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Opinion

An Opportunity for Progress in Combating the City’s Housing Crisis


A rendering of The Lirio


The ongoing affordable housing crisis in New York City requires bold solutions. We must house more people, especially in vulnerable populations. In Hell’s Kitchen we have an opportunity to do just that with The Lirio, a newly proposed 112-unit affordable housing development, which will include affordable homes for long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS.

New York City has been in an immense housing crisis for decades. Although our population and job demand have grown, we haven’t built enough housing to keep up. Now we have a substantial deficit of affordable housing, and especially deeply affordable housing. The pandemic exacerbated the need for housing as labor and supply chain constraints have further slowed construction. Many families have been forced to leave their homes due to high rents, and scores more may be set to follow them when eviction protections expire.

This is especially true of more vulnerable populations, such as people living with HIV/AIDS, whose own position in their homes might already be tenuous. To fully recover, the city must build quality affordable housing to provide homes for families of all types who need them. That responsibility extends to all neighborhoods, especially wealthier enclaves in Manhattan like Hell’s Kitchen.

According to the latest data from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Chelsea-Clinton has the highest rate of reported persons living with HIV as a percent of its population of any neighborhood in New York City. It is also the neighborhood with the second-highest rate of HIV diagnoses in the city. As available services and medical care for this population have grown and improved, those afflicted are living longer, better lives, and need more services, including housing. It is our shared responsibility as a city to provide survivors of HIV/AIDS with affordable homes so that they can live full lives.

The Lirio will help combat the city’s housing crisis and serve as a model for the rest of the city. It is a newly-proposed mixed development by the city’s leading real estate development company Hudson Inc., and Housing Works. Located at the corner of 54th Street and 9th Avenue, the 112-unit Hell’s Kitchen project would include 59 units of supportive housing targeted at long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS, along with affordable housing, office space for the MTA, and neighborhood retail.

Housing Works, a well-respected social services organization founded by members of ACT UP focused on fighting AIDS and homelessness, will provide on-site services and access to HIV-specific primary and behavioral healthcare at a new Housing Works medical facility on West 48th Street. With the help of Housing Works, The Lirio is the right solution to bolster Hell’s Kitchen and protect affordability while providing the critical tools needed to fight HIV transmission and protect people living with HIV.

We must act quickly – each month that we delay this new housing is another month during which it doesn’t house the populations it can support.

We have the opportunity to make progress on the goal so many of us have been advocating over the years: to provide affordable housing for our most vulnerable populations in a neighborhood where rising rent makes it harder to live there every year. To make change in this community, we must do everything in our power to support The Lirio development and the people it will benefit.

People living with HIV are instrumental to the fabric of our community, and have made these communities what they are today. We let down people living with HIV in the ’80s, we must not repeat our mistake.

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Moses Nakamura is a member of Open New York and a resident of Chelsea. On Twitter @OpenNYForAll.

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To Protect New York from the Climate Crisis, We Must Transform Our Streets


Eastern Parkway (photo: NYC Parks)


It’s another record-breaking hot summer in New York, and we can all agree that the climate crisis is already here. Sweltering days, terrifying flash floods, and increasingly poor air quality are putting all New Yorkers at risk, especially those living in historically underinvested communities. With no more time to waste, we can — and must — make major moves in the climate fight with our city’s streets. 

Imagine what it would feel like to walk down a street in your neighborhood that’s climate resilient: shade from abundant trees protects you from the hot sun; colorful rain gardens attract bees and birds while also collecting stormwater; neighbors sit peacefully at a misting station in a plaza at the end of the block; water features connected to fire hydrants create a safe and cool game for kids nearby; and raised medians with lush plantings protect bikers from limited car traffic thanks to carefully designed streets.

This city is possible. So, how do we get there? 

With over a quarter of New York City’s land area covered by streets, these dark, impervious surfaces can be the ticket to reducing emissions and creating new public spaces that fight climate change. Furthermore, climate investments on our streets are known to boost local economies and drive the recovery the city has set out for itself. With our streets completely government-controlled, we can act immediately to protect every neighborhood from the climate crisis. 

If the administration of Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council want to leave a legacy in the climate action fight, they need to invest big in a swift overhaul of our streets. Here’s how we can accelerate the process: 

1. Cut emissions to combat the public health emergency.
To reduce the number of cars and trucks on our streets, we should pilot low-emissions zones in every borough. We can look to cities around the world — like Medellin, London, Paris, and Madrid — that have restricted carbon-emitting vehicles at certain times of the day. In New York, let’s enact these in neighborhoods suffering from the worst air quality conditions and highest heat vulnerability, especially in the outer boroughs, and treat climate change like the public health emergency it is. 

2. Set bold, citywide climate goals for every street project and stick to them.
The city should mandate that all new street projects are approached to counter the climate crisis. Every new street project in your neighborhood can be integrating resilient materials like cool and permeable pavements during routine streetscape upgrades, creating
green roofs on bus shelters and other structures, and expanding street trees through a next Million Trees program.

An interagency Street Climate Action Task Force could set the vision for an evaluation framework to review every project within the public Right of Way to ensure it supports and prioritizes adaptation and decarbonization goals. There’s no reason every new Vision Zero project can’t also serve as a way to fight climate change.

3. Empower New Yorkers to support the climate fight from the grassroots.
To shape equitable and community-led transformation, the city should replicate and expand the DOT’s Street Ambassador program to account for barriers to participation like language or childcare. The city can honor community knowledge by providing neighborhoods with the technical expertise to design and steward public spaces that combat the climate crisis. Let's learn from successful community-led projects like the Clean Air Green Corridor on 182nd Street. Provide pathways to envision what’s possible, and not just opportunities to strike down new plans.

4. Invest, invest, invest.
Lastly, ideas without funding support won’t get us very far. New York City government can learn from cities like Montreal that are climate-testing their budget so that every tax dollar spent is contributing to the fight against climate change.

We should reprioritize the city budget and explore dedicated funding strategies through congestion pricing, toll roads, city-run parking garages, paid parking, and curb space fees to deeply invest in more accessible, climate-resilient, and livable public spaces. We can get creative by mobilizing federal investment, like the Healthy Streets program from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or accessing Community Development Block Grants to fund climate projects on our streets. 

A decade ago, we decided we could redesign our streets to protect us from cars. Let's use this decade to protect New Yorkers from climate change too. 

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Guillermo Gomez is program director and Martha Snow is associate program director at the Urban Design Forum, a nonprofit organization dedicated to mobilizing civic leaders to confront the defining issues in the built environment. They led the Streets Ahead initiative, a platform to imagine more vibrant, equitable streetscapes in New York City. On Twitter @UDFNYC.

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Our Obligation to Our Neighbors in NYCHA


NYCHA recovery and resiliency (photo: NYCHA)


Growing up in Section 8 housing on the Lower East Side in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I saw how large an impact the city’s infrastructure investments could have. From the restoration of Hamilton Fish pool across the street from my apartment that gave us a place to cool off in the summer, to the major renovation of the Williamsburg Bridge that made it easier for us to visit our relatives in Brooklyn, to the much-needed renovations at Bellevue Hospital that improved the quality of healthcare for our neighborhood.

Given the limited resources of our diverse, vibrant community, infrastructure improvements like these went a long way towards making New York a more livable city for us. Unfortunately, all too often, the city has a history of neglecting the infrastructure that serves low-income communities, and this disinvestment feeds vicious cycles of poverty and struggle. 

Now, in the face of a changing climate, there is consensus that the city’s infrastructure must adapt quickly, and it is critical that we do this without leaving the most vulnerable behind. As we enter the midpoint of hurricane season this month, and remember the devastation and destruction from Superstorm Sandy ten years ago this October, it is time that we make a real plan to double down on the resiliency efforts and infrastructure improvements of the last decade and make investments in the future, not just in our buildings but also in the people who live here. 

In New York’s 10th Congressional District, which I am running to represent, there are more than 18,000 families living in public housing, 96% of which is located in an Evacuation Flood Zone. These properties are home to tens of thousands of New Yorkers, all of whom are on the front line of the next major weather event and climate change more broadly. They will be the first to feel the destructive impacts of the next major storm whenever it arrives. The time is now for leadership at all levels of government to prioritize investing in at-risk NYCHA properties and their broader communities.

We must empower the New Yorkers who live in these low-lying areas and provide support to the strong community networks they’ve formed. We should be training individuals with the skills they need to create resilient neighborhoods and to ensure safety and security for themselves and their loved ones and neighbors in the event of a disaster. This means establishing and funding workforce training programs today that provide urgently needed skills such as retrofitting buildings and making other energy efficient improvements throughout neighborhoods.

We should put our young residents on a path of development to learn about the green building and construction jobs of tomorrow. By dedicating dollars to this pipeline now, we will begin to lay the foundation that future generations can build upon moving forward. We also need to invest in the backbone of our city, including our faith leaders, our teachers, our small business owners, and so many others who are grounded in our neighborhoods and are protectors of these communities. By supporting these local leaders and their institutions, we are ensuring safety for even our most vulnerable New Yorkers. 

In addition to the individuals who will collectively grow together to make our neighborhoods stronger and more resilient, it's imperative that leadership at all levels of government join together to put real money into infrastructure investment. Last November, President Biden signed the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which includes significant funding to make our infrastructure resilient against the impacts of climate change. I applaud these efforts, but our leadership in Congress must ensure some of this funding goes to protecting our NYCHA residents on the front lines of the climate threat.

If coupled with meaningful action by New York City to center resilience in NYCHA’s capital improvements program, our efforts can do right by these communities that have historically been so wronged.

We must unlock NYCHA funding that was promised in the Build Back Better agenda, but Congress has not delivered. This funding is desperately needed for climate resilience as well as the $40 billion capital backlog for a wide variety of repairs in NYCHA, including water, heating, power, elevators, and more related to health, safety, and quality of life.

Critically, no New York City congressional representative currently sits on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, where so many of these decisions are made. If elected, I will ask to sit on that committee to give NYCHA residents a voice in that process.

I understand that a true resiliency plan anchored around public housing in New York City will cost billions and take years to build, but the investment is unequivocally necessary. As climate change progresses, extreme weather events like Sandy and Ida will become more frequent and more dangerous to our communities, especially those on the front lines like NYCHA. Our future depends on our investments right now, and our leadership at the federal, state, and city levels must prioritize these efforts and work together to ensure a strong and stable future for this city. 

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Carlina Rivera is a City Council member and Democratic candidate for Congress in the 10th district. On Twitter @CarlinaRivera.

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