Testimony

Testimony Before the Committee on Land Use in Support of Int. 1572-A

As members of the Racial Impact Study Coalition, we the undersigned, thank the Chair for accepting our written testimony in support of Int 1572-A, and we ask that you take up the opportunity to make the bill even stronger in the ways we indicate below. We are a coalition of neighborhood, community-based, and planning groups who came together to ensure that the City of New York meaningfully considers racial impacts in making major land use decisions. Collectively, we represent all five boroughs, most of the communities that have been impacted by City-initiated rezonings in recent years, and a wide spectrum of New York residents. We share a commitment to protecting our communities from racialized displacement and expanding permanently affordable housing to all neighborhoods, and we are excited to support the legislation proposed by the Public Advocate and allies on the Council and hope to work collaboratively with the council to strengthen the bill. This legislation would make New York City a trailblazer in fulfilling the promises of the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, and the City’s own recent Where We Live NYC process. Requiring racial disparity reports to be prepared before major decisions about land use are made will strengthen the City’s ability to plan for, and build, a more equitable City. Importantly, when the City adopts a comprehensive, long-term planning process, the reports will help evaluate how proposed land use actions are likely to contribute to or detract from citywide goals to eliminate disparities.

Knowing Who’s at Greatest Risk and Who Stands to Benefit Will Help Us Avoid the Mistakes of the Past

Under the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations, neighborhood rezonings have disproportionately targeted low-income communities of color. This has resulted in destabilization and displacement of Black, Latinx and Asian New Yorkers, and missed opportunities to create affordable housing in white communities that don’t have much of it today. We believe we can do better, and that this legislation will help get us there.

The proposed report will paint a detailed picture of the community that stands to be impacted, and the racial disparities in housing security that are already present. Disaggregating information by race will help ensure that land use actions do not further burden groups that are already in crisis. Importantly, the legislation will require disclosure of critical factors that are not adequately considered, or not considered at all, within the City’s current environmental review processes, such as eviction filing rates and new construction permits – both important indicators of a community’s existing housing risks.

The proposed report also requires the City to determine which racial groups are most likely to benefit from new housing. This will help stakeholders more easily understand who the proposed residential projects – both market-rate, and affordable – are intended to benefit, and whether additional housing strategies are needed to serve those most in need. Having a clearer picture of the impact of new housing on different racial groups will enable the City to make decisions that advance racial equity. For example, in some cases, proposed new housing will create a foothold for low-income people of color in areas that are largely inaccessible to them today. In other instances, racial equity reports may show that new housing will facilitate the entrance of wealthier white residents into historically under-resourced communities of color – underscoring the importance of deploying additional strategies to ensure the stability of such communities or adapting the proposal to better align with the needs of the existing community and the City as a whole.

The thought of addressing race so explicitly within the decision-making process may feel uncomfortable to some – but avoiding difficult realities doesn’t make them go away. Today, New York is one of the most segregated and unequal cities in the country, the result of generations of policies that explicitly drove people of color to under-resourced communities and facilitated wealth-building for white families. Making land use decisions with a “colorblind” approach hasn’t gotten us any closer to ending this “tale of two cities.” Even so, when communities of color have objected to planned rezonings and voiced concerns that new development will not benefit them, they have too often been dismissed as unsophisticated or anti-development. At the same time, many white communities have been left out of the conversation altogether – not because the contributions they could make are unimportant, but because the option of building more affordable housing within wealthier white communities is too rarely put on the table, even when inclusionary housing could produce it at no cost to the City.

Examining the Impact on Employment Is Critical

The Coalition fully supports the proposal to require disclosure of the intended impacts of proposed commercial projects, in addition to residential ones. Many projects promise to bring new jobs into communities. However, for commercial projects to advance equity, they must create jobs that are accessible to current community members and New Yorkers with a variety of skills and experiences. Requiring the disclosure of projected industry sectors and occupations, coupled with a disaggregation by race of households working in those sectors, will enable decision makers to understand whether the types of jobs a commercial project envisions will offer meaningful opportunities to those who need them most.

To fully realize the legislation’s intended impact, the report should get more specific about residential and business displacement and highlight the extent to which planned housing meets the disproportionate housing needs of New Yorkers of color within and beyond the neighborhood.

The Coalition supports the proposed legislation, and we believe it represents a key opportunity to shift the way land use decisions are made. To fully realize its intended impact and vision for equity, we propose several additions as outlined below. Most of these additional areas of analysis can be performed using data the City already collects, and we strongly believe their inclusion will strengthen both the City’s ability to plan for equity, and – over time – the degree to which the City’s decisions are viewed as equitable by the communities that stand to be impacted by them.

• Require disaggregation by race of residents who are at risk of displacement. There are many flaws in the City’s current processes for projecting potential displacement, most of which are beyond the scope of the legislation at hand. But one thing racial disparity reports can, and must require is disaggregation by race of all residents at risk of displacement. The current legislation offers a clear picture of who will benefit from incoming residential development, and a parallel review of who is at risk of displacement is at the core of the spirit of this legislation and an important priority for the Racial Impact Study Coalition and the communities its members represent.
• Differentiate between housing that is guaranteed – not merely promised – to be permanently affordable. The City has a variety of tools at its disposal to create affordable housing, but some of these tools are stronger than others. Major land use actions introduce changes that unfold over the course of generations, and promises for subsidized housing that require private partners may or may not ever come to fruition. The report should describe future housing that will be constructed with tools that guarantee permanent affordability, such as cooperative housing, community land trusts, public housing, and zoning text requirements . This will also help to address the concerns of residents of historically under-resourced communities of color who are promised long-overdue investment if they accept new development, by creating assurances that they will be around to enjoy the benefits that come.
• Require disaggregation by race of workers and industry sectors at risk of displacement. Looking at potential future jobs and sectors, as the existing legislation proposes to do, is important – but it’s not enough. In many communities, people of color have spent years working and developing specialized expertise in sectors that may be threatened by new development, and it is unrealistic to imagine that if their jobs disappear, they will be able to instantly pivot, en masse, to new fields. Racial disparity reports need to evaluate whether sectors that support workers of color are at risk. Such potential impacts must be considered not only when commercial projects are proposed, but also when rezonings seek to permit residential development on land previously limited to commercial and manufacturing uses. It must look at residential and commercial impacts on both current workforce and projected jobs by industry, including factors such as wages and benefits.
• Require disaggregation by race of independently-owned businesses at risk of displacement. Communities of color often have their own local ecosystem of small businesses owned by local residents of color, which keeps local income circulating in the community rather than being extracted. Business ownership is also an important form of wealth and asset building. Racial disparity reports should assess whether the risk of business displacement will disproportionately affect minority-owned businesses, thereby worsening the already vast racial wealth gap.
• Evaluate whether proposed housing meets the disproportionate housing needs of people of color, wherever they live in the City today. Generations of structural racism have created a landscape in which people of color experience, by every measure, disproportionate housing needs. The report should disclose not only whether proposed housing is available to people of color on an equal basis, but – just as important – the extent to which it will address the most critical housing needs of communities of color in the City as a whole. Assessing the extent to which proposed projects meet the greatest needs will help to ensure that these needs are centered – and in some way addressed – within every residential project.
• If the report identifies “measures that may address … disparities” it should be required to include context on whether those measures are likely to be adequate. Recent rezoning plans or environmental reviews have cited programs such as right to counsel or workforce development without citing evidence that these programs are effective or have the resources to meet the level of disparities that may occur. If racial impact reports are expected to identify such programs, they should also include evidence of program effectiveness and whether the programs are adequately funded to fully address all projected disparities of the proposed land use action without simply moving program resources from other communities where they are also needed.

The racial disparity report will surface the potential racial impacts of planned actions – for better and worse. Either way, this knowledge is powerful. If the pandemic has shown us anything, it is the consequence of breeding segregation and inequality, and doing too little to change it. We can begin to shift the landscape now, and the proposed legislation is a critical step. We, the undersigned members of the Racial Impact Study coalition, thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony and look forward to working together to produce a bill that will set us on a path towards equity in New York City Land use decision making.

Sincerely,

The Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD)
Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association
Communities Resist (CoRe)
Community Action for Safe Apartments (CASA)
Hester Street
Inwood Legal Action
Laborer’s Local 79
Met Council on Housing
Pratt Center for Community Development
Staten Island Urban Center
We Stay/Nos Quedamos, Inc.
The Municipal Art Society of New York

Testimony of Coalition Members

“Comments on New York City’s Proposed Racial Disparity Report,” Regional Plan Association (January 13, 2021)

“Land Review Process Must Include Race and Social Vulnerability,” The Municipal Art Society of New York (January 11, 2021)