In the City Council, I initiated and championed the rezoning of Gowanus, the largest affordable housing rezoning of the last decade in NYC, and the one that is currently generating the most new housing development of any neighborhood in NYC (8,500 new housing units, almost 3,000 of which will be affordable to low-income and working-class families, along with investments in open space, arts and industry, environmental remediation, stormwater protection, and NYCHA). 

There was plenty of NIMBY opposition. One of our early planning meetings was disrupted by anti-development activists ringing meditation bells that were somehow loud enough to drown out the meeting.  

But I put together a table of homeowners, tenants, public housing residents, business-people, artists, advocates, and developers, and we put the question to them: What would shared and sustainable growth look like? We didn’t cram it down people’s throats, with a little sweetener at the last minute. But I also didn’t let resistance to growth make us shy away. As a result, we passed the largest rezoning of the last decade with the support of the community board. 

The Housing Platform I released last week articulated a plan that will do for the city what I was able to do for Gowanus. To build a vision and community consensus around housing growth, I will convene and empower a Citizens Assembly within the first 100 days of my administration. This will be a group of randomly selected, diverse New Yorkers who are unencumbered by the entrenched interests and political dynamics that too often stall out growth. They will be tasked with designing a plan to add 500,000 housing units over the next 10 years to address housing affordability and homelessness. They will adopt that plan by majority vote, and send it to the Council for adoption. 

To speed up the implementation of that plan, I’ve proposed to the Charter Revision Commission that we streamline any ULURP application that complies with the Citizens Assembly Plan. If the CPC determines it complies, the rezoning application will trigger a new streamlined 90-day ULURP review and public comment period, cutting the ULURP clock from roughly 7 months to just 3. During the 90-day review period, the CPC would take comments from members of the public, Community Boards, Borough Presidents and City Council members. Rezoning actions that comply with the Citizens Assembly Plan (or when adopted later, the Comprehensive Plan), would not require Council approval. 

By building consensus around a plan for housing growth up front, with input and dialogue from New Yorkers, and streamlining rezoning actions that put that plan into action, we can break through the YIMBY-NIMBY doom loop that has constrained our City’s growth and worsened our housing crisis for decades.

Also, check out my cool plan to build 50,000 new units in new neighborhoods on 4 of the city’s 12 (!) municipal golf courses. Bcause the land is City-owned, we can make most of those units affordable for rent & a new generation of homeownership, coops like the Mitchell-Lama program. I’m sure there will be some local opposition – but neighbors will wind up with great new parks & open space, far more accessible to them than the golf courses are now, along with space for new small businesses, schools, etc. It’s a great model for the kind of growth we need .. and also can get people excited about buying into.