Evaluating the final East New York rezoning plan

The East New York rezoning is the first domino to fall as Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 10-year affordable housing plan moves forward. Despite a consistent outcry from housing advocacy groups and local residents, the City Council’s Land Use Committee voted today to approve the rezoning, 18-1.

City & State’s City Hall reporter Sarina Trangle has been covering the housing debate extensively and was at Thursday’s committee vote. I asked her a few questions on what the final rezoning plan will look like for East New York residents.

Nick Powell: What appreciably changed between the original rezoning proposal and the final vote?

Sarina Trangle: There are two Mandatory Inclusionary Housing templates being used, one of which is that 25 percent of housing will be available for those earning an average of 60 percent Area Median Income, and the other is the 20 percent of housing at an average of 40 percent Area Median Income, and the developer gets to pick site-by-site. They identified another 100 units of affordable housing that they have planned in the next couple of years – they said it was about 1,200 before, now they have more than 1,300.

Tangential to the housing itself, they did commit to phasing out three homeless shelters, two of which they already planned to do, and giving out 500 vouchers to homeless families to move them out of the shelters and into permanent homes. They’re also going to do a working group that will examine ways to legalize basement apartments in East New York. They have $12 million they can use, either to convert the apartments or support other repairs.

There is a city-owned building that they’re converting into an NYPD community center, budgeting $10 million for that. They’re investing in improvements to Atlantic Avenue, which they were going to probably do under Vision Zero anyway. They made a bunch of commitments for the Industrial Business Zone, putting $16.7 million into that, which includes stuff like bringing high-speed broadband to businesses there, renovating a city-owned industrial building, hypothetically better serving businesses.

There was a large parcel called Arlington Village, which is in a rent-regulated program, the residents were concerned that if it was rezoned so that a larger building could be constructed, there would be an increased incentive for new owners to try to evict people or get people to move. That was taken out of the rezoning. They also are providing about $2.8 million for retrofitting a space for an early childhood center, and also going to fund $17.45 million for improvement projects to existing schools. Those are all things I have not seen before.

NP: It looked like Councilman Rafael Espinal was doing a victory lap on a lot of these changes during the hearing – is it fair to say that he’s responsible for a lot of the concessions made in the final sketches of the plan?

ST: I would think so. He would be among the pivotal people involved in that. Seems like there is a lot in terms of business stuff and funding for schools and parks that maybe wasn’t explicitly in there. I don’t know that the actual income levels or housing has changed so much, however a lot of that is site-specific. The city has to do it as they see an opportunity and have other subsidies and tools to give out.

NP: What about the jobs and retail aspect? I know that was a big focus of Espinal’s and the various advocacy groups involved.

ST: There’s nothing new that I’m aware of. The jobs stuff that they have, they’ve already presented – a more detailed study of the Industrial Business Zone, they will have the Department of Small Business Services do some servicing in the area, conduct some classes for business owners, and they have a digital marketing campaign for the Industrial Business Zone. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development will pilot a retail preservation program so that new development sets aside space for local businesses. There is some money for commercial district needs and studies, but in terms of jobs on the construction site, it’s the same thing where they have their citywide HireNYC program, where if you have a contract over a certain size, you have to go to the city and they funnel candidates to you and you have to consider them, but if they’re not qualified you don’t have to hire them.

NP: I saw that Bertha Lewis, Jonathan Westin and other community advocates were arrested protesting outside of Rafael Espinal’s district office. Was it a fairly tame committee vote today?

ST: It was the first meeting I attended that was so sparsely attended. I’m not sure why they are protesting outside his district office but don’t want to come to the committee vote. Clearly there are people who are very unhappy with this. I don’t think you even have to have them in the room to know that. New York Communities for Change and the groups they are working with are sending out releases calling the rezoning a total sham.

NP: To what extent do you see this specific rezoning as a template for the other rezonings to come?

ST: I don’t know whether they would consider it a template or not. To some degree, they must. The Jerome Avenue corridor, East Harlem and Inwood are not particularly high-income communities, they’re not all the same. East New York has much higher homeownership rates than the other communities up for rezoning, so the basement apartments and that kind of stuff may be less relevant in those communities and homeownership programs might not be things that are carried forward.