Housing For Formerly Incarcerated Could Test City Council’s ‘Member Deference’

After City Hall pulled its support for an East Bronx project to build supportive housing for seriously ill people leaving jail, City Council members are considering overruling one of their own.

Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication to clarify how the approval process for land disposition differs from other land use actions, and to clarify the mayor’s role in the Charter Revision Commission.

A housing development that would create 58 apartments for formerly-incarcerated people with severe health needs in the Bronx is in jeopardy after the Adams administration pulled support for the project last week. 

Now, Council members are prepared to vote it through anyway, even as City Hall says the “Just Home” plan—which has spurred significant local pushback over the last three years—is now under review.

The vote, which Gothamist reported will take place during the Council’s stated meeting this Thursday, could advance the project over the objections of the local rep, overriding an informal practice called “member deference,” where the Council won’t vote a land use change through unless the home councilmember approves. 

The fight comes after Mayor Eric Adams’ Charter Revision Commission took aim at the Council’s land use powers by advancing four November ballot measures aimed at speeding up housing production in the city.

“The mayor, with one hand, he’s trying to steamroll us with these ballot proposals, and with the other hand, he’s playing games on a f***ing housing proposal,” said Councilmember Justin Brannan.

No-show applicant

The Just Home project has been controversial since it was first proposed in 2022, attracting raucous opposition at community board meetings. The project was approved by NYC Health and Hospitals’ (H+H) board in 2024, and had the Adams administration’s support as of last month.

H+H owns the currently vacant building on the Jacobi Hospital campus in Morris Park where the development would be built. Thursday, in an unusual step, agency officials for H+H did not attend the City Council’s Landmarks Committee meeting where their resolution to lease the land was being reviewed.

It was the second City Council hearing last week where councilmembers expected to question administration officials who didn’t show.

H+H did not respond to City Limits’ questions about the project. 

Instead of attending the hearing, they sent a letter excusing themselves, saying that the administration is “actively reviewing” Just Home to identify a different location for it. The Daily News first reported that First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro was pulling City Hall’s support for the plan, and instructed agency officials not to testify.

Fortune Society, the nonprofit partner which would develop the project, said it will bring 83 residential units to the site. That would include 24 affordable studios for households making less than 80 percent of the area median income ($90,000 for a single person) and 58 supportive units for formerly incarcerated individuals with significant medical needs who would otherwise be homeless.

Some community members, at Thursday’s hearing and throughout the project’s years-long review process, have expressed concerns about safety in their neighborhood.

Bernadette Ferrara, an east Bronx resident, testified Thursday that “the Just Home project is not our community’s need,” saying that it was too close to schools and risked public safety.

“The fact is that providing formerly incarcerated people with supportive housing does not make our neighborhoods less safe,” the Fortune Society CEO Stanley Richards countered at Thursday’s hearing. 

He and other advocates say access to a stable home and other support services makes it less likely someone will return to jail or prison. 

“To the contrary, it makes all of us safer,” he said.

Michael Kaess, a Morris Park resident who supports the project, said he was dumbfounded by the administration’s last-minute shift.

“I don’t know what the hell Adams is doing, because I know these folks,” Kaess said of his East Bronx neighbors. “These are not Adams voters.”

City Hall sent two officials, Senior Advisor to the Mayor on Intergovernmental Affairs Diane Savino and Deputy Mayor for Intergovernmental Affairs Tiffany Raspberry, to testify Thursday. They said they’d asked lawmakers the day before to delay the hearing, which was scheduled three weeks prior. 

“The City is developing a new proposal that would identify a different location for Just Home,” H+H’s letter to the Council read, though officials did not specify what alternative sites are being considered.

City Hall also criticized the Council for waiting to vote on the application until now, almost two years after it was advanced by H+H’s board of directors. 

Brannan said that still doesn’t explain the administration’s last minute rug-pull. 

“How come this has been sitting around for four years and you never had a problem with it until now, when it’s time to vote,” he said.

A new battleground for ballot measures

The contentious hearing Thursday highlighted ongoing tensions between City Hall and the City Council over powers to control land use.

While the process for an agency like H+H to get approval to lease its land is slightly different than the land use process targeted by the Charter Commission, it has nonetheless ignited debate over the power of local councilmembers.

Mayor Adams has supported three general election ballot proposals from the Charter Commission that would erode the Council’s authority on housing development decisions, a move that Council leadership has broadly condemned.

Earlier this month, they tried to get the Board of Elections to throw out the ballot measures, calling them “misleading.” But the Board declined.

One of the proposals, written by a Charter Revision Commission that Mayor Adams convened at the start of the year, seeks to undermine the practice of “member deference,” saying it slows down and limits new housing production.

It would create a new tribunal of the mayor, council speaker, and borough president that could override the Council’s collective land use decisions. 

Kristy Marmorato, the Republican councilmember representing Morris Park, is opposed to the Just Home project, a stance that helped her win her seat in 2023. She did not respond to City Limits’ request for comment.

Now, City Hall’s backtracking on the plan could prompt the Council to override member deference, at least in this instance. Councilmembers Sandy Nurse, Brannan, and Lincoln Restler told City Limits they would support the project over Marmarato’s objections.

Other supporters include Council leadership and Speaker Adrienne Adams, according to sources.

“Mayor Adams and Randy Mastro may be trying to block another housing project that can deliver homes for the people of our city, but the Council won’t allow it,” a spokesperson for the Council told City Limits, calling the move “despicable.”

What’s next?

Still, the project’s future is uncertain. The process for withdrawing a land disposition application like the one that H+H’s board approved is not clear, according to sources familiar with the Council processes.

“It would be incredibly hypocritical and going against their own stated goals and stated needs if they were to pull this application,” said Councilmember Nurse, who co-leads the Council’s progressive caucus. “This, again, would be a situation where the mayor is going against his own agencies and the advice and recommendations and solutions that they have been publicly championing.” 

Fortune Society is more confident: “You’re always worried about the unknown, but I feel pretty good about the leadership and movement on the Council,” CEO Richards told City Limits.

When it comes to member deference, voters will get a chance to weigh in on the ballot measure come the November election. 

Some housing advocates say the practice is a barrier to housing production, with the Charter Commission noting the significant neighborhood-by-neighborhood disparities when it comes to where new units get built.  

But Councilmembers say that forcing developers to the table to win their support helps them extract vital concessions for their neighborhoods, like affordable housing, infrastructure, or other upgrades.

“If we don’t have those levers, then we can’t negotiate those benefits,” said Brannan.

Lawmakers point to the 130,000 projected housing units that the Council has approved through land use actions in the past four years.

“The majority of the Council knows how important housing is and knows where districts have not done their fair share,” said Nurse.

If voted through, this would be the first time the Council overruled one of its own on a land use decision since lawmakers approved the New York Blood Center’s expansion in 2021, over the objections of then-Upper East Side Councilmember Ben Kallos.

Councilmembers think Just Home warrants the same.

“This is the right project and the right location,” said Nurse. “At the end of the day, the opposition to this project is based on homelessness, it’s anti-Blackness. It is fear of people with real social issues. And, quite frankly, I just can’t entertain that.”

Even an approval from the City Council wouldn’t guarantee the project moves forward. But it would allow the Fortune Society to start fundraising to begin development. They’d still need the collaboration of H+H down the road.

“We all must carry our fair share, and we all must be part of the solution,” said Richards. “Time has really come for us to stop pretending we don’t have vulnerable people living in our communities, that if we move them somewhere far away, somehow their challenges in our cities will go away.” 

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