Race lost for the new East New York

As the City Council readies to vote Wednesday on Mayor de Blasio’s proposed new development rules for a swath of Brooklyn, one basic question remains unaddressed: What is the plan for East New York’s current residents?

That question matters because East New York anchors one of the city’s greatest concentrations of black and Latino residents, who account for 90% of the area’s population. The median income for a family of three is just $34,512, among the city’s lowest, and half of the area’s households spend a too-high 35% or more of their income on rent.

The mayor’s rezoning plan would allow for large-scale new development that must include some affordable housing — aimed at tenants earning about $46,000 a year. That’s simply unaffordable to the area’s residents. While the city promises to subsidize apartments for lower-income households, even these are priced too high for the majority of East New York residents.

Add in an expected influx of market-rate housing, and the East New York plan in and of itself would make New York City on the whole a less black and Latino place.

Yet the de Blasio administration has failed to study the potential for discriminatory racial impacts of the East New York zoning — a failure that’s more than just morally shocking. Such a review is required under federal fair housing laws. So is a meaningful response.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires the city, as a recipient of federal funds, to affirmatively further fair housing when rezoning — to address the vast housing needs of residents in racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty. The city is obligated to not just avoid perpetuating segregation but also to take steps to create opportunities for fair housing.

In communities like East New York, this means preventing the displacement of low-income residents of color — rather than pushing them out to bring in waves of new faces who can afford much higher rents. That is anything but residential integration.

New York City’s fair housing failures are not new. In 2009, we represented a community coalition that challenged the city’s proposed rezoning of 30 acres at the intersection of Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant for housing development. City officials testified that — in blatant violation of federal civil rights laws — they never analyze nor consider the racial impacts of their rezonings. We’ve seen what happens when the city neglects to even ask whether its zoning plans discriminate, never mind tackle the consequences. The Williamsburg-Greenpoint waterfront rezoning of 2005 led to skyrocketing rents, displacing low-income residents of color who had lived in these communities for generations.

History must not repeat itself. Almost 50 years after fair housing became the law of the land, any proposed rezoning by city government must pass this basic test.

Beginning with East New York and continuing with more than a dozen promised future rezonings, from Flushing and Long Island City in Queens to the Bronx’s Jerome Ave. and Staten Island’s Bay St., the city cannot use the veil of purportedly affordable housing as an excuse to neglect the real needs of low-income black and Latino communities.

Accurate and truly fair housing analyses, with a view toward identifying and remedying the racial impacts of rezonings, will lift this veil. East New York is an essential place to start.