Affordable Housing
East Harlem Community Board Digs Into Rezoning Controversies
Abigail Savitch-Lew |
A new CB11 task force will take the lead on responding to the city’s rezoning plan, which has supporters and critics.
A new CB11 task force will take the lead on responding to the city’s rezoning plan, which has supporters and critics.
Funding for the bodies has increased steadily, if slowly, since 1996. But resources are still scarce for the entities that represent the city’s most local level of government.
Community groups pressed for deeper housing affordability and protections for workers. Other voices stressed different priorities.
The MTA is relocating its bus depot at East 126th Street so the city can create a memorial honoring the history of an African burial ground formerly located at the site. But the full plan calls for much more than a memorial.
Even as borough presidents have been offering incremental changes, like the appointment of several teenage board members in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, several Council bills to reform term limits and mandate demographic reporting from board members have stalled.
Recent citywide projects like the mayor’s affordable-housing plan have reignited long-standing critiques of community boards—about the value of their advisory votes and how effective they are at reflecting the will of the diverse community districts they represent.
An elaborate community planning process underway in East Harlem has the Council speaker’s backing, foundation support, critics and fans. What it doesn’t have is a sense of whether and how the city will be guided by the plan it produces.
But CB11’s conditional rejection of the two sets of proposed changes did not satisfy some advocates who wanted a more absolute rejection.
Unfounded fears, legitimate doubts and ambitious alternatives have greeted the mayor’s two proposals to change zoning rules to permit greater housing density and require affordable housing.
The de Blasio administration and allies want to change zoning rules that mandate the creation of off-street parking. But there’s opposition to the idea from some civic groups.