Asian Advocates, Elected Officials Call on Redistricting Commission to Redo City Council Map
A portion of the Unity Map proposal for new City Council districts
Last month, the New York City Districting Commission released a preliminary map of new City Council district lines, redrawing boundaries across the city based on population changes enumerated in the 2020 Census. Uproar quickly ensued over several of the major changes in the draft maps for the 51 City Council districts across the five boroughs.
In Brooklyn, the commission proposed a new Asian American majority district that could award political power to a growing constituency — what the commission itself deemed an “Asian opportunity district” for the fastest-growing ethnic group in the city.
But some Asian American advocates say that the proposal will continue to divide their communities and rob them of equitable representation in the Council. And they are proposing a different map of Brooklyn districts and preparing to push the districting commission to change its boundaries at upcoming hearings to be held before the commission puts the next iteration of the maps to the current City Council.
New York City’s Asian population grew by 345,383, or 33.6%, over ten years, the fastest of any major racial or ethnic group in the city, according to 2020 Census data. That accounts for more than half of the total increase in the city population, which grew by 629,057 people, or 7.7%. Asians now make up 15.6% of the city’s total population of more than 8.8 million.
In Brooklyn, Asians account for 13.6% of the borough’s population, up 110,647 residents, or a 42.5% increase from 2010. The borough neighborhoods with the highest Asian populations include, in order, Bensonhurst, Sunset Park, and Gravesend.
The Districting Commission, in its proposed maps, created new lines in South Brooklyn that have drawn consternation from some Asian and Latino advocates, immigrant advocacy groups, and the local Council Members, Justin Brannan of District 43 and Alexa Aviles of District 38.
Under the new lines, the two districts would be combined in parts to create a new District 43 with an Asian American majority, while splitting the Hispanic population of Sunset Park and Red Hook that is currently concentrated in District 38. The configuration could possibly also set the two lawmakers on a path to conflict in the upcoming 2023 elections that will use the new maps and see every Council seat on the ballot. The proposed new District 38 would include Brannan’s political base of Bay Ridge and Aviles’ political base in Sunset Park.
“It is perplexing that the creation of an AAPI-majority seat in southern Brooklyn would lead to the dissolution and division of Red Hook, Sunset Park – in addition to Dyker Heights – and it is certainly not necessary,” Brannan and Aviles said in a joint statement when the preliminary map was released, noting that the “historically Latino” District 38 would be torn apart.
“Pitting one community of interest against another and wiping out hard-fought gains that have existed for a generation is not the path forward,” they added.
Asian American advocates, on the other hand, are organizing around different proposals that could even yield two new districts with Asian American pluralities.
The population trends in South Brooklyn show that the Asian population has already grown significantly within the current confines of District 38, where Asians make up about 41% of the population, and some have argued that it should be kept intact. But they are also arguing for a unified district that encompasses Bensonhurst’s large Asian population, which is currently split across four City Council districts and would still be divided among three districts under the preliminary proposal from the districting commission.
The Districting Commission is currently soliciting public input on the map it has proposed, and will hold a series of public hearings, one in each borough, over the next few weeks. Members of the public can even present their own maps to the commission as alternative proposals to consider. The Brooklyn hearing is scheduled to take place at Medgar Evers College on August 21 from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.
“We have to show them how we can achieve these goals without blowing up all of Southern Brooklyn,” said Council Member Brannan, in a phone interview. “I think we are all on the same page.”
Indeed, Brannan’s and Aviles’ interests in holding their communities together align with many Asian American advocates who say that District 38’s growing Asian American population effectively already makes it an Asian opportunity district. “You want to empower emerging immigrant communities but you don't do that by tearing down one of the main historic Latino districts in Brooklyn,” Brannan said. His current district covers Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst and Bath Beach, half of which would end up in the new proposed District 38 while the rest would largely be in the new District 47.
Though there isn’t yet a consensus on what an alternate map should look like, groups like New York Immigration Coalition are helping educate their members on the proposal and using mapping tools to submit their own ideas to the commission. “I think making a majority Asian district in South Brooklyn is definitely what advocates have been calling for and it's really, really needed,” said Asher Ross, who is leading the Immigration Coalition’s redistricting work.
“The biggest problem with the South Brooklyn lines, in our opinion, is that they would break off Red Hook from Sunset Park and take a district that was actually plurality Asian with a very large Latino share of population and make it a strong white plurality district,” Ross said of the proposed new District 38.
One alternative that has been proposed is the Unity Map, by a coalition composed of Asian American Legal Defense Fund, The Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College, and LatinoJustice PRLDEF. Under that proposal, Districts 38 and 43 would remain largely unchanged while Bensonhurst would be largely contained within the new District 47 along with Gravesend – creating a district with a 34.3% Asian American population – rather than being split between the current Council Districts 38, 43, 44 and 47.
The Unity Map also seeks to unite communities of interest in other parts of the city. It brings together Chinatown and most of the Lower East Side into a new proposed District 1, removing Tribeca and Battery Park City, and also unites the Asian American population of Richmond Hill and South Ozone Park in Queens into a new District 32. Like Bensonhurst, those neighborhoods are also divided among four Council districts currently. The Unity Map also proposes 11 Latino majority districts, rather than the current 10, and 11 districts largely made up of Black communities of interest.
“This is an iterative process and we continue to hear public testimony on the preliminary plan,” said Eddie Borges, a spokesperson for the Districting Commission, in a brief phone interview. “We encourage people, if they’re unhappy, to either come to one of the hearings next week or come by Zoom or send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Up to date, we’ve received more than 1,000 testimonials and we wouldn’t be surprised if we had another 1,000 people next week.”
Some have argued that while the current District 38 has recently been represented by Latino officials, including Aviles and her predecessors Carlos Menchaca and Sara Gonzalez, it is already an opportunity district for Asian representation and could easily trend that way for a future election without any changes to its boundaries.
Many of the issues around the preliminary map stem from the commission’s decision to keep the three Staten Island City Council districts contained on the island despite changes in population, affording little wiggle room to redraw lines in the other boroughs. The other choice facing the commission would likely have been to combine a portion of Staten Island with some of Southern Brooklyn, which is already the case in legislative districts at other levels of government.
That not only impacted the drawing of these Brooklyn districts, but also in part led to a new district that includes parts of Queens combined with a portion of the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island, which has been another major source of pushback from current elected officials, advocates, and residents of those areas.
“Asian Americans made significant gains in representation in New York City government with the election of a record five Asian American members elected to City Council last year,” said Jerry Vattamala, Democracy Program Director at the AALDEF, in a statement accompanying the release of the proposal. “Yet, as the fastest growing racial group in the city, this is still an underrepresentation indicative of the historic and continued marginalization of Asians and other communities of color. The Unity Map is fair and necessary to ensuring our communities’ voices are being heard and that the long-neglected issues we care about are actually addressed.”
Steven Romalewski, director of the Mapping Service at CUNY’s Center for Urban Research, said the Unity Map and other proposals from local residents – highlighted on CUNY’s Redistricting & You website – have more flexibility than the commission’s map. “That doesn’t necessarily mean those proposals are better or worse,” he said in an email. “But it’s somewhat easier to move the lines around to achieve the goal of population equality while also meeting the other districting requirements.”
“I think it’s great that we can see these different plans on the map, because it makes it very clear that there isn’t just one way to draw the districts. And it also makes it clear that drawing a district a certain way has implications for all the districts around it, and across the city,” he added.
Local advocates are likely to advance similar proposals but there are several complicated factors to consider, said Elizabeth OuYang, coordinator of the Redistricting Task Force for Asian Pacific Americans Voting and Organizing to Increase Civic Engagement (APA VOICE), a coalition of 21 organizations not affiliated with the Unity Map proposal.
“There is the issue of Asian American communities of interest in Sunset Park and Bensonhurst. There is the issue of keeping neighborhoods together and there is the issue of respecting other marginalized groups,” OuYang said in a phone interview. “All those three are interrelated and so it's complicated and we are looking at it very carefully.
“Both the history of diluting Asian Americans into four districts in Bensonhurst and our 43% increase in APAs in Brooklyn do dictate reform,” she added.
“It has always been a challenge for us that Bensonhurst is divided into four City Council districts,” said Don Lee, chair of Bensonhurst-based Homecrest Community Services, a member of the APA VOICE coalition.
Though Lee had no complaints about the Council members from those districts, and said that they work well with the communities, he did say that it is “if nothing else, taxing.” “How can you really ever be a voice when you're only a portion of each of the districts?”
The separation of the community is also confusing for voters who live in the same neighborhood but could have different Council members from one street to the next, he noted.
“We are a very powerful voting bloc,” said Jo-Ann Yoo, executive director of the Asian American Federation, noting that Asian Americans make up more than 10% of the population in 28 out of 51 City Council districts. “Our elected officials, no matter who they are…it’s to their peril if they ignore us.”
At least one Asian American group supports the new maps. The Asian Wave Alliance, a political club that isn’t part of APA VOICE, applauded the districting commission for creating the new Asian opportunity district. “For decades, Asian residents in Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Dyker Heights, and Bensonhurst have been splintered across four city council districts, diluting our representation and subverting our priorities and concerns,” said AWA President Yiatin Chu, in a press release. “This draft map will unite and connect the Asian communities and allow their voice be heard at the City Council.”
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
‘Do in Congress What I Did in Albany’: Yuh-Line Niou Runs for Congress in the New NY-10
Yuh-Line Niou, center, with campaign volunteers (photo: @teamniouyork)
Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, who has represented the 65nd Assembly District in Lower Manhattan since 2017, is running for Congress in the new 10th Congressional District of New York.
Niou, a favorite of many in the progressive left, is part of a crowded race of roughly a dozen Democratic candidates hoping to win the new congressional seat, which spans a set of diverse neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. Rep. Jerry Nadler, who represents the current 10th district, is running in the new 12th district against Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Suraj Patel after his West Side turf was drawn into the 12th, leaving the new 10th district wide open.
“We have to make sure that we have somebody who's willing to fight for us, fight for us continuously, and make sure that we are standing up in this moment where our government is needing that voice more than ever,” Niou said during a recent appearance on the Max Politics podcast from Gotham Gazette.
“Right now, our country is in this moment of apathy, where a lot of times, these horrible things are happening to us and we feel like we can't do anything to change it,” Niou said. “As a young person who's just started working in public service when I was in college, I really realized that there are a lot of times when people make it seem like there's some big secret to accessing government, but it's really just that there are powerful people that are in government right now that don't want us to realize that we actually have the power to make the changes that we want to see.”
The new 10th Congressional District includes a set of diverse neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, including the East and West Villages, Soho and Noho, the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Battery Park City, the Financial District, parts of Downtown Brooklyn, Gowanus, Park Slope, Red Hook, Sunset Park, Borough Park and more.
The party primary elections for all congressional and State Senate districts will conclude on August 23, with early voting and absentee balloting preceding primary day.
During the interview, Niou was first asked about her reaction to former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to end his congressional bid, which was announced just before the taping of the mid-July podcast with Gotham Gazette editor Ben Max.
Niou lauded de Blasio’s two decades of public service and mentioned how it can be difficult to choose the direction of your career related to serving various constituencies.
Asked how de Blasio lost many of his relationships with progressive voters living in Brooklyn, who had helped elect him as a City Council member, public advocate, and mayor, Niou said she is unsure if there was a trigger that has led to this unpopularity, but emphasized the importance of listening to constituents — even if they have an opposing view — and the need to “meet them where they are.”
Niou said she is running for Congress this year, and giving up her Assembly seat in the process, because the country is in crisis. She pointed to mass shootings and the loss of reproductive rights via the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade precedent, among other issues that have spurred her run.
She argued she has represented her overlapping district “really well” over the last six years, and underscored wanting to continue to represent her neighbors and community.
Niou said she would represent all of the expansive district’s residents and be the type of elected official who is a good listener and accessible to hear their concerns. She stressed, though, that it is important to fight for the most vulnerable to uplift everyone in the community.
“I tend to look at making sure that things are accessible for all,” Niou said. “It’s so importance for us to be able to have the lens of looking through all legislation and all representation as, ‘Is this going to help with social justice, is this going to make it so that we have ecological and environmental justice, and is this going to make it so that we’re looking at things with disabilities centered in our conversation, is this making it so we are actually looking at economic justice?’ We have to ask those questions.”
If elected to Congress, Niou said she would look at social infrastructure and climate spending, including passing the Green New Deal, the Green New Deal for Public Housing, and the Green New Deal for Public Schools, and said she will fight for the working class to build an economy that works for the average New Yorker. She said she would direct her attention to combating climate issues facing Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, with both parts of the congressional district largely coastal, and empower small businesses while creating strong union jobs.
Niou added that she would advocate for the full funding of public housing, mentioning how she pushed in the State Legislature for state government to take more responsibility for public housing, and how she fought for and achieved hundreds of millions of dollars in additional state funding for NYCHA.
“It also means doing in Congress what I did in Albany, which is winning our community a larger share of government support for that true affordable housing to ensure people who live and work in our communities can keep their head above water,” Niou said.
While Niou is not the only progressive Democrat in the race (most if not all of the six leading candidates describe themselves as such), she has the most endorsements from New York’s left wing, including the Working Families Party and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, among others. Still, City Council Member Carlina Rivera and Rep. Mondaire Jones (NY-17) have also received a significant number of endorsements from progressive officials and groups, with Rivera leading the field in local backing, including from Rep. Nydia Velazquez and both Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.
Also in the race are Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, former federal prosecutor Dan Goldman, and former Rep. Liz Holtzman, who recently received the endorsement of the New York Daily News editorial board.
When asked if she would continue to be a left-wing progressive in Congress, Niou said there is a need for political courage. If Democrats are in the House minority following this year’s midterm elections, progressives can be a “roadblock to conservative overreach,” Niou argued, and “a voice of moral authority in the face of attacks on our rights or giveaways to the wealthy.”
If part of a House Democratic majority, Niou said she will continue to work to develop legislation to improve the lives of New Yorkers. She said bipartisanship can only be reached if Republicans are not attacking democracy or “violently harm their colleagues in a fascist coup.”
“We don't need to save seats,” Niou said. “What we need to do is save our people. I always think that it's really important that we vote for somebody who's willing to stand in front of our people and take the hits.”
Asked for her assessment of current Democratic leadership at the national level, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and President Joe Biden, Niou said she has “always spoken truth to power” against her own party leaders, including former Governor Andrew Cuomo, noting how she defied him and regularly pushed back against what she deemed the state’s “austerity budget.”
She said that she wants to always be held accountable to her constituents.
“I felt like we lost a lot of lives because instead of passing a budget that would be something that was going to make us healthy, happy, and whole again, we were cutting and slashing health care funds and social services and education dollars in the beginning of a worldwide global pandemic,” Niou said, with apparent reference to the state budget deal reached during the first phase of the pandemic in spring of 2020. “We should have been investing in our communities.”
Niou was then asked to address some of the criticism she faced, namely about being unwilling to compromise and often taking positions against projects, budgets, and legislation. Niou said she thinks she’s actually rarely a voice of opposition, but is such when it is essential. There are times where she has to say “no” when it is warranted, she said, providing the example of education cuts and underfunding healthcare. “I'm just really trying to shine a light on some of the places where people are not given the ability to shine the light on in the normal darkness and opaqueness of government,” she said.
On housing, an area where Niou has particularly faced some criticism for her opposition, Niou said that more housing is needed in the 10th Congressional District, and reiterated her belief that new units need to be deeply and permanently affordable. She also said that density is not a problem in Lower Manhattan, but many do not have a say over the housing developments being built in their neighborhoods.
The new congressional district includes the city’s two Chinatowns, one in Manhattan that Niou currently represents and the other in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Asked about possibly representing the two large Asian-American communities in the district, Niou said the district was purposely redrawn to include both Chinatowns and to have Asian-American representation.
Niou, the first Asian American to be elected to her Assembly seat, said if she does not win the congressional seat, it might be decades for another opportunity to elect an Asian-American representative from New York to Congress. The new district also has a sizable Latino population, but is dominated by white voters, particularly white liberals who reside across much of Lower Manhattan as well as most of the Brooklyn portion of the district and typically vote in especially high numbers.
Niou pointed to the country facing an increase in anti-Asian hate, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia over the last several years. She touted her work in the State Legislature in continuing the fight for Asian-American representation, including advocating for additional funding in the state budget for local groups to do community work.
Niou said she was able to secure $10 million for Asian-American organizations in the Liberty Defense Fund, which was doubled this year, and tripled funding toward yeshivas for protections against hate crimes (the district also includes a significant Orthodox Jewish population in Borough Park).
Asked about some Asian-American voters moving from voting for Democrats to Republicans, Niou said she is not surprised, especially given the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes.
“It's really important that people recognize that a lot of times when we're seeing this kind of hatred, this kind of fear throughout, the purpose of that kind of terrorism, that kind of hatred, is to make us afraid and to make us not show up for things, not run for things, just to hide,” Niou said. “That's why it's so much more important that we have visibility and that we have somebody who's running that looks like us, and helps us break some of the stereotypes and break some of the hatred and the perpetual foreigner syndrome that our country buys into.”
When asked about the gap between a portion of Asian-American communities and progressives, especially on issues like police funding and presence, Niou said it can be narrowed down to educating New Yorkers about the need to fund programs that can help with ending poverty and fostering community safety. Niou, who is a progressive proponent of divesting from policing to invest in other community programming, said safety should be focused on prevention, expanding mental health services, and giving residents a platform to share their concerns.
“I will say that I am not surprised by folks being disillusioned with the Democratic Party when it comes to our Asian American communities because I will say that during this pandemic and for many, many years before it, we have not had the representation to really be able to speak for our communities in a way that matters,” Niou said.
On her recent comments endorsing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that targets Israel, Niou emphasized that she is committed to the safety, security, and wellbeing of all Jewish people in her district, the United States, Israel, and anywhere in the world. She added that she has dedicated her personal and public lives to fighting for communities targeted by bigotry, white supremacy, and nationalism, which includes her Jewish neighbors.
She said she supports the BDS movement’s right to political speech, including boycotts and economic pressure, and commitment to human rights. “I know that boycotts are tried true, respected, and constitutionally protected, non-violent tactic for human rights and social justice movements, and I think that it's really important that we be able to continue to be able to utilize that tool,” Niou said.
When pressed by Max again to clarify whether she is a supporter of the BDS movement, Niou said that she believes tax dollars should never be used in violation of human rights, which is why she supports legislation that “would prevent federal funds from going to the persecution of Palestinians, or to the construction of settlements.” She mentioned Rachel Corrie, who she said was “my classmate, and she was my friend,” and her story of being bulldozed to her death while protesting for Palestinian rights.
“I'll just say it out loud that I will be a strong voice in Congress against occupation and in support of equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Israelis and Palestinians,” Niou said. “The only way we get there is through direct negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians themselves.”
During a brief lightning round of questions, Niou said it is time to shut down Rikers Island jails and called the jail complex “a human rights atrocity.” But she did not directly answer the question as to whether she believes the Rikers jails should be entered into a federal receivership.
When asked about Rep. Mondaire Jones’ recent move to Brooklyn to run in the 10th district, Niou said anyone can run, but she believes constituents would want a candidate who knows their issues and what they have experienced. “I think that when we have neighbors that we already know and already know the issues that they care about, it makes a big difference in how we represent them,” she said.
Asked what strategy she favors for bringing in revenue to repair dilapidated NYCHA public housing outside of tens of billions in federal funding, Niou also did not answer the question directly. Instead, she pointed to a bill proposed by Rep. Velazquez to fully fund public housing, as well as the Green New Deal for Public Housing and the Build Back Better agenda that included tens of billions for NYCHA but has not passed through the Senate after passing the House.
“The most important thing is that we find more and more mechanisms in order to be able to get those dollars to our state and to our public housing residents who are seeing that their homes are making them sick — no hot water, no heat, mold, lead, paint,” Niou said. “It's really, really devastating, every single time.”
[LISTEN to the full conversation: Max Politics Podcast: Yuh-Line Niou on Running for Congress in the New NY-10]
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Rachel Cohen, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette
Despite Tens of Billions Proposed, NYCHA Again Left Out of Major Federal Funding Packages
NYCHA left out in the cold again (photo: Governor's Office)
As the Democrat-led federal government moves toward passage of another massive spending package, billions of dollars in much-needed funding to repair crumbling public housing, particularly at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), has again been left out.
The U.S. Senate on Sunday passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a major spending bill that will invest hundreds of billions in climate action and clean energy, cut health care costs and raise taxes, reducing the overall federal deficit. But the bill excluded investments in public housing that were previously included in President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better proposal, which the Inflation Reduction Act is considered by some to be a slimmed-down version of.
The Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate on a party-line vote with every Democrat voting for and every Republican voting against it, and is expected to pass the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives this week as well. It is being hailed by many, especially climate activists, as a massive victory for the country and by many pundits as politically advantageous for Democrats ahead of this fall’s congressional elections and the 2024 presidential race. The package includes hundreds of billions of dollars in funding, all offset by other parts of the plan, largely going toward the transition from fossil fuels to greener, renewable energy.
The legislation came out of an agreement between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, with changes then insisted upon by Senator Krysten Sinema of Arizona. Manchin and Sinema were the main obstacles to getting more of the full Build Back Better agenda passed in the Senate, with concerns about overall spending, the national debt, and inflation.
Though the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better proposal passed the House of Representatives, it stalled in the Senate. If it had been successful, it would have been a boon for public housing entities like NYCHA, which have seen decades of federal disinvestment. It included as much as $170 billion for housing, including $65 billion for public housing across the nation.
In September of last year, Schumer made the case for a major federal investment in public housing. “There is a humanitarian crisis going on in public housing developments across New York City,” he wrote in an op-ed in City & State. “Due to decades of disinvestment, many of the New York City Housing Authority’s properties have fallen into such a state of disrepair that the only solution is through big, bold, and transformative action by the federal government.”
NYCHA has struggled for years due to a lack of funding and though its operational finances were brought into better standing by former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, it still has a capital backlog of roughly $40 billion in required maintenance and repairs. Much of the city’s public housing is crumbling around its roughly half a million residents across the five boroughs, with rampant issues related to basic structural damage both exterior and interior, leaky roofs, mold, broken doors and elevators, faulty heating systems, and more.
U.S. Rep. Nydia Velázquez, a Brooklyn Democrat, also acknowledged NYCHA’s needs during her vote for the Build Back Better Act in November.
“[F]ederal disinvestment in public housing has forced many residents of public housing across the country to live in accelerating substandard living conditions. In my home city of New York, residents suffer from consistent lack of hot water, insufficient heat during the winter months, rodent and insect infestations, broken elevators, and widespread and recurring lead and mold problems,” she said. “This legislation includes the largest single one-time investment ever made to HUD’s Public Housing Capital Fund will go a long way to clearing the backlog of repairs around the country.”
Velázquez introduced a bill early in 2021, the Public Housing Emergency Response Act, that would allocate $70 billion in public housing funding across the country for physical repairs and upgrades via that capital fund, including $32 billion for NYCHA. But, it has not moved, nor has it been incorporated into any package able to pass both houses of Congress.
While city and state officials have been making some moves toward bringing in billions in capital repair revenue and getting repairs done at some public housing developments, the need far outstrips what has been done thus far, and few see a real solution without the federal government stepping in with at least tens of billions of dollars in direct funding.
In this year’s $101 billion New York City budget, Mayor Eric Adams dedicated about $5 billion in additional funding to affordable housing over ten years, for a total $22 billion housing program that includes dedicated capital funding for NYCHA -- roughly $1 billion per year. Adams had previously pledged to invest as much as a total of $4 billion annually in affordable housing, including $1.5 billion for NYCHA, but did not follow through.
Adams has repeatedly called on the federal government for greater assistance for NYCHA. In May, speaking at a news conference in favor of state legislation to create the NYCHA Preservation Trust that was later passed to help the authority raise more money for capital repairs, Adams said, “One thing that's clear, we need to stop playing with this. We're not getting money from the federal government this year. They're not. They already told us, ‘We are not concerned with NYCHA residents.’ They did not pass that $35 billion that we needed, so we must do it on our own. Here's a way to do it, the Trust. Let's get the Trust passed.”
An Adams spokesperson declined to comment for this article.
In June, the state Legislature passed that bill, creating the New York City Public Housing Preservation Trust that would then convert up to 25,000 NYCHA units, out of a total of 176,000, into federal Section 8 housing units eligible for federal housing vouchers worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Crucially, the trust will also be able to issue bonds to raise billions more for repairs and maintenance.
Elected officials and advocates expressed disappointment that Congress may yet again fail to provide desperately needed funds that could help the more than 535,000 New Yorkers, mostly low-income people of color, who call NYCHA home.
City Council Member Alexa Avilés, who chairs the Committee on Public Housing, praised Congress for addressing climate change in the IRA, but criticized the failure to fund housing. "Reconciliation offered a golden opportunity to fight for housing investments and public housing...But the need isn’t going anywhere," she said. "As far as I’m concerned, the US Senate – Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema most of all – owe public housing residents the full $65 billion."
“It is beyond disappointing that Congress has left out public housing once again,” said Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference, in an email. “Even with the passage of the Preservation Trust, NYCHA can utilize federal resources to make immediate repairs that will improve living conditions for residents and make buildings greener.”
“There was little expectation that funding for NYCHA would be included in the Inflation Reduction Act,” said Jeffrey Maclin, a spokesperson for Community Service Society of New York, a nonprofit group. “However, if there was a silver lining to the failure of Build Back Better – which proposed investing billions to restore NYCHA’s infrastructure – it was recognition that we cannot solely rely on Washington to rescue NYCHA. That helped spur state creation of The NYCHA Preservation Trust, which represents a comprehensive strategy for preservation of our public housing in New York.”
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Note - this article has been updated.
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