Title: NIMBY vs. YIMBY Housing Battles Continue

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now that he's winning the Democratic nomination for mayor, let's take a fresh look at what New York City's housing policy might look like under a Mayor Mamdani, who might oppose that agenda, whether in Albany, the real estate world, or City Hall. What can we learn from two other high-profile housing stories that have been playing out in recent weeks?

The fight over Elizabeth Street Garden, which we mentioned before the news, and I believe Mamdani was on the side of the senior housing on that one, so we'll touch on that, and the city's latest controversial waterfront development plan in Red Hook. Joining us is David Brand, housing reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. Hey, David, always glad to have you with us.

David: Hey, Brian, thanks for having me.

Brian: If Zohran Mamdani does become mayor next year, one of his proposals is to dramatically expand publicly owned, publicly financed housing on state-owned land. Whitney Tilson, candidate, sort of also ran, but a Cuomo supporter, went hard after Mamdani on this during the campaign, saying that would cost the taxpayers of New York like $70 billion that they can't afford. What would it take to implement what kind of public housing development plan, as Mamdani has described it?

David: Mamdani's plan is to dramatically increase the amount of money the city spends to finance new affordable housing. His plan is $100 billion to finance the creation of 200,000 new units, especially for affordable to the lowest-income New Yorkers, over the next decade. He says in his housing plan, in his remarks on the campaign trail, he wants to quadruple the amount of money the city is spending each year to finance that housing. What Tilson is criticizing is how he would get to that number, that $100 billion number.

That would depend, according to his plan, on the federal government lifting the cap on bonds that cities can issue to raise money for affordable housing, and then a cap from the state. That's going to be an uphill challenge, given the Trump administration probably wouldn't do that. The state might raise the cap that they currently have on the city, but that is going to be uphill. I'm thinking about that more, as while $100 billion might not happen, the approach that he's going to take is to really focus on public investment in affordable housing.

Brian: The platform on Mamdani's website also calls out real estate interests and criticizes the reliance on private developers to create affordable housing. Do you think we could or would see a dramatic change in how development deals get made, or would the institutional resistance be too great?

David: It's interesting. His policy platform that he released several months ago, does say that, but he's kind of tempered those views. For example, in a recent interview he did with the New York Times, they asked, "What's something you've changed your mind about?" He said the important role of the private market and private developers in housing construction. I think right now, a lot of the affordable housing that gets built is after there's a rezoning.

A quarter of the units in new developments have to be priced for low and middle-income tenants. Then also projects that receive state tax breaks, same thing, about a quarter of the units have to be priced for low and middle income. As we've seen in the past, it's actually middle and upper-middle-income renters. I think he would continue to do that on a lot of projects, but I think he would really try to subsidize even more, 100%, more deeply affordable.

Brian: You've been covering the Elizabeth Street Garden controversy. For people who don't know, that was over whether to build senior housing on this plot of land on the Lower East Side that is currently the Elizabeth Street Garden. The Adams administration was for the senior housing. There's been a huge fight.

I mentioned earlier, and first incorrectly, but then I corrected myself, that the city councilman from the neighborhood, Christopher Marte, has been fighting hard for preservation of the garden and apparently won that fight. He and his allies won that fight when, just this week, the Adams administration announced that they are abandoning the plan to build 123 units of affordable senior housing on the site of the Elizabeth Street Garden. What happened?

David: That's a great question. This has been quite an ordeal for more than a decade. To step back, this would be a 100% affordable senior housing project plan for what's known as the Elizabeth Street Garden. It's a city-owned lot adjacent to Elizabeth Street Gallery, where the owner of that gallery started storing sculptures, and over time, started hosting community events and opening it to the public. A lot of people in that area want to preserve that garden.

The previous council member, Margaret Chin, negotiated a deal where they would build that affordable housing project. They won a rezoning to do that. Mayor Adams has continuously promoted that project and said it's a symbol. If we're going to build affordable housing everywhere, it's a place like this in lower Manhattan that we have to do it. That all changed recently when a new deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, came on board and almost immediately paused the project.

They had issued an eviction notice to the garden back in March. He put that on pause. We're going to review this. Then over the past few months, worked out this side deal with the new councilman who's been there for about four years. He hasn't officially won, but it looks like he's going to win reelection to represent that district. The new deal would preserve the garden, and they say instead, add affordable housing on other sites.

There's some interesting things to this deal because that project could start tomorrow. The city owns the land, they have the development partners, they have the plans, the developers have the financing in place. This new deal is more ambiguous. One of the sites they mentioned for the additional affordable housing is at 100 Gold Street. That's actually the offices of the city housing agency, HPD. That plan they announced six months ago, but now they're saying, "Oh, now Christopher Marte, the council member, he supports it."

There won't be any kind of roadblocks or any opposition from the councilman.

Another site is on Bowery. It's several properties that a developer purchased over time and is planning to demolish. They're going to build something as of right there, relatively small residential building. Now, the plan, they want to do a huge upzoning of those parcels to create a pretty big new residential building with the affordable housing that would have been at the garden site, but that's very, very early stages. They haven't filed anything with the city to even begin the pre-planning phase of that.

Then another site is at 22 Suffolk Street. I've heard that was actually planned for a school. Again, that's a place where planning hasn't even started. They're basically trading one project in the hand for three in the bush, and the promise that maybe down the road we could develop these other lots.

Brian: Eric Adams has changed positions on the Elizabeth Street Garden. Where is Zohran Mamdani in case this becomes an issue in the general election for mayor?

David: He has explicitly said he supports housing on that site. I just referenced a New York Times interview he did where he talked about the role of private developers. They also specifically asked, "Do you support housing on the Elizabeth Street Garden site?" He said, yes, he does. It shows just what a symbol this lot has become, because it's not that much housing.

It's 123 units, but it's become a symbol of this fight between people who want to resist new development and have a not in my backyard mentality, and then people who say we need to build new housing everywhere and every little bit helps, especially when it's affordable housing. We'll say that people who support the garden say we're not NIMBYs. We want a green space. This is a cool community space, and it is a cool space. It's pretty unique, but it has become this source of tension and a symbol in this bigger fight.

Brian: How different is Eric Adams' City of Yes housing development plan, that's been a big thing in his administration, I'm sure he'll be running for reelection on it, compared to Mamdani's housing plan? Are they very much on different sides of how to develop more affordable housing in the city?

David: I think they have a lot of similarities. They are both embrace the pro-housing movement, the NIMBY movement. Mamdani was a supporter of City of Yes, and he would have liked to go even further than they ultimately did. For example, one of his proposals is to eliminate parking mandates so that new developments don't have to include a certain number of parking spaces that take away space and eat up money that could otherwise go to new apartments or condos.

He's definitely in that same mold, supports that type of upzoning across the city, changing the zoning rules to allow for more development. Again, the big difference is he wants to empower the city to finance more affordable housing and take a stronger role there. He supports comprehensive planning where the city determines how much housing gets built where, rather than leaving up to the private market and rezoning neighborhood by neighborhood or parcel by parcel. I don't think there's that much daylight between where they're at when it comes to new development.

Brian: Interesting. On the question of how much taxpayer money it would take to realize the Mamdani housing plan, a listener heard us discussing that and texts an interesting question. Listener writes, "I hear you emphasizing public funding. How much public funding has gone to subsidize corporate expansion and projects in New York City?" There are often subsidies that go to the private sector developers to build housing developments with X% affordable housing. I don't know if you've looked at it at this granular level with a dollars-and-cents spreadsheet. Would the Mamdani plan cost the taxpayers a lot more than the subsidies that the state already gives and the city already gives to developers to build from the private sector?

David: Yes, I hear that point. There already is a lot of subsidy going to for-profit developers to entice them to build or require them to build affordable housing. I think this plan would increase the amount of taxpayer subsidy, but I hear that point that there already is a lot that's going to developers. I think he would want to empower nonprofit developers probably more. He has a commitment to social housing where everyone pays 30% of their income toward rent, and then wealthier people subsidize the less wealthy people or the lower-income people living in the same building. It'd be interesting to see how he would work on a project like that in New York City.

Brian: All right. If the Elizabeth Street Garden has been one controversial site where development might take place, now there's a new one, and you've been reporting on it: the city's proposal to redevelop the Brooklyn Marine Terminal and surrounding waterfront in Red Hook. It's a massive plan, thousands of new housing units, for listeners who haven't heard about this, major industrial upgrades, and big promises of investment in nearby NYCHA buildings.

In your piece, you draw a comparison to the Atlantic Yards project from two decades ago, where many of the city's promises were never kept regarding affordable housing. For listeners who don't remember that saga, what happened at Atlantic Yards briefly, and why are some residents seeing echoes of it at the Marine Terminal?

David: We got to go back more than 20 years here. 2003, developer Bruce Ratner, city officials announced this plan to build the centerpiece Barclays Center surrounded by a number of new market-rate and affordable housing, basically an entire new neighborhood with, I think, 12 buildings around the arena. Half of those have been built. The other half we're still waiting on, despite an agreement that the developer reached with community groups in the state back in 2014, where they would deck over the rail yards just east of the Barclays Center and then build 6 new buildings, which would include about 900 units of affordable housing.

They had a deadline to build those units by May 31st, 2025. It's June 25th. They haven't even started the platform. As part of that agreement, the state would fine them $2,000 a month for every apartment that didn't get built by the deadline. That's close to $2 million a month. The state told us that they're not going to collect those fines. They're instead letting a new developer try to come up with a new plan and a new community engagement process.

Now, fast forward to this Brooklyn Marine Terminal project, could be a good project. There's 7,700 units of housing plan, including about 35% that would be priced for low and middle-income renters. They want to invest in nearby NYCHA developments and Red Hook, upgrade the ports there, Brooklyn Marine Terminal. The comparison that people are making is to that previous process.

Atlantic Yards didn't go through the city's usual land use review process, where the community weighs in, community board, local council member comes to a council vote. They instead went through a state process called a general project plan, where basically the state proposes it or the city proposes it, and then the state is the arbiter who decides, "Oh yes, our plan's great." That's what they're doing here, and so that's what's also really upsetting people, that they feel like the community is being cut out of a pretty massive project.

Brian: Last thing on this, Antonio Reynoso, the borough president who just won renomination yesterday and is generally considered pro-housing, has come out against this plan. Why has he broken ranks here?

David: That was a bit of a surprise because he has positioned himself as the pro-housing candidate. Initially, this plan was for, I think, 12,000 units. They trimmed that to 7,700. He says he wants to focus on port operations and industrial use for that land. He's also trying to appeal to residents of that area who are opposed to this project.

We'll see where he ends up on this, because on Friday, as opposed to the usual community planning process, they're instead having a task force of, I think, 28 elected officials and local community leaders who will vote on this coming Friday, two days from now, on whether the city and state can move ahead with that general project plan. Reynoso is one of the votes on that task force. If the majority says they can, then it'll be up to the state to come up with a more detailed plan, and then it'll be up to the state to finally approve that plan. We'll see what happens on Friday.

Brian: WNYC and Gothamist housing reporter David Brand. I guess we now have seen the fate of the Elizabeth Street Garden, which will remain. We will see the fate of this Brooklyn Marine Terminal proposal. We will see how different the Zohran Mamdani and Eric Adams housing proposals are, and maybe the Curtis Sliwa, and maybe even still the Andrew Cuomo, if he runs on an independent line. Obviously, housing, a major issue always in New York City, probably more these days than ever before, given the intense unaffordability and the growth of unaffordability, the diminishment of affordability, if you want to put it that way. David Brand, always a lot for you to cover, and you do a great job. Thank you very much.

David: Thanks a lot, Brian.

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