New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams.
Picture courtesy Workplace of the Mayor of the Metropolis of New York
After we got here into workplace, we had a transparent mission: defend public security, rebuild our economic system as rapidly 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 dwell within the metropolis they love. However there’s presently not sufficient reasonably priced housing to fulfill 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 fee of 1.4 p.c, the bottom this measurement has been since 1968. The one strategy to create extra rental availability and decrease costs is to construct extra housing. To construct extra reasonably priced housing, we should assume creatively and convey 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 at all times opened their doorways to these most in want. Now, they wish to lend a serving to hand in creating critically-needed reasonably priced housing. Nevertheless, due to outdated and antiquated zoning legal guidelines that return generations, homes of worship have been instructed ‘no.’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. Below 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each instrument at our disposal to construct a bit of extra housing in each neighborhood, together with removing outdated zoning guidelines that forestall us from growing the housing we desperately want.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 heaps 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 assets 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 evaluation and the Metropolis Council will vote on it by finish of the yr.
Whereas we’re doing every part we are able to 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 funds 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 enable us so as to add extra housing in residential neighborhoods, and to provide New York Metropolis the facility to legalize present basement residences in order that they will meet well being and security requirements. Lastly, we’d like Albany to cross the Religion Based mostly Reasonably priced 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 prefer to dwell 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 baggage full of garments to highschool as a result of we didn’t know the place we’d sleep the subsequent evening. That’s no strategy to dwell.
And it’s no strategy to dwell for numerous New Yorkers who wish to proceed to dwell within the metropolis they love a lot. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew that reasonably priced housing was vital to our nation’s future, and we all know at this time that it’s vital for the way forward for our metropolis. It was Dr. King who referred to as out discriminatory practices by landlords and realtors that stored Black People out of sure neighborhoods. And it was Dr. King who advocated for the Truthful 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 at this time so that each one New Yorkers can dwell with the dignity, safety, and peace of thoughts that they deserve.
