Clueless Politicians Fuel Housing Woes
TO learn why New York City’s housing picture is so bleak, you don’t have to read books and news articles. Just drop in on a meeting of the City Council’s Land Use Committee, where ignorance and progressive lunacies rule the day. The panel members at a hearing last week at 250 Broadway clearly took their cues from the Watergate-era congressman who, in defending President Richard Nixon, famously declared, “Don’t confuse me with the facts.”
City Planning Commissioner Dan Garodnick discussed strategies Mayor Adams and Gov. Hochul pitched to convert old office buildings into apartments. They would make it easier for landlords to repurpose obsolete office buildings. We have too many empty offices and not enough apartments, so what could be more logical, right?
Garodnick patiently described steps to eliminate bureaucratic red tape, build apartments in areas they’re currently prohibited and permit larger towers than state and city rules allow. The new measures could make 136 million square feet of offices, nearly one-third of the city’s inventory, eligible for conversion, he said.
But the panel’s members pursued off-base, underinformed and sometimes goofy tangents. Committee Chair Rafael Salamanca Jr., who represents the South Bronx, got the ball rolling the wrong way by stating Manhattan’s offices are “25% vacant.”
Ahem — the true vacancy rate is between 16.7% and 18.1%, according to real-estate companies JLL, Colliers and CBRE. It’s merely the difference between a predictably sluggish market after COVID-19 and utter, irreversible catastrophe.
Shouldn’t the guy who heads the land use committee know such a basic fact? But let’s not pick nits when there were so many juicier howlers!
Council Member Kevin C. Riley, whose district covers part of the north Bronx, raised the question no doubt on everyone’s mind: Would apartment conversions “require amenities such as schools and libraries?”
Some who challenged Garodnick made little secret that they detest developers and landlords, whom they regard as profiteers eager to prey on “communities of color.”
But it’s beyond chutzpah for them to trash private owners when the city itself is America’s largest slumlord, wholly to blame for miserable conditions endured by a half-million New Yorkers in 335 New York City Housing Authority locations.
The main reason for a housing shortage is rent controls, which discourage tenants from ever giving up their apartments, thereby keeping 1 million off the market.
More recently, a state “Housing Stability” Act dissuades landlords from fixing up apartments in disrepair by denying them the right to raise rents to pay for the repairs — leaving tens of thousands more units uninhabitable and un-rentable.
Such truths are but trifles to progressive councilmembers who want just about all apartments spun from former offices to be “affordable” — i.e., so cheap that no developer could afford the costly construction to create them.
Pierina Sanchez, who represents several Bronx neighborhoods, cited a “need to see our lowest-income communities in all of these proposals.” Garodnick was there to talk about facilitating residential conversions, not about satisfying woke wish lists. But he wisely kept his cool and repeatedly thanked councilmembers for their input, however idiotic.
Hochul’s proposal to extend 421-a tax abatements — which give developers incentives to build new housing — gave Council members at the session fits.
Darlene Mealy, who reps central Brooklyn neighborhoods including Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, said, “Every time there’s a proposal that leaves my community out, I’m on the offensive.”
That’s code for “No gentrification,” the excuse that Councilmember Kristin Richardson Jordan (who was not at the hearing) recently used to block a project that would bring more than 900 new homes to central Harlem.
Mealy bizarrely asked why buildings converted to apartments wouldn’t be required to have parking spaces, apparently unaware that City Hall is using every trick in the book to get rid of cars. She suggested subsidies for developers to pay for conversions would amount to “a bailout for private-property owners.” (“I would call it a lifeline,” evertactful Garodnick answered.)
Attendees also asked such trenchant questions as: Why couldn’t houses of worship be turned into housing? Why are there no “setasides for homeless”?
These are the follies that excite many councilmembers, the people who would have to approve any zoning changes Adams wants to make conversions easier. God save us from their demented priorities.
‘ That’s code for “No gentrification.”’