BP Reynoso, CM Bottcher push for a new Housing League
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and City Council Member Erik Bottcher are joining forces to promote a new pro-housing development group.
The two sent out invitations to some 160 other elected officials for an inaugural meeting of what they’ve deemed a Housing League. On March 1, they spoke about their new grouping with 16 other elected officials and 18 representatives of electeds at Brooklyn Borough Hall.
The Housing League will be an assemblage of state and city elected officials who support pro-development policies and land use actions.
The meeting offered a chance to those who are pro-development and those who may have some qualms about it to come together and discuss the issues, BP Reynoso said at a press conference following the meeting. “We really want to have a meaningful conversation. So, this was like a big tent approach that allowed for a lot of people to come regardless of their position on housing.”
“Historically,” Council Member Bottcher added, “this is a topic that elected officials have run away from. So, to have as many folks as we had here today is very encouraging.”
The meeting introduced the Housing League to the other electeds and gave them a chance to talk about what the League wants to do.
BP Reynoso and Bottcher did not go into detail about the discussions that took place inside the meeting. But, so far it’s clear that one central goal of the Housing League is to promote planned and directed housing development that spreads the growth of neighborhoods across all five boroughs.
Promoting planned housing is a crucial item Reynoso pointed to in the “Comprehensive Plan for Brooklyn” his office produced in October 2023. Low levels of both affordable and market rate housing and a lack of tenant protections have led to higher rents in some neighborhoods. And while developers will often zero in on building in one neighborhood, other city neighborhoods have remained practically construction free. “When comparing across community districts,” the plan states, “CD 1 [Greenpoint, Williamsburg] added 18,500 units of housing [between the years 2010 and 2020] while CD 18 [Canarsie, Bergen Beach, Mill Basin, Flatlands,
Marine Park, Georgetown, and Mill Island] added only 500 units.”
Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson attended the Housing League meeting and spoke about the various new buildings going up in her borough. In Brooklyn, Borough President Reynoso talked about neighborhoods like East New York where there are nearly 40 active construction cranes while there has been a lot less development in a neighborhood like Bay Ridge. “What happens there is that maybe Bay Ridge doesn’t know that they’re not contributing to the greater good, but now they see it,” Reynoso said. “They see they have seven [new units] and East New York has 13,000 units of housing that they built. And it’s just like, okay, we can see how the perception could be that we’re not assisting in this crisis.”
The Housing League believes that, if the city plans to meet its goal of providing enough housing for everyone, construction cranes should be as commonplace in the Bronx as they are in other neighborhoods.
The electeds who showed up to attend the March 1 Housing League meeting were Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson; City Council Members Chi Ossé, Julie Menin, Chris Marte, Shahana Hanif, and Pierina Sanchez; State Senators Jabari Brisport, Julia Salazar, and Brian Kavanaugh; and Assembly Members Emily Gallagher, Jo Anne Simon, Harvey Epstein, Yudelka Tapia, Alex Bores, Grace Lee, and Linda Rosenthal.
One part of the Housing League’s program is that it plans to be a vocal supporter of politicians and community groups who want to promote housing development.
“We have a housing crisis and the goal of this group is to solve the housing crisis in a meaningful way,” BP Reynoso added. “We have hundreds of thousands of people in our homeless shelters, we have people that are paying significant amounts of rent––they may be one paycheck away from becoming homeless. So, the goal overall is to address the housing crisis with a crisis level response. We want the group to grow. We had meaningful players in the meeting: I think the chairs of all the housing in the state, city and the assembly, the senate and the council housing chairs were all there. They did a great job expressing what issues they think are meaningful for us to get to a place where the general public feels like the housing crisis is being addressed in a fruitful way. But the goal here is to come together as one to solve this crisis.”
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