Politicians who fight construction in the name of combating gentrification are having the opposite effect—driving up building costs and cutting into affordable housing creation, Deputy Mayor Vicki Been asserted Tuesday.
Speaking at a Crain's Business Breakfast Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio's housing czar ripped into recent efforts by local officials to force seemingly as-of-right developments through the fraught land-use review process, known as Ulurp. Because this forestalls the start of construction, Been asserted that these efforts to "increase the process" also increase the the price tag attached to a development, reducing affordability obligating the city to dole out more subsidies.
"At the end of the day, it's a political question, and we have to call out the delay, and the cost of that delay," Been said. "We don't talk enough about what is at stake when somebody holds a process up for 18 months. Well, that's how much this adds to the cost of an affordable unit. It's how much more our tax dollars have to pay to get that kind of affordability. So I think we have to be a little bit tougher about saying, 'This is what your process is costing us, and is that a price that's worth it, and that we're all going to pay on your behalf.' "
Despite this talk of calling out pols, Been hedged when asked about Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer's spearheading a lawsuit to force the Two Bridges project—three new residential towers on the Lower East Side—to go through ULURP. The mayor's law department and the developers argued that the project required only a "minor change" to zoning, and needed only approval from the executive branch—not from the City Council, as the more tortuous land-use procedure requires.
"I love Gale Brewer," said Been. "I don't agree with her on these particular things."
Brewer defended her suit—which succeeded at its initial stop in state court and is being appealed—and insisted Ulurp would empower local elected officials to compel the developers to include more below-market units in the Two Bridges project at lower rents.
"We could end up with more affordable housing, because it will have community input," the borough president told Crain's.
In her address Tuesday, Been also continued to mourn Amazon's decision The e-commerce behemoth has continued to beef up its presence in Manhattan, though not nearly at the scale planned for Queens.