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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, sitting in for Brian today. On our second installment of 30 Issues in 30 Days, we'll talk about the three housing-related ballot questions that will get a yes or no vote in this election. As you've heard on the show, Mayor Adams convened a charter revision commission last year. The commission was tasked with focusing on the city's housing crunch. The commission and the questions it developed are not without controversy. In some ways, it's just the latest chapter in a series of battles between the city's branches of government, with the mayor as the executive on one side and the city council as the legislative branch on the other. To help us understand how we got here and what these proposals would do if enacted, I'm joined by my colleague David Brand, housing reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom. Hey, David.

David Brand: Hey, Brigid.

Brigid Bergin: Great to have you here as always. Listeners, we're going to put the question out to you early. Are you a supporter of these proposals? Maybe a developer who thinks these changes will help you deliver more housing, or someone who works in housing and just thinks this is the way to go? Call us and make your pitch for a yes vote. The number 212-433- WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

Maybe you're someone who's concerned about how these questions are shifting power away from the city council. Call and give us your pitch for why voters should reject these proposals, or maybe you just have more questions about what's happening and how things are changing. You can ask our housing reporter, David Brand. The number, 212-433-9692. Call or text. David, let's set some context. We know that there's a housing emergency, but what kind of housing shortage are we talking about right now? What is the shortage the city is facing?

David Brand: We all know there's a problem. Listeners out there, you talk about it, you hear us talk about it on air, but let's put some data to this housing crisis. The city's most recent housing and vacancy survey, where they do a census of available apartments, they found that fewer than 1.4% of all apartments in New York City were empty and available to rent. When they looked at apartments priced below $2,400 a month, that's still pretty expensive. The number was 1%, fewer than 1% of apartments.

Then, when you think about affordable housing, this is one of these statistics that just reminds me how huge New York City is and how much housing we need, there were about 10,000 units on the city's affordable housing lottery last year. Those 10,000 units got 6 million applicants.

Brigid Bergin: Oh my goodness. Wow.

David Brand: That's big.

Brigid Bergin: That's striking. Then we know there's a massive crisis. I hate using the word massive. My apologies.

David Brand: It's up tier.

Brigid Bergin: It is up tier. Talk about how projects are currently reviewed before the shovel goes into the ground. What happens now?

David Brand: Sure. The goal of these ballot measures from this commission that propose these measures is to speed up the process of approving new housing development. Right now, there is a seven-month public review process that goes before the local community board, the borough president, the city council. That's about seven months. There's some pretty strict deadlines and timelines for that.

Even before that, there's a long pre-certification phase where a developer will go to the City Planning Commission or the Department of City Planning and propose a project, put together a lot of studies, and check the feasibility, the financing for that project, that what's possible. Then, after that, the city will certify the application, and that will begin the public review process. That's potentially a year-long process that ends with a city council vote, and that's a binding decision. If the city council would approve it, then the project can move forward. The mayor will sign off on it. If the city council were to reject, it would die.

The problem that a lot of people, including members of the Charter Revision Commission, say is that before that public review process even begins, the local council member might be opposed to the project, or the local community would be opposed. The council member speaking for that community would reject this. They don't even go through the public review process. They're saying projects die even before that seven-month process.

Brigid Bergin: That, of course, I think, is what we refer to as member deference.

David Brand: Correct. Yes, this custom in the city council. It's been going on for a few decades, where they will defer to the local member on land use decisions in their district. Typically, the full body will vote in line with that individual member.

Brigid Bergin: David, you will not be surprised to know that we have callers who are ready to give their pro stance and their con stance, rejecting these measures. Before we take those callers on air, I want you to just-- We've said there are three housing questions. Just to know for listeners, if you really want to read the background of each question, there is a more fulsome document on the City Board of Elections website that you can click through. It's on a banner ad that says General Election 2025 Ballot Questions. It's at their website, Vote NYC. It gives you some of the background to how the question was developed.

I just want to quickly run through the questions so that then we can listen to some of what our callers have to say and answer their questions. Question 2, Fast-track affordable housing to build more affordable housing across the city. What is that changing? What's a yes vote mean? What's a no vote mean?

David Brand: This question is asking voters to approve a sped-up process for specifically 100% affordable housing that receives city funding, city financing, that would, instead of going to the city council for final approval, would go to the city's Board of Standards and Appeals. There's another component of this that it would also create this fast track for new affordable housing in the 12 community districts that produced the least amount of affordable housing in the previous five years.

There's some math and some studies that would need to go into that, but right now, the 12 community districts that have produced the least amount of housing last five years include the south shore of Staten Island, Northeast Queens, even the Upper West Side. A project that is proposed in that district would not go to the council for final review. It would go to the City Planning Commission, which is mostly mayoral appointees.

Brigid Bergin: Then let's do Question 3. Simplify review of modest housing infrastructure projects. I think the word modest is doing a lot of work in that. What kind of projects would this apply to? How controversial is this one?

David Brand: Sure, so modest. Yes, you're right. It's in the eye of the beholder, I guess. This, again, would bypass the City Council, go to the City Planning Commission for housing proposals that would allow for 30% more density than the current zoning rules allow. Relatively small. It would also do that for infrastructure and resiliency projects. The specific references on the Charter Revision Commission's website are to raising the street grade, for example, or adding solar panels on public land.

Brigid Bergin: Then let's do Question 4, which, as I understand, is the one that has got the most controversy around it. The basic wording on the ballot is establish an affordable housing appeals board with council, borough, and citywide representation. This proposal would create an affordable housing appeals board with the council speaker, local borough president, and mayor to review council actions that reject or change applications, creating affordable housing. Why did the commission think an appeals board was necessary?

David Brand: Well, because of, we had explained earlier, the process for the public review takes seven months, ends in the council vote. Even before that, if a developer finds that the council member in that district is not going to support it, they might not even go through the review process. Charter Revision Commission says this will encourage people to go through with the process even if the local council member opposes it, and even in the possibility that the full council rejects it. It could then go to this three-member appeals board that would include the mayor, the borough president of the borough the project is in, and the city council speaker.

That's probably the biggest change here, and also creating the biggest controversy because it neuters the power. Not kind of, it would neuter the power of the city council.

Brigid Bergin: All right, let's get some callers in here who have different takes on these ballot questions. We're going to start with Amit in Queens, who supports these ballot initiatives. Hi, Amit.

Amit: Hi, Brigid. Hi, David. Thanks so much for having me on today. Amit Baga, I'm the campaign director for the Yes on Affordable Housing Campaign, which is a campaign to get these ballot measures passed in November. David, I want to commend you for doing a great job, and Brigid, you as well, for laying out the problem. I won't repeat some of the stats that you mentioned, but I think it is pretty clear that whether you are a renter in Crown Heights or a homeowner in Cambria Heights, everyone in New York City is really drowning under the cost of housing.

Recent reports have shown that it's not just renters who experience this crisis. In fact, nearly 50% of homeowners, this was in a Comptroller Lander report, are underwater with their housing costs. This is a crisis that's really being felt in a lot of the neighborhoods that have one to three family homes, which are very diverse neighborhoods. Our neighborhoods where we have seen a huge growth in population of Black New Yorkers, Latino New Yorkers, South and East Asians. It's really a crisis that impacts everybody.

As you pointed out, David, with a 1.4% housing vacancy rate, despite the fact that that we've seen glass towers go up in places like Long Island City, where I live, or Waterfront Brooklyn, this is a citywide crisis. It's a citywide crisis because we haven't built enough homes in enough places across the city fast enough. Our population has actually recovered quite a bit from the dip that we had in the immediate post-COVID period. We are at 8.8 million in the 2020 census. We're now back at 8.5, according to the Department of City Planning, will be at 9 in under 10 years. This is something that is really about our demographic and economic future.

New York City's entire economy and history has been built on the notion that we are a beacon for working people coming from all over the country and all over the world. Our future depends on our ability to house our own residents affordably.

Brigid Bergin: Amit, thanks for that, and we appreciate you giving the pro. We're going to bring in some people who are not as much in favor of it. Let's go to George in Manhattan. George, you're on WNYC.

George: Thank you. These three ballot initiatives are just the latest among many blatant efforts by the avaricious real estate industry, fake nonprofit like Open New York and maybe Yes on Affordable Housing, who we just heard from, bought politicians, gullible media, to undermine essential public review and input on often massive developments using the false promise of affordable housing that is neither affordable nor often even created. Just this week, after years of thoughtful review and input, the developers of Atlantic Yard said with impunity that they're simply not going to build the promised housing. David can maybe talk to that.

Also, if the city or anyone else is serious about thoughtful housing or other developments, other considered developments, they disincentivize the demolition of viable buildings like the massive Hotel Pennsylvania, among many others, by removing tax breaks for developers like Vornado, which they get by reducing the value of their property through creating vacant lots. The city should incentivize adaptive reuse and real development rather than--

I'm speaking from Midtown Manhattan, which is littered with massive vacant lots, including the Soloviev development site, which was just rejected as a casino site, but it's a massive vacant lot in the same way that Soloviev created massive vacant lots and supposedly priceless 57th Street between 5th and 6th. I digress. I'm just making the point that developers are able to demolish viable buildings that could be housing, and they leave them as vacant lots for 5, 10, 15 years, the rest of our lives.

Brigid Bergin: George, thank you so much for that. Very much a no vote on those housing questions. David, I'm going to bring in some more callers, but I want to give you a chance just to weigh in for a moment. George mentioned some of what we have seen happen at Atlantic Yard, something that you have covered probably more closely recently than anybody, which is the refusal to build some of the affordable housing that were part of some of the agreements to get all the land that they were able to build on. What did you hear out of those callers that stood out to you?

David Brand: Well, when it comes to Atlantic Yards, we've been covering that closely here. Just to give a brief summary, this was a project to build housing and a couple of thousand units of affordable housing around the Barclays Center site. In 2014, the developer entered into a legally binding agreement with community groups to create nearly 900 of the missing affordable housing units by May of this year or face millions in monthly fines. Well, it's five months later, and they haven't even started that housing, and the state has chosen to waive those fines.

That's not a great comparison here, though, because that never went through the current land use process for most projects in the city. That was a workaround that the state has called a general project plan. It's not really an apples to apples comparison. Though, I think that opponents of these ballot measures might say, "Well, this proposed process could mirror that because it would cut the council out of some of the review and because the council member is the voice of the community and the one with the ultimate authority on the projects in the current system, that it's actually cutting out the community voice."

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Rachel in Manhattan. Rachel, you're on WNYC.

Rachel: Hi, thanks for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Rachel, I'm going to jump in real quick just because we have a whole bunch of callers waiting to give their pro and con stance on these. If you could just, in about 30 seconds, tell us, I believe, why you support these initiatives.

Rachel: Sure. I've been working in affordable housing for 20 years in New York City, and I have seen so many projects get delayed or blocked under our current rules. I think we're beyond the time that we need to implement a fast track for affordable housing. It's really critical that the city-sponsored affordable housing has a different process, one that is not political, one that has a technical review and gets shovels into the ground faster.

My organization has also done a lot of research on the inequities in affordable housing production across the city, and it's very clear that we have no go areas in this city where we just cannot even propose a project that has affordable housing because, like David said, it'll get rejected even before it has a chance to get started. I think these rules will really help build a more affordable and more equitable city.

Brigid Bergin: Rachel, thank you so much for that call. Let's go to Marcia in Brooklyn. Marcia, you're on WNYC.

Marcia: Hi, thanks for taking my call. First, I want to say ditto to your other caller, George, who called in, on talking about the adaptive reuse of properties and everything he said about the problem with the pseudo-progressive viewpoints of affordable housing that are often reported on on this station. To Rachel, what I want to say sounds like she belongs to a developer family.

To this board that you're talking about, the city council is my representation. I've lived in five different New York neighborhoods, rent-stabilized housing built by my own family. I am now in another rent-stabilized unit, fighting to keep it from being condoed completely. I am absolutely not in favor of this resolution, where only one person voted to represent the people will be on this board. It doesn't represent us, working New Yorkers paying ridiculous rents, whether we are rent-stabilized or whether it is free market. That's all I have to say.

Brigid Bergin: Thanks, Marcia. We appreciate your call. David, any reaction to those callers?

David Brand: When Marcia was just talking about that board, I think channeling what we're hearing from a lot of opponents, including opponents on the council, again that point that the council member is the voice of the community and in negotiations over a housing or land use proposal, they are able to use their leverage to extract concessions, whether that's from the city and more investments in infrastructure or maybe lower affordability levels in the new housing or concessions from the developer. Yes, the affordability, more units of affordable housing. They say they would lose that power if the developer could just go through the process and then try to appeal to that three-member board.

Brigid Bergin: David, just to zero in on it, where do residents fit into these proposed new processes? Will New Yorkers still have a voice in these housing development decisions if these questions are adopted, particularly if they're council member is no longer the person who becomes the gatekeeper?

David Brand: Yes, there's still a community review process here. Like we talked about, the first two questions that bypass the council for approval either through the City Planning Commission or the Board of Standards and Appeals. Both of those still go through a public review process with the local community board and also the borough president. That gives people a chance to weigh in, make their opinions known. Those opinions can be influential, especially with the board and the borough president.

Then this other one that would establish that three-member appeals board that still has the existing land use review process. People are concerned that if a developer is committed to this project, that they would not even try to work with the community or work with the council member. Instead would just target two of the members of the appeals board, probably the mayor and the local borough president. That's possible. Borough presidents tell me that they would not honor that, that they would still want to uphold the views of the community and the councilmember, but if this were to pass, I guess we would see. The borough presidents would suddenly have a lot more power.

Brigid Bergin: These are obviously questions that voters need to make a pretty important decision on. How much have the mayoral candidates weighed in on these, if at all? Do you know at this point?

David Brand: Not much. Mayor Adams is a supporter. He appointed this charter revision commission that proposed these ballot questions at the end of last year, and a lot of the people on this revision commission were either city employees or Adams allies. Other candidates aren't really wading into this. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate, says he's staying out of it. His spokesperson recently told Politico he's glad these are on the ballot, but he doesn't want to get into this dispute between the mayor and the city council.

Interesting note is that a lot of the unions that were not backing Mamdani initially went for Cuomo and are now involved in the Mamdani campaign and have endorsed them, are actually opposing this. We're going to see how that plays out. They're going to probably be campaigning against these, and you might see ads on television or flyers, or on social media that are going to be opposing these. We're going to see how that plays out. There's going to be a lot of money behind these questions, pro or con.

Brigid Bergin: Now, David, we didn't really get into another ballot question that is tangentially related to housing. This is the one that would create a new digital map. Can you just talk briefly about that? It is less controversial, obviously, than these other three. What is the question at hand? What would a yes vote or no vote do?

David Brand: Yes, this one's definitely a lot less controversial. Also interesting, though. I didn't know this, but all of the official city maps are contained in the archives of borough president's offices in borough hall. If a developer wants to make a change to that map, a zoning change, they have to physically go to borough hall and look at these maps. I was talking with someone who said, "Yes, some of them are from the 19th century, these musty maps." This would just digitize that process, and then that would relieve this choke point. I guess it's just added time, maybe added expense. You have to pay someone to do that and make it official. Less controversial, but also an interesting piece of history.

Brigid Bergin: Before I let you go, I want to briefly mention a major city development project that got an initial green light after a nearly year-long delay. That's, of course, the Brooklyn Marine Terminal project. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso was on this show last week to explain what prompted him to change his vote from a no to a yes on that project. Just briefly remind us what's being considered and what happens next there.

David Brand: Sure. We've been talking about the land use review process here in New York City. This is a project that would totally bypass that city review process by giving the state and the city's economic development authorities the power to control this. This would be a plan to build 6,000 new units of housing along the Brooklyn waterfront in the Columbia Street Waterfront District and part of Red Hook. Right now, that's the Brooklyn Marine Terminal. There's a working port there.

The city and state say they want to preserve some port operations, but modernize them, make a new neighborhood essentially on the waterfront there. Reynoso was one of the holdouts opposed to this process. There's a task force that had to approve to allow the state and the city to do this. As he said on the show last week, he came around because the city and state have agreed to consider maintaining and even expanding some of the port operations. He says he was concerned about manufacturing and continuing use of the port. Meanwhile, we could see a new neighborhood, maybe in another decade or so.

Brigid Bergin: Super quickly, there's another big development vote happening in the council today up in The Bronx. You reported on it for Gothamist. What's happening there? What are you going to be watching for?

David Brand: We've been covering this closely, too. It's a proposed supportive housing project for people with serious medical problems leaving Rikers Island, so formerly incarcerated people with complex medical issues. The plan is to build a supportive housing site on the campus of Jacobi Hospital in Morris Park. It was first approved by the city three years ago, hasn't really moved until recently. Now the city council says they will approve that process or approve that plan despite opposition from the local member, Kristy Marmorato, who represents and lives in Morris Park, where residents are really angry and upset about this plan.

What's interesting about this, the vote would be Thursday. We've been talking about how the council never overrides a local member on land use issues in their district. This would be a rare break from that custom. It's all playing out with this political feud in the background. It's all interconnected. Supporters of this project say it's really important. It's only 58 units of housing for people who really need it, who would otherwise become homeless after they leave jail and have serious medical problems. Stay tuned. We'll see what happens on Thursday.

Brigid Bergin: David Brand covers housing for the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom and occasionally does investigations with me, which is always fun. David, thank you for joining me.

David Brand: Thanks, Brigid.

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