Title: The 'City of Yes' Plan Passes City Council

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, and happy Friday. Later in the show, heads up, those of you who sell holiday gifts, not in New York City, we're going to have the latest episode of our holiday season call-in series called Shop Listener, where we invite listeners who sell holiday gifts to call in, also post on our website and tout your wares. We invite our listeners who want to buy and browse for holiday gifts to go to your websites or go to your stores and shop there to support our community, Shop Listener.

Today's call-in is going to be for anybody who's a listener and has holiday gifts to sell outside of the five boroughs. We've done a few cuts already of this that definitely included primarily people in the five boroughs. Well, today we're going to give you a shot, specifically make sure the lines are clear enough if you're on Long Island or in New Jersey or Connecticut, Westchester, Rockland, and other points north. It's Shop Listener later in the show. Actually, that'll be our last segment in the show in about an hour and a half. Shop Listener, for those of you selling holiday gifts from brick-and-mortar stores or just online, if you are anywhere in our listening area, let's say greater New York City or suburb, it can be Newark, it can be Bridgeport, but in our general area, but outside the city, that's coming up.

Now, as you've been hearing on the news, New York City Council passed the so-called City of Yes housing plan yesterday after months of negotiations between the Adams administration and City Council. Even with the support of Mayor Adams and City Council Speaker Adrian Adams, no relation, the plan got only 31 yes votes out of the 51 council members, but that was a majority, so City of Yes is in. More relaxed zoning rules in much of the city to incentivize building, to ease the housing shortage. Hot topics included basement apartments and parking spot mandates, infrastructure.

Let's look at the fine print and we'll invite your questions and comments as we're very happy now to have leaders from both sides of City Hall. Dan Garodnick is Mayor Adams' director of the City Planning Department. Pierina Sanchez is chair of the council's Housing Committee. Her own district is in the Bronx, Kingsbridge, Fordham, University Heights, Mount Hope. So glad you were willing to come on together. Welcome back, both of you, to WNYC.

Dan Garodnick: Thank you.

Pierina Sanchez: Thank you for having us.

Brian Lehrer: I'll let each of you first just say what you believe you passed here and what good it will do to the city or what risks it comes with, if you think there are any of those to identify. Councilmember Sanchez, would you like to start?

Pierina Sanchez: Sure. Thank you so much, Brian. I have so many nice things to say about Dan, but I'll reserve those for a sec. Look, I think that the City Council did something great yesterday, last night. It was 31 votes, but I honestly thought we were at 26 or 27. There were a few folks who came on board just yesterday. I think that what we did through passage of the modified City of Yes proposal, paired with the council's $5 billion in investment commitments that we negotiated with the administration, is that we proved two things. We proved that we're capable as a body of citywide collective action to take on the housing crisis, that we don't need to fight the battle against the housing crisis one neighborhood at a time, one little rezoning at a time, one little Article 11, that's a tax break for folks that don't know, at a time. We can take bites at the apple, big bites at the apple.

Then second, we showed that we listened to New Yorkers. We had at the City Council 15 hours worth of hearings where over 700 people either called in, Zoomed in, were in person, or wrote to us, and they shared a lot of concerns around, okay, zoning relief, and these are my concerns around relieving zoning. What about affordability? What about keeping people in their homes? What about gentrification and displacement? That's where the $5 billion in generational investments that we were able to negotiate through the city for all plan, the paired plan, really comes in.

It's generational investments and thoughtful legislation together are showing a comprehensive approach by our city's leaders. Not every single one, us, 31 of us on the City Council and, of course, the administration. I think it's a big step in the right direction and, hopefully, a harbinger for more good housing policy to come, and with the governor joining us yesterday at the mayor's conference, maybe also state policy to come.

Brian Lehrer: I want you to expand on two of the things that you said there. Then we'll bring in Mr. Garodnick. One was that this allows you to rezone the city, not just neighborhood by neighborhood. I wonder if you'd go over the basic new rules or new relaxation of the rules for construction that are in this plan. Also, you talked about money in the plan to protect against gentrification. I wonder if you could tell us how that does that.

Pierina Sanchez: Yes, absolutely. Brian, I want to take this moment to push back on something that I kept hearing yesterday and we've heard a lot during this process. There shouldn't be a one-size-fits-all solution. We heard that so many times yesterday. This plan is not a one-size-fits-all solution for the City of New York. My neighborhood in Kingsbridge and Fordham is treated nothing like parts of low-density Queens, parts of Staten Island. There there's just very different treatment. The plan, especially the one that we ended up with, is very contextual. What are we doing? Dan, I'll phone a friend in a second. We're allowing more density in dense neighborhoods, so those like mine, in exchange for affordability. If you're going to build affordable, you're going to be able to build a couple more units, maybe a floor or two more, depending on where you are. We're taking into account transit, knowing that--

Brian Lehrer: Is that it? Let me follow up on that specifically and then you can continue. When you say a floor or two more, I know some of the concerns that I've heard from people from various neighborhoods is we don't want buildings that are out of character with the neighborhood. If you have a lot of medium rise, maybe that's the case in a lot of your districts. If there are a lot of 5, 6, 7, 8-story buildings, this is going to allow 9 or 10-story buildings. It's not going to allow 25-story buildings. What would you say about that?

Pierina Sanchez: That's exactly right. I'll turn it to Dan to give the specifics. We're not talking about bringing in a Chrysler building to Grand Concourse. That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about bringing up a six or seven-story walk up to a neighborhood of one and two-family residences either. In a neighborhood of one and two-family residences, the R1s and the R2s, we're talking about legalizing their garage so that they can convert to an apartment. We're talking about legalizing accessory dwelling units.

I think that's something that really, I don't know if it was intentional misinformation or if it was confusion or some mix between, depending on who you're talking to, but that's something that's really important, is that we're not bringing the same interventions to every neighborhood. This is about taking into account the context of each neighborhood, what each neighborhood could support, and bringing affordability, bringing just a little bit more density so that we're accommodating or making space for new New Yorkers and honestly, New Yorkers who are here, who are overcrowded, or maybe they're already living in a basement, and we want to make sure that they're safe.

Brian Lehrer: To finish the thought, the relationship between the new funding in this plan and protections against gentrification.

Pierina Sanchez: Yes, absolutely. The city council and the mayor, we go through the budget process every year. Some of this, if you follow us with popcorn at home, hopefully, it's somewhat interesting. We're talking about investments into, say, legal counsel, so expanding legal counsel to prevent evictions. We have in here $20 million for additional FHEPS vouchers, which help people to stay in their homes and not be evicted. We also have here investments, tens of millions of dollars in homeownership opportunities that are, and let me specify, increasing funding for the down payment assistance program. We're doubling that program.

We're expanding the HomeFix program, which allows homeowners to access HPD financing in order to fix their homes. It's $5 billion worth, and there's a lot in here. I think it's very important to know that these are programs that have been around and we're growing them to protect New Yorkers' ability to stay in their homes if they're renters and to fix up and stay in their homes if they're homeowners.

Brian Lehrer: All right. There are some of the first thoughts on what the City of Yes would do if it meets its hopes from the City Council side of City Hall. Now, we'll hear from the mayor's side of City Hall. Dan Garodnick, thank you for your patience. You get the same open-mic question. Just say what you believe you passed here and what good it will do the city and if you want to throw in any risks that you think it also poses.

Dan Garodnick: Thank you for that. I agree with everything that you just heard from Chair Sanchez. I do want to thank her for her incredible leadership through this process. We started with the mayor charging us to go big on housing. We have a crisis that has been decades in the making. When I came into my role at the Department of City Planning, he was extremely clear about the need for us to take a big bite, as the chair said. We put forward a proposal that was designed to create a little more housing in every neighborhood and to do so in a way that was respectful but also started to tackle this problem, which has been so challenging for so long.

With the council's approval yesterday of what we project will be about 82,000 units of housing over the next 15 years, that is the single biggest zoning action that has ever been taken for the purpose of housing supply in the city's history. Just by way of comparison, that single action in zoning is bigger than what was delivered through 12 years of zonings under Mayor Bloomberg. It's double what was delivered over eight years under Mayor de Blasio. Of course, doesn't even take into consideration the various neighborhood plans, which are at various stages under our own process right now.

To the council's credit, this was a complicated proposal, it was a big proposal, it was ambitious, but every core component of the original proposal remains. After the council's modifications and actions yesterday, not a single one was removed. It's still a citywide proposal ensuring that we do, in fact, create a little more housing in every neighborhood. Of course, these key investments into housing and infrastructure, these are really important components, really important to partner with the zoning change. This is what we generally do with our neighborhood planning processes. It was important to do here. We're appreciative of the constructive relationship that we had with the council with Chair Sanchez, the Speaker, and so many members of the council who made a very meaningful vote yesterday. People will look back, I believe, at 2024 as the year that we finally turned the tide on housing supply in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we invite your questions or comments on the City of Yes housing plan now approved by City Council and the mayor. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can call, you can text, you can ask about the specifics for your neighborhood, whatever it is. You can give us your opinions, of course, anything that's relevant to the City of Yes now passed with 31 votes out of the 51 members of City Council. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Mr. Garodnick, what was the hardest part of the negotiations from your standpoint? Then I'm going to ask Councilmember Sanchez the same thing.

Dan Garodnick: I think the hardest part was making sure that people understood the connection between our housing scarcity problem and the challenges that they are facing in their own lives. We have had a housing crisis for so long that people have accepted it as a fact of life, that rents are going to be exorbitantly high, that neighborhoods are going to feel pressures of gentrification and displacement.

The numbers of people in the homeless system, in our shelter system, at the end of last year were 92,000, 33,000 of them kids. You saw the stats on the number of kids in our public school system who experience homelessness at one point or another over the last year. We don't need to live this way. I think that people have started to see, and we certainly appreciate that the council understands this, that there is a direct connection between our failure to deliver enough housing for New Yorkers and all of the challenges that people face. That was the biggest ask and we're glad that we were able to get them.

Brian Lehrer: Councilmember Sanchez, what was the hardest part of the negotiation from your standpoint?

Pierina Sanchez: I think it's a version of what Chair Garodnick just said, but I'm going to tie it into the city council's. Trying to get New Yorkers to understand broadly the connection between a lack of supply and our housing crisis, that translated into the nitty-gritty negotiation on modifications in the actual proposal. I'll speak for myself here. You might remember that the original proposal was planned to deliver something like 110,000 units of housing over the next 15 years, whereas the modified version will get us closer to 80,000. Still a big deal. That's 80,000 more than we wouldn't have had without the rezoning.

I think the modification discussions and the debates were the city council's little version of what Dan is mentioning around that connection between supply and the housing crisis. Folks wanting to whittle back for different reasons. Some were legitimate and I supported. No ADUs in flood zones. Yes, that's absolutely right. Some were political. Just certain powerful civics in my neighborhood will have my neck if I don't get rid of this. I can't vote on this if that. You won't hear other people talk about this, but I will.

I think that those discussions were really tough for me and for members that were more closely aligned with my perspective on y'all, we just got to do as much as possible. We got to do as much as possible on the rezoning front, on zoning relief, and we have to do as much as possible on investments to deliver for New Yorkers. I think the speaker ultimately, obviously, she got the votes, struck the right balance, but that was certainly hard. It's democracy, so it's where we are, but that was tough.

Brian Lehrer: As you probably won't be surprised to hear, about 12 seconds after I gave out the phone number, all our lines were full with people wanting to comment or ask questions about the City of Yes housing plan. We're going to start to take some phone calls right now. For our guests, Dan Garodnick, Mayor Adams' director of the City Planning Department, and Pierina Sanchez, chair of the City Council's Housing Committee after the negotiations brought them to yes on the City of Yes. Alice in Brooklyn is not happy about this, I don't think. Hi, Alice. You're on WNYC.

Alice: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I live in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, which is a neighborhood of single-family homes that was built at the turn of the last century. Across the street from where I live, the main thoroughfare is called Beverley Road. On the opposite side of Beverley Road is a landmark historic district called Prospect Park South. On my side of the street of Beverley Road, according to the City of Yes, they can now buy up those single-family homes and then put five-story apartment buildings.

If someone one house in from the corner on the side street doesn't want to live next to a five-story apartment building, the developer can then offer them money. Then the trickle down of the domino effect of going down the block of taking up all of these single-family homes will take effect as it did in the 40s and 50s, another block over where it's nothing but apartment buildings for that one section. The neighborhood has already been broken up.

Ours is a neighborhood that doesn't have any public green space. Our green space is our gardens and our lawns in the backyard. I have owned this house for 30 years. I just paid off my mortgage. I was planning to grow old in this house. My mother died in this house. They're now talking about putting five free apartment buildings and breaking up the continuity of the neighborhood between Prospect Park South and Beverley Square West and Ditmas Park West. It would break up our neighborhood. We have three train stations within a four-block radius. It's not access to public transportation that is an issue in this neighborhood.

Brian Lehrer: Let me jump in, Alice, and get a response for you from Dan Garodnick. You want to take this one? I will say, I think we could take similar phone calls from various other places in the city. It looks like one is coming in from Windsor Terrace. I see that the council members from around Fresh Meadows and Queens, low-rise area, Bayside in Queens, Riverdale in the Bronx voted no, I think, for very similar reasons to what Alice is articulating. What's your response?

Dan Garodnick: Certainly, and I appreciate Alice's call and comment. I will note that we did hear this argument in lots of corners of the city and we also proposed something which is deliberately respectful of the various neighborhoods of New York City. We do not expect that you will see, as Alice had suggested, a five-story apartment building on every corner. We don't actually believe that such opportunities will be taken advantage of in every circumstance. In fact, in some areas, it is only a three-story apartment building if you're near transit or a four-story, or at the absolute maximum, we have enabled a five-story apartment building near transit in everywhere, low density, except as modified by the council in the lowest of low-density neighborhoods.

The caller really makes a very important point here, which is, with three train stations within four blocks and an area which does have the ability to accommodate some housing, the idea that we would shut it off from the possibility of housing production is not the luxury that we have in New York City at a moment when we're at a 1.41% vacancy rate. People are struggling. We need to give them relief. That was why we proposed to do something that was truly respectful to a neighborhood like Ditmas Park and other neighborhoods that I expect we may hear from today.

Brian Lehrer: Is she wrong that a developer could come in, buy a single-family home from somebody and build, what'd she say, a six-story apartment building there and then try to buy out the next person on the block and start a domino effect of turning single family home blocks into apartment building blocks?

Dan Garodnick: We've heard that argument before. Of course, it's a scare tactic argument that we've heard from people who frequently don't want to see anything happen. The answer to the question is she's partially right and she's partially wrong. If you happen to be within a half mile of transit and you are not in an R1 or an R2 district and you have a lot that is 5,000 square feet or more and you are either on a wide street or the short end of a block, then you can take advantage of the development that she is talking about for a three, four, or five-story apartment building in that area. We think that that's totally appropriate. We appreciate that the council also agreed with that. There are things that are enabled to be done today that are not done. We needed to create more zoned capacity here to be able to enable change and to enable housing to be constructed. We think we did it in a really respectful way.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Councilmember Sanchez and Planning Department Director Garodnick. I'll give you a preview. The next question that I will ask comes from a text message and it's very straightforward. It asks, "Will this actually lower rents? When is it expected to have an effect on rent?" We'll see what your answer to that is and take more calls and texts as we talk about the City of Yes, which passed City Council yesterday right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with a City Council leader and a leader of the Adams administration who came together and negotiated the City of Yes housing program that passed council yesterday is Dan Garodnick, director of Mayor Adams' Planning Department and Pierina Sanchez, chair of the council's Housing Committee. Her own district is in the Bronx, Kingsbridge, and around there. I'm going to read a text here. We've gotten a lot of texts actually during the break. responding to the caller, Alice, from Ditmas Park, who was just on and concerned about the character of her neighborhood. Some are echoing her and some are not.

Here's one just for diversity of viewpoint that's different. It says, "I also live on Beverley Road and I want to see more big apartment buildings. Young families need to be able to move here and the massive houses in Ditmas Park are dinosaurs." The caller is classic NIMBY. "There are new apartments being built on Coney Island Avenue and they're bringing families into the neighborhood who can't afford to buy the multimillion-dollar houses in Ditmas Park. Bring on City of Yes."

For what it's worth, there's a different point of view from the same block in the same neighborhood as the caller. Obviously, there are different points of view in many places. All right. Councilmember Sanchez, I said I was going to ask you about this text that came in. It's very simple. It's two lines. It says, "Will this actually lower rents? When is it expected to have an effect on rent?"

Pierina Sanchez: That's a very important question. I think just to be completely straightforward and straight arrow about it, it probably won't lower rents anytime soon in the City of New York. In other places that have had zoning relief that have allowed a lot more housing construction, we've seen little decreases in rent over time. New York City is massive and our shortfall in housing is so large that this is like the conversation about inflation. Are we going to see prices go down? Am I going to go to the grocery store and pay less for eggs tomorrow, depending on the policies that we see from the feds? What we're doing is we're certainly slowing the increase of prices, but I don't think the prices will go down.

That's where the commitments of $5 billion that we were able to negotiate between the speaker and the mayoralty, that's where those commitments come into effect because those commitments include things like housing vouchers to help New Yorkers to afford their homes. It includes things like legal assistance so that if you face eviction and you live in a rent-controlled apartment or a rent-stabilized apartment, you have a much higher likelihood to be able to stay in your home if you have legal representation. That's why we had this sort of yin and yang of zoning relief and allowing for the construction of more but deep investments in New Yorkers today to help with the struggles that people are facing today.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you about the numbers here and whether they're even enough to move the needle. It's 80,000 units projected over 15 years. Do I have the timeline right Councilmember?

Pierina Sanchez: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: 80,000 units over 15 years. Isn't that really actually small? I look back at some old news clips and I saw the Bloomberg administration. Their plan was 165,000 over 10 years preserved or new affordable units. The de Blasio administration plan was 200,000 units and they say they met it two years early. It was a 10-year plan, and they met it at the end of the eight years of the de Blasio administration for new or preserved units. This is just 80,000 units over 15 years. Considering the extent of the shortage and 8 million people in New York City, does this even move the needle?

Pierina Sanchez: It absolutely moves the needle because it's 80,000 over and above all of the rest of the efforts that we have in motion right now. Take last year's city council and mayoral budget negotiation. We added billions of dollars to the HPD capital plan, which we're going to be projected to create tens of thousands of units. There are already developers across the city, who without City of Yes and without HPD capital, they're already developing. There are all of these different efforts that are happening. On top of the 150,000 that we would have seen with no City of Yes, we have an additional 80,000. I think it's important to look at it in that context.

In Spanish, I'm Dominican, and we have the saying granito por granito sedien el vaso, which means grain by grain, we can fill the cup. That's what we're talking about, is all of these policies have to come together and get us to where we need to go. I've heard the number half a million units in the next 10 years. That's what we need to be looking at to stabilize the housing market. We get 80,000 from City of Yes, and we get an additional 100,000 from the other policies that we were considering. Maybe Albany is able to make some changes in this next session as well, and that gets us another 100,000. There's a lot of moving pieces here. Just because one policy doesn't get you to the finish line doesn't mean that it's not critical to pursue in the bigger picture.

Brian Lehrer: Dan Garodnick, why is there a more intense housing shortage, or it feels like there is, than maybe at any time in the city's history, if every administration in recent decades has been adding six digits numbers of units, if it's 100,000 from Bloomberg, 100,000 from de Blasio, 100,000-plus from you, and yet the shortage seems to be getting more intense, the rents seem to be getting ever more unaffordable? Why doesn't any of this move the needle?

Dan Garodnick: I think it's important to note that this problem has not really just crept up on us. It has been brewing for decades and we have not, as a city, taken sufficient action to turn the tide. It's very important also for us to just compare the apples to apples here. When you were talking about the numbers in prior administrations, you were talking about create and preserve. Some of them were just critically through city subsidy, et cetera.

Zoning action to zoning action, what the city council did yesterday and what Mayor Adams sponsored in this proposal is more apples-to-apples units in all 12 years of the Bloomberg administration, and double that was delivered in de Blasio. It's really important that we put this into context and why this was so meaningful. To Chair Sanchez's point, these are incremental additional units beyond what we otherwise were going to be able to do. In zoning, the projection for 82,000 units is over 15 years, but zoning stays put. We're talking about changes that were put in place in 1961. Zoning will stay put until it has changed. These are generational changes and why this is so important.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe something much bigger needs to be done. The New York Times article today on passing City of Yes quotes Zellnor Myrie, state senator from Brooklyn, who's running for mayor, who it says released an ambitious housing plan this week that called for building or preserving a million homes over the next decade. Are you thinking too small? Of course, we'll ask Mr. Myrie at some point how he gets to a million, but are you thinking even too small?

Dan Garodnick: Look, I think this is great that people are taking up the cause of housing supply and recognizing how important it is to New York City. I think that it's obviously worth taking a close look at how numbers are derived and things like that. Most importantly, every candidate for office at every level should be talking about how we need more housing in New York City. That does not at all take away from the monumental victory that the mayor and the council had yesterday. We love that people are talking about this. This is central to the future of New York City and why yesterday was such a big deal.

Brian Lehrer: Wesley in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Wesley.

Wesley: How are you doing? Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we got you.

Wesley: I had two questions. One question is if there is one, two, or three-family building and there is a basement, at the beginning of-- I heard something that the basement would be allowed to be converted to rental apartment. Is that true or I understood it improperly? The second one is, if the owner lives on the first floor of the two-family house, let's say, or three-family house, and he has a basement finished that is almost at the level of the first floor, is he able to use it for himself at the second level of his own apartment? Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. I think a lot of people in Queens in particular have that question, Councilmember.

Pierina Sanchez: Oh, I was actually going to defer to the chair, but I will say that as a part of the-- There was the zoning relief that we passed and then there was accompanying legislation. What we did through the legislation that we passed was clarify the requirements for accessory dwelling units, ancillary dwelling units, and basements, and we simplified the code so that even though there have been attempts in the past, pilot programs, to legalize basements, the code was very complicated. We tried to make it a bit easier. We're including financial incentives with this program. Chair, I think you're probably best positioned to take this one.

Dan Garodnick: Sure. That's all accurate. The only additional things that I would say are that if you're talking about a one or two-family home and you're interested in using your basement, obviously, there are state legislative limitations and there are zoning limitations, at least there were until yesterday, to your ability to use a basement as an accessory unit. The city council made some modifications to ensure that subgrade or rear yard accessory units would not be possible in certain stormwater, flooding areas, coastal floodplains. There are certain zoning districts where they are not permitted. The short answer is it depends on where you are. Also, we have to just make sure of the applicability here of the city council's changes they made yesterday.

The question about the owner on the first floor being able to occupy his own basement, I'm a little confused by the question. Obviously, if you own the building and you want to make use of your own basement for a variety of personal purposes, that is unaffected here, but if you're talking about converting a basement, same answer to your very first question.

Brian Lehrer: Director Garodnick, what happens in neighborhoods that were already individually rezoned? Inwood, Manhattan, where I live, there was a big battle over Inwood rezoning in that past. East New York had an individual neighborhood rezoning. Are these additional rezonings that would allow for more density than those neighborhoods and others that were individually rezoned are already seeing?

Dan Garodnick: Right. It's important to note that, and this goes to the point that we were making with the first caller, Alice, which is that the changes on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis are very modest. They are the sorts of things that can be easily handled by neighborhoods even in the context of existing neighborhood plans or special districts. We think that these are readily able to be included in those areas because at the very most dramatic, as Alice pointed out, if you are right near transit and on a wide lot, you might see a five-story apartment building at the very maximum.

We have today, Brian, in our 1 and 2-family districts, we have 14,693 multifamily buildings across New York City. If you look at individual, what we would perceive as lower-density areas, they are all over the place, and New Yorkers accept them. We live with them. They do not offend people. They're largely bigger than what we are even proposing here. We think that these can be easily handled in neighborhoods throughout the city.

Brian Lehrer: Director Garodnick, I know you have to go in about a minute. I want to stay on this topic a little longer. If you need to jump, go ahead and I'll ask our last question or two of Councilmember Sanchez. Councilmember, there's a whole thread of text messages, and by thread, I don't mean one person posting over and over again, but a lot of people weighing in with comments like, "I can't listen anymore. The politicians are just doing the bidding of REBNY." That's the developers, real estate industry.

Another one, "There's a lot of housing available in the dozens of 10 to 12-story luxury buildings built on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn in the last 25 years. Why not just make them affordable?" Another one, scrolling down, "Could you ask your guests if the city is considering to extend Section 8? They just did a lottery, but it's very hard to be selected." All of those go to a cynicism that's out there among some percentage of the population that this really helps the real estate developers more than it does anything for housing that's really affordable because that would come from more regulation.

Pierina Sanchez: Listen, I hear that and I feel that. I spent a lot of time myself just looking in the mirror and questioning who benefits and how do they benefit and who are these policies going to make a difference for. I think that that's where I personally landed, where I landed, that we need to add housing supply because there's a reason that the real estate industry was not extremely vocal on this proposal in the way that they have been about, say, 421A tax incentives, billions of dollars of tax benefits for new construction. There's a reason why they were not as vocal as they are about other programs that the city and the state have pursued. That's because of something that Chair Garodnick keeps saying is that these changes are pretty modest.

The changes to accessory dwelling units, for instance, to allow a conversion of a basement or a garage to become a home, that's not for a developer, that's for a homeowner to be able to make ends meet. My brother owns a home in the East Bronx around Eastchester Avenue, Gun Hill, and he's super excited that maybe he'll be able to get a loan. We come from nothing. My parents came to this country in the '70s and were taxi drivers and street vendors. I went to college and here I am. That's my story. My brother, we have the same story. We're just now middle-class New Yorkers who were raised really poor and we want to be stable and we want to be able to stay in our city.

Something like allowing accessory dwelling units is not for REBNY. It's not for the big developers. It's for my brother, who will be able to have extra income if he's able to convert a unit in his backyard. Something like the transit-oriented development that is part of the rezoning, that is going to require affordability so that instead of having a three-story building, you get a four-story building and two of those units can be affordable. That's not sexy to the real estate industry. That's for normal New Yorkers. These are small interventions everywhere that can make a difference without involving the big industry. It's really about the average person.

Brian Lehrer: Director Garodnick, you're still there and have time for one more question?

Dan Garodnick: I'm here.

Brian Lehrer: More texts along these lines. Here's just another one. Those, like I read, keep coming in. "If you want to see what big multifamily buildings will look like, come to Fort Lee. The mayor's son construction company is buying up homes and tearing them down and building multifamily units that are jammed into spaces and neighborhoods and look out of place and are built with the same materials, black, brick, and white stucco, so they all look alike." This one's a question. Let me get down to this here. This says, "I am listening to your segment about rezoning and the need for more housing. At what point do we say no more building, our infrastructure can't handle what we have. Overcrowding, too many cars, trucks, delivery, et cetera." That's exactly the text, Director Garodnick. Is there a point at which we say, "New York City is crowded enough. If you can't afford to live here, there are many places where you can afford to live"? Is there any thinking along those lines like this listener suggests?

Dan Garodnick: Look, I appreciate the question. Also, it's important to note that our population is expected to continue to grow from where we are today. The people will be coming and they will be looking for places to live. There will be our net population growth in New York City through additional births in New York, and we're going to need to find a place to accommodate the people who want to be here in New York City. The absence of building just creates pressures on the city, the price of rent, the imbalance of power between landlords and tenants in New York City. We also should remember that we've had big areas of New York City that really have produced very little housing over many decades.

We have 59 community districts in New York. Last year, 10 of them produced as much housing as the other 49 combined. We haven't even opened the door to any housing production in a lot of areas of New York City. We wanted to do that here. Again, respectfully, but we wanted to do it here. Then to the point about big multifamily buildings over in Jersey, I might just ask what one's definition is of a big multifamily building. When you're proposing a three-story building or a four, or at the absolute maximum, five-story apartment building anywhere in New York City, to me, the definition of whether that is big, I think, is at least a point of debate.

Brian Lehrer: We'll close, Councilmember Sanchez, with another point from that listener's text. Tax on infrastructure. I see that there's money for sewage infrastructure expansion in the bill. What about schools? Is there anything for public schools? Of course, everybody's worried about pressure on mass transit too, but you're not the MTA. Is there money for additional schools here if you're going to be adding additional population?

Pierina Sanchez: Yes. In this $5 billion, we don't have specific funding for school, but we do have an ongoing five-year capital plan that's always looking at population and always looking at projections and always concerned about making sure that we are meeting the need, and so that that will continue. It's a big-picture approach. We have these $5 billion worth of investments are a direct response to what we heard, specifically with respect to concerns on City of. Yes. Then we're a city. We're a city with a $100 billion budget that has ongoing conversations of budget process every single year that we will continue to invest.

Look, I am nine months pregnant. I am due on Wednesday. I can barely walk right now. I'm just very close. This is so important to me that we are having this conversation as New Yorkers and we're hearing from everybody and we're doing everything possible because it's about getting to a future where New York City continues to be a city of opportunity. I think that's worth fighting for. Thank you, everyone, for texting and calling in because that means you care and that means that we're going to keep making progress one way or another.

Brian Lehrer: Working till just before she goes into labor. Pierina Sanchez, chair of the council's Housing Committee, and we also thank Dan Garodnick, Mayor Adams' director of the City Planning Department. After all those negotiations between the mayor's people and the City Council's people, we're grateful that one from each of those camps would come on with us this morning. Thank you both very much. Councilmember Sanchez, congratulations in advance.

Pierina Sanchez: Thank you so much.

Dan Garodnick: Thanks, Brian.

 

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