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Embracing Growth, Preserving Neighborhoods


Related Articles:
Overdevelopment by Julia Vitullo-Martin

On our Community Gazettes, a look at three specific struggles:
Staten Island: Confronting Rapid Growth
Bay Ridge: Fighting the Fedders Houses
Throgs Neck: Protecting a Waterfront Community

New York City is undergoing a building boom, with more than 21,000 housing construction permits issued last year, the highest since 1973. As a result, some neighborhoods are being overwhelmed by development. Many quiet, tree-lined communities are struggling with traffic, a lack of parking, and housing that is vastly out-of-character for areas that are used to single-family homes and big lawns.

New Yorkers in neighborhoods fiercely protect their communities, and with good reason. The problems of congestion affect New York City's long-term prospects for business and job growth.

However, halting development altogether is not the answer. Our need to house a growing population is too great.

Instead, we at the Bloomberg administration are working with local elected officials, community representatives and builders to address real problems in these communities, while still allowing housing development of an appropriate density, type and scale.

OVERDEVELOPMENT AND SOLUTIONS

Many neighborhoods are beyond the reach of subway and bus lines, and so many households often have two or more cars.

Some new developments in these neighborhoods do not have enough off-street parking. A moderate-sized lot that once would have been the site of three single-family homes, might these days be developed with as many as 12 dwellings generating up to 24 cars. Even with driveways, garages and curbside space, many blocks cannot accommodate so many additional automobiles.

These larger dwellings are possible because of zoning rules that go back four decades, which enable new housing to be larger than its neighbors. The very qualities that make these neighborhoods attractive and desirable are being compromised by new multi-family development.In parts of Staten Island, for example, homes once had big back yards; today they often are developed as multiple buildings with minimal front, side or rear yards.

Last fall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg?s Staten Island Growth Management Task Force developed ways to revamp the zoning regulations for the borough that, when implemented later this year, will result in better housing and a better neighborhood fit.

Under the plan, parking requirements would be increased from the current one space per dwelling to two spaces for a single-family house, and three spaces for a two-family home. This will require somewhat wider lots and reduce the number of units on many lots.

New rules for developments on private roads and interior lots would be similar to those for lots that face public streets throughout the city, ensuring that new construction would enhance, not detract, from neighboring homes. There will no longer be any new housing without front and rear yards, or with stoops descending directly into the street.

BALANCING HOUSING GROWTH

The Department of City Planning has an ambitious, two-pronged program that seeks to create new opportunities for housing throughout the city, and to put in place new zoning that responds to local needs and conditions.

In the Bronx, for example, mixed-use zoning has already been adopted to spur housing development in Morrisania, even as special preservation rules were enacted for historic City Island.

Last year, we enacted the first comprehensive revisions to Harlem's zoning in more than 40 years. New zoning for 100 blocks of the community will preserve the row house character of its side streets while greatly increasing housing density on the avenues, which are well served by mass transit.

In Brooklyn, Fourth Avenue in Park Slope will embrace new 12-story residential buildings, while new development on brownstone-lined historic blocks will need to match the existing building heights and footprints.

In Queens, zoning changes will ensure that new development reflects the low-density character of such neighborhoods as Forest Hills, Rego Park and Holliswood, whereas new opportunities for growth will now be directed to Northern Boulevard and North Corona's other broad thoroughfares.

And, in keeping with the mayor's ambitious strategy to create 65,000 new units of housing over five years, thousands of apartments will be built along Brooklyn's East River waterfront, the west side of Manhattan and other neighborhoods throughout the city that are well served by transportation.

Zoning for other areas will also benefit from a fresh look.

In the Bronx, city planning studies are underway in Riverdale and Morris Park. In Brooklyn, we will be updating the zoning for Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, and Bedford-Stuyvesant. And in Queens, we are studying Bellerose, Kew Gardens/Richmond Hill, Bayside, and East Flushing. Lessons learned on Staten Island and in the zoning study of Throgs Neck in the Bronx will be applied elsewhere, if appropriate.

We will insist on tree planting on sidewalks and landscaping that camouflages parking to enhance the look and lifestyle of these neighborhoods. We will distinguish between areas that are far from the city's mass transit system and others that are better served. Our lower density neighborhoods deserve the same level of attention as the brownstone blocks on the Upper East Side, which were rezoned to protect their special character in the mid-1980s.

If we are to continue to accommodate a growing population and protect our precious neighborhood assets, we must preserve the very qualities that make these neighborhoods special without stopping housing construction.

We must continue to pursue new housing opportunities in the right locations and at the right scale. By doing so, we can increase the supply of housing for everyone and preserve one of the special attributes of New York City, the diversity of housing and neighborhood choices. Here in New York, we can choose from center-city high rises; converted warehouses in mixed use areas; the "suburbs" of garden apartments and one- and two-family homes.

With creative and responsible planning, we can balance neighborhood preservation and the need to create housing for New Yorkers, and we will.

Richard Barth is executive director of the Department of City Planning.

 

 

Decline In Tenant Organizers


Some of the tenants in an apartment building on Haven Avenue in Washington Heights were outraged recently. Their building, with a marble lobby, spacious rooms and beautiful views of the Hudson, had been a grand address when it was built in 1920. But for a while now, the residents have been beset, as one tenant puts it, by an "accumulation of annoyances" -- a lack of hot water, a broken front door, infestation of rodents and vermin, a faulty intercom, a spotty elevator, and a landlord who has been unresponsive to their requests for repairs. So they were aghast when they got their new rent bill in the mail, and saw that it included an extra charge of $3.86 per room.

A few tenants began to meet informally to figure out what to do. It was the beginning of a tenant association on the 200 block of Haven Avenue in Washington Heights - one of countless thousands of such tenant associations throughout the city.

The Haven Avenue tenants have only begun what will likely be a long, difficult effort to challenge their landlord. In their first official meeting, only 12 out of the 160 apartments were represented. "We're not even a zygote yet," one tenant said. Their effort, like those of other tenants in the city, is made all the more difficult because of the steady decline in professional tenant organizers.

Tenant associations have been an important part of housing in New York City for more than a century. State and city laws specifically establish the right of tenants to organize, forbidding landlords from harassing or punishing tenants for exercising that right, and permitting tenants to meet in a public space of their building at reasonable hours.

But some tenant advocates are convinced that tenants are suffering because of a decline in organizers. There used to be hundreds. Two decades ago, most of the 200 community organizations that are members of the Association for Neighborhood Housing and Development listed in its directory "tenant organizing" as part of their work, according to the association's director of advocacy, Adrian DiLollo. That is no longer the case. Recently, the organization awarded grants to only 15 community groups specifically to finance tenant organizing.

Why did so many organizers leave the front lines of tenant issues? The main reason, advocates said, is lack of money to do organizing.

"There are fewer organizers because it's hard to raise funds for organizers - harder now than in the past, certainly," said Michael McKee, associate director of New York State Tenants and Neighbors.

State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat representing the East Side of Manhattan, said the de-funding of organizations that did tenant organizing was a strategic goal of conservative Republicans.

"I don't feel it is an accident," Krueger said. "I can definitely tell you that in the 20 years or so of my career, we saw a dramatic drop in the funds available to do advocacy work on behalf of low-income people. It shifted fairly heavily on the city level when Giuliani came in, and in Congress with (former House Speaker) Newt Gingrich and in the state with Governor Pataki." McKee agreed.

"There's no question about it," he said. "We went through this during the Reagan Administration. De-funding the Left, that's what the Republicans call it."

The work itself is not for the faint hearted, McKee said, and there are few career organizers.

"It's very hard work, very frustrating work and it's low paid," he said. "And people don't tend to stick with it unless they must. It's the kind of thing that people do for a few years and then they do something else with their lives.

"There are more defeats than victories as a rule," he continued. "It's the kind of thing that a lot of people just find too hard."

Some say the decline in organizers may even have diminished the effect of the tenant lobby in City Hall and in Albany. Irene Baldwin, executive director of the Association for Neighborhood Housing and Development, pointed to the fate of city-owned vacant buildings (known as the in rem housing stock) under former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's administration as an example.

"Under the Giuliani administration, all of a sudden the in rem housing, a lot of it was diverted from affordable housing programs - a diversion from a very effective housing plan," said Baldwin. "People challenged that, but that was an example where I think if communities had been stronger we could have had more of an impact."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's housing plan, which includes building or renovating 65,000 units of housing over five years, also reflects the decline of tenant organizers, she added: "There's not much of a role for community based groups because grassroots voices have not been as strong." Jenny Laurie, executive director of the Met Council on Housing, agreed: "I could talk for days about what tenant organizing in the past provided, in terms of building a tenant movement, educating tenants, and not just in their own building." Evan Hess, director of the community organizing department at the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation, said his staff tries to link tenant organizing with broader political goals. The organization is now campaigning to obtain more money in the city budget to pay for code inspectors, for city attorneys to litigate cases and for emergency repairs.

"We actively try to make a link between the two here," Hess said. Some community-wide efforts "grew out of tenant organizing."

The consequences of fewer organizers are more significant for tenants, everyone agreed.

"Fewer people are aware of their rights, the ability to get support for organizing in their buildings, and knowing alternatives to resolving problems," said Larry Wood of Goddard Riverside Community Center. He said that was particularly ominous for people who find themselves in Housing Court, where tenants frequently represent themselves.

"There're more people going on their own then ever before," Wood said. "We're further and further away from" getting tenants the right to legal representation than ever.

Laurie of the Met Council on Housing said that tenants are often now "at the mercy" of city agencies. "Their only recourse is to call 311 and complain, and basically wait in a long queue for help."

The fact that tenants were organized "forced judges to deal with tenants on a different level," she said. "I think it was easier 15 years ago to get a judge to pay attention to housing conditions and the affordability of housing. The tenants won more frequently - the right to get services restored - and they won abatements."

On Haven Avenue in Washington Heights tenants have received help from the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation, which directs one of the largest community organizing efforts in the city with a staff of six. It is hardly enough.

"We don't have the resources to meet the demand," Hess said.

"Any tenant group that can stay together will be successful," he said. "It's a question of persistence. If they can stick together and overcome the indifference that they find in courts and city agencies, and keep pushing, they can eventually get repairs."

Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a coalition of community housing organizations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eight Ways To A Better Future Now


With talk of new stadiums for the Jets and the Nets, new buildings for the site of the World Trade Center, and the possibility that the Olympics will come to the city in 2012, New Yorkers seem to be focusing lately on the future, and hoping for a glorious one.

This has happened before – in the World’s Fairs of 1939 and 1964, for example – and, just as with those ambitious projects, the advocates envisioning an Olympics 2012 in New York City promise investments in preparation for the games that will result in permanent improvements in the city’s waterfront and waterfront communities. But those who remember past promises of future glory know that many of the shining new pools and shimmering lakes have turned into decrepit pools and silted-in lakes.

In any case, we shouldn't have to stay in a holding pattern until July 2005 (when the 2012 Olympics host city will be announced) in order to make improvements. There is much to improve right now.

A. Embrace the Water:

1) In the city's rush to revitalize the waterfront, we are overlooking the most important physical asset: the water itself. We should make water usage and water dependency a priority for waterfront land use policy. In 2002, the city conducted their first ever inventory of publicly owned waterfront. Now we need to take the next step and identify those inlets, bays, creeks and reaches of rivers where in-water opportunities exist.

2) The city has nearly a dozen marinas, stretching from Throgs Neck to Jamaica Bay. Too many of these places are viewed as physical blights rather than community assets. The city parks department should conduct a review of all municipal marinas and explore new partnerships with community-based organizations, particularly the variety of young and upstart rowing and boating programs.

3) Many great waterfront cities have a dock master, someone who understands the physical characteristics of the water (and the submerged lands, pile fields, and ship wrecks underneath) and can advise other agencies, communities, and waterway users on how that area can be used and maintained. New York should consider this as well.

B. Face up to End-of-Pipe and Bottom-of-Pail Problems

4) The greatest threat to water quality is our waste. One type of waste is the oily, polluted runoff from streets, highway and roofs that comes with every Nor'easter or summer downpour. In such a heavily paved environment as New York, every serious rain event makes our beaches unswimmable and our fish and crabs inedible. Our current municipal strategy for dealing with storm water is to build giant containment tanks that can capture and hold the "storm surges," as they are called. This end-of-pipe "solution," however, is perpetuating the dangerous trend of creating a whole new infrastructure that future generations will have to pay to maintain. To look at it another way, our gas taxes are being used to build new transportation facilities, which create more runoff. Then our water rates are raised to help pay for the new infrastructure needed to capture this runoff. It's a vicious cycle that is also costing us billions.

Rather than have tax- and rate payers perpetuating the problem of endemic over-paving, the city should institute a "Zero Tolerance for Polluted Runoff." This comprehensive greening program would include new wetland buffers at the water's edge, a giant green grid of new street and sidewalk trees throughout the city, and green roofs on buildings.

5) With two of the city's largest central business districts located on the island of Manhattan, we need more marine transfer facilities in midtown and downtown.

C. Invest In Better Mobility

6) Air quality is threatened with the growth of marine transit for goods, for people, and for trash. On the water, so-called "marine engines" are not regulated by the EPA as are land-based engines. New York City, home of the most famous ferry service in the nation, should invest in clean fuel technology to help our fleet get to the forefront of marine transit. The Staten Island Ferry will be 100 years old next year. We should make a more substantive investment in its long-term success that lasts long after the inevitable blue and orange balloons have gone flat.

7) Truck traffic exacts a tremendous toll on the physical infrastructure of the city, from the cobblestone streets of Soho to the structural steel and deck plates of the river crossings. The movement of goods is critical to keeping New York a center of world trade and business.

The city should look at truck ferries as a way to reduce truck traffic and increase the reliability with which goods are delivered. New freight ferries from the Greenville Yards in Jersey City to Brooklyn Army Terminal on Atlantic Avenue could help reduce truck traffic along other congested routes such as the Verrazzano Bridge or Gowanus Expressway.

8) And last, with long-range planning back in vogue for the first time in over a decade, the city should put stock into other long-range planning efforts now ongoing. City University's Gotham Center is looking ahead to "NY2050," and a "Comprehensive Port Improvement Plan" is looking ahead as far as 2063.

Carter Craft, an urban planner, is director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance.



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