If you find living in Brooklyn difficult to afford these days, you’re not alone. The cost of living in the borough is 62% higher than the national average, due, in large part, to the fact that housing is 180% more expensive.
It’s time to make New York City’s most populous borough more affordable, ensuring that people from all walks of life can continue to call it home.
Organizations like the Fifth Avenue Committee are working to do just that. Since 1978, we have pursued our mission of advancing economic, social and racial justice in New York City through integrated, community-centered affordable housing, policy advocacy and more.
What started as a group of Brooklynites determined to undo decades of redlining and racist housing and economic policy has transformed into a powerful nonprofit advancing equity and justice in Brooklyn and beyond.
To achieve our vision of a more livable and inclusive city, FAC’s development projects are 100% affordable. Despite that, they often still get held up in red tape for months — or even years.
All the while, individuals and families are forced to go without the affordable homes they desperately need. This can’t keep happening.
Fortunately, there are proposals on the ballot this November that will make it faster, fairer and easier to deliver housing and affordable housing across the five boroughs.
Questions 2 through 5, put forward by the Charter Revision Commission, directly address New York City’s housing crisis, and Questions 2 and 3 specifically expedite the creation of affordable homes.
These proposals would make a major difference in creating more housing in New York City. Questions 2 and 3, in particular, have the potential to greatly enhance the work we do at FAC by enabling many of our affordable housing projects to be fast-tracked.
Take our city-funded affordable housing developments, including those on city-owned land: If voters approve Questions 2 and 3, these would go through a more efficient review process than the current seven-month-long Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, which leads to delays.
Rather than a full ULURP, publicly financed affordable-housing projects would go to the Board of Standards and Appeals for approval, allowing us to bring urgently needed affordable homes online much more quickly while still maintaining the 60-day review by local community boards.
And for any projects we pursue in the 12 Community Districts that currently build the least affordable housing, Question 2 would accelerate those, as well, ensuring every neighborhood in every borough is doing its part to tackle this historic crisis head-on.
If voters vote ‘yes’ for Question 3, the city-owned Boerum Hill parking lot that Fifth Avenue Committee is converting to 70 affordable apartments, with 21 set aside for formerly homeless families and individuals; a job-training center for low-income New Yorkers; and more will go through the new Expedited Land Use Review Procedure, making these homes and resources a reality much sooner than would have previously been possible.
It’s important to note that none of the four housing-related ballot proposals — Questions 2 through 5 — cut the community out of the conversation.
Rather, after years of hearing that communities are not receiving the affordable homes they need and deserve quickly enough, these proposals respond to that feedback by making it easier to deliver housing and ensure that every neighborhood does its part to address the crisis.
New Yorkers will still have ample opportunity to weigh in through community board review and extensive community visioning processes for publicly-financed projects, which often shape both the initial Request for Proposals and the plans that organizations like Fifth Avenue Committee put forward.
At the end of the day, the cost of living in Brooklyn and beyond is skyrocketing, while affordable homes dwindle. If we don’t act now, many of our friends, family members and fellow New Yorkers will be forced out of the neighborhoods they’ve always called home. We can’t let that happen.
I urge you to vote ‘yes’ on the ballot proposals focused on housing and affordable housing this election. A vote for these proposals is a vote for a more affordable Brooklyn and a more affordable city for all.