Baby Grand Bargain And Early Jan Updates
The start of the new year means a new legislative session in Albany. Every year offers a chance for a do-over on past sessions’ mistakes—and boy does New York need one now.
Hi All,
The start of the new year means a new legislative session in Albany. Every year offers a chance for a do-over on past sessions’ mistakes—and boy does New York need one now.
Here’s what you need to know about the housing conversation getting underway, as well as some other high-and-low-lights from the past couple of weeks in New York politics. (Scroll down for deeper dives!)
🏠 Coming soon: a housing grand bargain? Last year, the legislature rejected Gov. Hochul’s bold proposal to require new housing statewide. This year, we might get a “grand bargain” that pairs new renter protections with tax breaks to incentivize income-restricted housing development—but no supply mandates. Call it baby grand.
🏛️ Museums are great, but the city shouldn’t be one. Binyamin Applebaum argues that the city’s balance between building housing and historic preservation is out of whack, freezing the city in amber—and freezing out new generations of New Yorkers.
🚗 Teachers Union works…to keep asthma rates high for vulnerable students!?Congestion pricing is coming, but UFT leaders (without a vote of members) joined a GOP lawsuit to stop it, claiming care for student health. That’s ridiculous: reduction in gridlock from this kind of tolling has reduced childhood asthma by ~50% elsewhere.
🗑️ The Mayor’s budget cuts mean more trash on the streets. A coming 3% sanitation budget cut will mean fewer trash cans (and, probably, more rat-buffet buildup). But this year we’ll finally see the start of citywide containerization for residential trash—the step we know works to reduce rats.
🌱 We’re behind on our renewable energy goals. NIMBYs aren’t just blocking new housing and public transit: they’re also partially why we’re behind on conversion to renewable energy.
Watch this space for more about what’s going on—and ways our community can change these storylines for the better. And don’t hesitate to reach out with questions or ideas.
Ryder
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🏠 Coming soon: a housing grand bargain?
📖 READ the Daily News critique our lawmakers’ fear of requiring new housing supply, even though it’s the single most important step we can take to address our crushing affordability crisis.
Key quote: “It’s ironic that lawmakers feel that voting for an expansive housing agenda is politically perilous territory, brave votes that they have to expend political capital on, to the point that they can imperil reelection. It should really be the opposite; policymakers should pay a heavy price for having torpedoed one of the most forward-thinking agendas in decades.”
🔎 SUBTEXT: Until the political price for inaction rises, lawmakers will keep thinking small; knowing supply mandates won’t pass, the governor isn’t proposing them this year. Instead, both Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins intimated in their opening remarks that they want to pair stronger tenant protections (helpful to reduce evictions and homelessness) with a new tax subsidy to fund the development of income-restricted housing (essential to get any new buildings built). But without supercharging supply—to deliver enough homes for everyone who wants to live in New York, and to give tenants much more market power vis-à-vis landlords—this “grand bargain” leaves the biggest piece of the puzzle unmet.
🏠 Museums are great, but the city shouldn’t be one
📖 READ a powerful op-ed in the New York Times by Binyamin Applebaum, arguing that the city’s balance between building housing and historic preservation is out of whack, freezing the city in amber—and freezing out new generations of New Yorkers.
Key quote: “New York is not a great city because of its buildings. It is a great city because it provides people with the opportunity to build better lives. To preserve that, the buildings must change.”
🔎 SUBTEXT: Many of our debates about housing policy in New York are stuck in an outdated Robert Moses vs. Jane Jacobs framework, where bulldozing development with no concern for local communities is counterpointed against preservation of neighborhoods and slow, deliberative decision-making. But that dynamic emerged during decades when the city was shrinking, not growing; now, we’ve turned the dial of policy-making all the way towards allowing local vetoes by the richest, whitest communities best served by the status quo—all at the expense of the marginalized.
👂 LISTEN to this great Ben Max interview with Howard Slatkin from the Citizens Housing & Planning Council all about the city’s zoning history, offering a deeper dive into this outdated dynamic.
🚗 Teachers Union works…to keep asthma rates high for vulnerable students!?
📖 READ about how the United Federation of Teachers joined the Staten Island Borough President in suing to stop congestion pricing—the tolling program that will speed buses and emergency vehicles, reduce gridlock and pollution, and fund critical upgrades to the subway system.
Key quote:“How many teachers are we talking about here? According to the MTA, 1.5 million people from across the region work in Lower Manhattan, and 1.3 million take mass transit; only 11 percent, or 143,000 of them, drive... some nine percent of all New York City teachers—6,794 people—commute to Manhattan from other boroughs. If 11 percent of them drive, that's 750 teachers, or 0.02 percent of the average weekday ridership on the subway in 2022.”
🔎 SUBTEXT: The UFT leadership decided to join this GOP lawsuit without a vote of support from actual members. Their claims that congestion pricing was “rushed” are contradicted by the fact that it’s been under consideration for over a decade, passed into law five years ago, and underwent a 4000-page environmental review. Finally, the justification that their concern is driven by fears of asthma from redirected cars (rather than by tolls to be paid by a few powerful leaders) ignores that central business district tolling has reduced childhood asthma by nearly 50% elsewhere. Congestion pricing is going to happen after years of planning, passage, and study; these lawsuits are part of opponents’ last gasps of gridlock—leveraging the courts to stall already delayed policies.
⇨ ACT: Submit public comment to the MTA to say you support congestion pricing and are excited to see it rolled out swiftly and comprehensively. You can do so through March 11 by email, mail, fax, or phone.
🗑️ The Mayor’s budget cuts mean more trash on the streets
📖 READ about how the 3% sanitation budget cuts that Mayor Adams is demanding will translate into reduced presence of trash cans on city streets. (Instead of reducing the frequency of trash can emptying, the department is just reducing the number of cans.)
Key quote: “When the city removed 223 litter baskets in Harlem in 2018 because people were throwing household trash in them, residents complained that the result was just trash piling up on street corners where the baskets had been.”
🔎 SUBTEXT: Mayor Adams has been vocal about eradicating rats, and his sanitation commissioner famously said “The rats don’t run this city—we do.” But rat sightings are explodingsince we don’t yet do the one thing that works: putting trash into rat-proof containers, depriving them of food. Why? Because doing so requires repurposing some of the city’s 3 million free parking spaces for the containers. Instead, the city has reduced the hours when household trash bags are on the street. But they’re still sitting there: a slightly delayed rat buffet.
Thankfully, the city is finally getting serious about the war on rats, with containerization plansannounced recently and set to start rolling out this year—finishing in 2026.
🌱 We’re behind on our renewable energy goals
📖 READ about thebarriersto generating the amount of offshore wind needed to get us to our fossil fuel reduction goals.
Key quote:“Just 27 to 29 percent of the state’s electricity currently comes from renewable energy, a far cry from the goal of New York’s climate law, which calls for 70 percent by 2030… [Last year] Gov. Hochul vetoed a bill that would have allowed the major offshore wind project Empire Wind to connect its windfarm to the grid and power 1 million New York homes.”
🔎 SUBTEXT: As the article notes, New York law requires a shift to renewable energy, but to get there we have to build it—and build the infrastructure to move electricity from power generation to end users. Many communities are working to block both kinds of projects: loud local pushback led to the governor’s recent veto of critical grid electrification, a win for Long Island NIMBYs but a loss for New Yorkers who want to stop climate change.