and are based on years of public input, including from local experts, builders, and other stakeholders,” he said. “We are reviewing all the feedback we have gotten to ensure we craft the most effective proposal to lower housing costs, and look forward to receiving Borough President Richards’ recommendation.”
Housing advocates have said the City of Yes is key to solving the housing and affordability crisis in New York City.
“With such a broad diversity of communities, Queens will benefit from every aspect of City of Yes,” said Open New York Executive Director Annemarie Gray in a statement Thursday. “While denser areas will see more affordable housing with the Universal Affordability Preference, moderate and low-density districts will also see benefits with town-center zoning, the elimination of parking mandates, and the reintroduction of accessory dwelling units In low-density communities, ADUs can empower homeowners to add more homes without changing neighborhood character.”
Richards has until the end of the month to issue his recommendations for the City of Yes, but said he intends to wrap up his thoughts in the next two weeks.
“We certainly will take into account things we've heard from both sides,” he said. “We're never going to make everyone happy, but at the end of the day, it's about making sure we can leave this borough better and certainly the city better.”
Richards has — in the context of approving other large developments— highlighted the need for more housing in order to address housing shortages. While acknowledging that many on Thursday came with legitimate concerns, he said he needs to look at it from a more big picture perspective.
“I have to always look at this from a global perspective, not just a local perspective,” he said. “There were definitely legitimate concerns raised on infrastructure, on transportation, certainly on the affordability conversation.”
“We are in a crisis,” he added.
