After we got here into workplace, we had a transparent mission: shield public security, rebuild our financial system as shortly as potential, and make our metropolis extra livable for on a regular basis New Yorkers. The important thing to livability is reasonably priced housing. It’s the bedrock on which New Yorkers can construct a household, construct a life, or just proceed to stay within the metropolis they love. However there’s at the moment not sufficient reasonably priced housing to satisfy our metropolis’s wants.
The New York Metropolis Division of Housing Preservation and Growth’s 2023 Housing and Emptiness Survey confirmed that our metropolis has a emptiness charge of 1.4 %, the bottom this measurement has been since 1968. The one method to create extra rental availability and decrease costs is to construct extra housing. To construct extra reasonably priced housing, we should suppose creatively and produce each associate to the desk. No associate has been extra prepared to reply the decision than our faith-based organizations. They’ve been on the frontline of each disaster — from the COVID-19 pandemic to the asylum seeker disaster. Homes of worships have all the time opened their doorways to these most in want. Now, they wish to lend a serving to hand in creating critically-needed reasonably priced housing. Nonetheless, due to outdated and antiquated zoning legal guidelines that return generations, homes of worship have been instructed ‘no.’ However these days are over.
Our metropolis should cease saying ‘no,’ and as a substitute say ‘sure’: ‘sure’ to housing in God’s yard. Underneath our ‘Metropolis of Sure’ plan — probably the most pro-housing plan in our metropolis’s historical past — we’re utilizing each instrument at our disposal to construct a little bit extra housing in each neighborhood, together with taking away outdated zoning guidelines that stop us from creating the housing we desperately want. This implies giving our homes of worship the flexibleness to construct houses on their campuses, allowing the creation of much-needed three-to-five story buildings on massive tons owned by faith-based organizations, and permitting landmarked homes of worship to allow unused land on their websites for use for improvement.
These modifications to our zoning guidelines will assist faith-based teams generate income, add extra reasonably priced housing throughout the 5 boroughs, and develop new sources and services for congregations at a second when some are struggling to make ends meet. The modifications will assist each on a regular basis New Yorkers who want reasonably priced houses in addition to our communities of religion. This April, our ‘Metropolis of Sure for Housing Alternative’ plan will enter public evaluate and the Metropolis Council will vote on it by finish of the yr.
Whereas we’re doing the whole lot we will on a metropolis degree with our ‘Metropolis of Sure’ plan, we additionally want the state to behave. At this second, state leaders are negotiating a price range deal in Albany. We’d like their deal to incorporate a brand new incentive for reasonably priced housing development and a tax incentive for workplace to residential conversions. We additionally want the state to repeal the outdated FAR Cap, which can permit us so as to add extra housing in residential neighborhoods, and to offer New York Metropolis the ability to legalize present basement flats in order that they will meet well being and security requirements. Lastly, we’d like Albany to cross the Religion Based mostly Inexpensive Housing Act, which says ‘sure’ to constructing reasonably priced housing on the properties of religion establishments.
This battle is private for me. I do know what feels wish to stay with out the safety of housing as a result of I grew up on the sting of homelessness. My siblings and I needed to carry trash luggage full of garments to highschool as a result of we didn’t know the place we’d sleep the following evening. That’s no method to stay.
And it’s no method to stay for numerous New Yorkers who wish to proceed to stay within the metropolis they love a lot. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew that reasonably priced housing was essential to our nation’s future, and we all know right this moment that it’s essential for the way forward for our metropolis. It was Dr. King who referred to as out discriminatory practices by landlords and realtors that saved Black Individuals out of sure neighborhoods. And it was Dr. King who advocated for the Honest Housing Act, the landmark laws that was lastly handed by Congress the week after he was assassinated.
However his life’s work didn’t finish with that bullet. We’re persevering with to battle for it right this moment so that each one New Yorkers can stay with the dignity, safety, and peace of thoughts that they deserve.
