General Lee Avenue on Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn (photo: Gettty)
Every Soldier, Sailor, Marine, and Airman from New York City and Long Island conducts their enlistment at the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) on Fort Hamilton Army Base, located on the southeast coast of Brooklyn. Many recruits show up to Fort Hamilton unaware of the fact that the main drag on the base is named after confederate General Robert E. Lee.
As if it weren’t embarrassing enough that a street on Fort Hamilton was named after the General in Chief of confederate forces in the Civil War, the MEPS facility is located on the corner of General Lee and White Avenue.
The central problem is two-fold: not only are Confederate leaders overrepresented on military bases (since, ostensibly, there aren’t any confederates left), but people of color are underrepresented in the names of bases across the country. The military should not only be a place where service members are free from systemic racism, but also a place where the people honored on bases — including their avenues — should reflect the backgrounds of the service members themselves. The time for us to rename Brooklyn’s General Lee Avenue is now.
We can only speculate about the mindset of the people who decided to place New York’s gateway to the military on what is likely the most racist-sounding intersection in the five boroughs. What we are left with are the reactions of recruits of all races who pass through the intersection on a daily basis. I witnessed these reactions first hand as a recruiter in the U.S. Army from 2014 to 2018.
Idling cars with government licence plates fill the MEPS parking lot before sunrise on a typical day there. Recruits eventually line up to prepare for a day filled with paperwork and physical examinations to ensure that they are fit for duty. Occasionally, one of these queued volunteers will ask their recruiter about the street sign at the intersection closest to MEPS.
Most of the curious recruits — many of whom are Black — pause to contemplate the situation, followed by the common refrain of “that’s messed up.” Some will shake their heads with furrowed brows, completely at a loss for words as they stare at the posted name of General Lee.
Black veterans, who have more liberty to speak their minds once outside the ranks, have called Confederate memorials a “slap in the face” that “contribute to lower performance.”
I used to explain to my recruits that Lee had been stationed at Fort Hamilton during his days as a Captain in the Union Army. Lee served there in the 1840s as an engineer, long before his defection to the confederacy.
The recruits’ outward disgust would eventually dissipate as they turned their focus to the enlistment process. To this day, I wonder how many of these recruits internalized their frustration about Lee and White. Their reactions are completely valid, of course. The Army was choosing respect for white-supremacist rebels over respect for the dignity of service members of color, not to mention all those who fought for the Union in the Civil War and their loved ones.
The street names at that intersection are particularly insensitive to Black servicemembers, who are overrepresented within the military’s ranks compared to the general population. Black men are 60% more represented in the U.S. Military than their white counterparts, according to a report by the Brookings Institution. That same report shows that the 22-million-plus Black women in the United States are over three times as likely to serve in the Armed Forces as white women. And the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 24.3% of New York City residents are Black.
Confederate symbols garnered increased scrutiny in 2015 after a white supremacist murdered nine congregants of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. For a time, opponents of Confederate memorials had to contend with President Donald Trump, who actively defended such memorials in the name of “history and culture.”
While a plaque commemorating a tree planted by Robert E. Lee was removed from an off-post church near Fort Hamilton in 2017, General Lee Avenue kept its name. It turned out that changing the road’s name would literally require an act of Congress.
But Congress did eventually take action on this issue. Section 370 of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act established a “commission on the naming of items of the Department of Defense that commemorate the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America,” which is commonly referred to as the “Naming Commission.”
The bipartisan commission is tasked with working with local communities to “develop a plan to remove names, symbols, displays, monuments, or paraphernalia that commemorate the Confederate States of America.”
It is important to note that certain items exist outside of the purview of the commission. Suggestive names — such as White Avenue — fall outside of the commission’s mandate because the road is not named after an individual from the Confederacy. Still, as a street on a federal military base that is named after a Confederate rebel, General Lee Avenue is fair game.
The Naming Commission is currently working on renaming military bases, collaborating with neighboring communities to come up with replacement names for bases such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Rucker in Alabama. But the commission’s initial focus is on nine bases in the South, according to commission chair and retired Navy Admiral Michelle Howard.
Influential officials in New York, such as Mayor Bill de Blasio and Mayor-elect Eric Adams, must immediately reach out to Adm. Howard to ensure that Fort Hamilton is up for review when the commission expands its proceedings. A successful renaming campaign would be an easy win for any elected official who takes it on, or, as we say in the military, “free chicken.”
Finding a replacement name for General Lee Avenue should involve community input, much like the renaming proceedings that are occurring across the nation this year. The list of Medal of Honor recipients connected to New York provides plenty of potential candidates to replace Lee. Whatever name the commission settles on, it will undoubtedly give new recruits the honorable welcome to the U.S. military that they deserve.
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Stephen Bragale is a U.S. Army veteran and an undergraduate student at Fordham University, majoring in English and Political Science.
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Former Assemblymember Robert Rodriguez, middle (photo: @_rjayrodriguez)
How might Assemblymember Robert Rodriguez’s resignation lead to Puerto Ricans losing the seat for which they have fought so long? Let me explain.
Last week, as a who’s who of New York elected officials descended on the island of Puerto Rico, Governor Kathy Hochul was preparing her continued push to revamp state government, attempting along the way the diversification of the Empire State’s governmental representatives.
On Thursday, 1,600 miles away from New York and under the hot Caribbean sun in Borinquen, Hochul announced the appointment of Assemblymember Rodriguez of East Harlem to the position of Secretary of State. Rodriguez becomes the fifth consecutive Latino to be appointed to the position.
Rodriguez’s appointment will set off a royal rumble, with numerous individuals already declaring their intentions to succeed him in the Assembly. Rodriguez’s seat is one that has significant historical importance for Latino politics in New York.
It was in 1937 that the first Latino to win elected office in New York, the Puerto Rican Oscar Garcia Rivera, occupied this very seat in East Harlem. (East Harlem would come to be known as a place of firsts for Latino political representation. Tony Mendez would become the first Latino Democratic District Leader in 1957. And his daughter-in-law, Olga Mendez, would become the first Puerto Rican woman in the nation to win a seat in a state legislature.)
By the time Garcia Rivera was elected to the State Assembly, East Harlem had become the hub for new Puerto Rican migrants arriving in New York. To be sure, East Harlem was not the initial destination for the first major wave of Puerto Rican migrants. That distinction belonged to Brooklyn, with many Puerto Ricans arriving in Williamsburg and the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a result of the neighborhoods’ proximity to the New York City waterways. Puerto Ricans eventually made East Harlem their hub and in time it was first there that Latinos’ base of political operations and eventual electoral successes took place. The sheer number of Puerto Ricans that filled the streets of East Harlem led to its unofficial name change to “El Barrio,” as it continues to be known today.
Even before the election of Garcia Rivera, Puerto Ricans had become a sought-after voting bloc in East Harlem. Fiorello La Guardia, before his election to the mayoralty, represented East Harlem in Congress. His foresight and close observation of the demographic changes engulfing his neighborhood led La Guardia to foresee the powerful bloc Puerto Ricans would eventually become. His protégé and successor, Vito Marcantonio, also recognized the importance of the Puerto Rican presence and heavily courted their vote and support. Marcantonio became Boricuas’ darling for ensuring that proper constituent services (including hiring Puerto Rican, Spanish-speaking staff) be made available to the newcomers. He also championed Puerto Rican independence as East Harlem’s congressman.
By 1937, Puerto Ricans had become a powerful force in East Harlem, not only propelling Marcantonio to victory but electing one of their own—Garcia Rivera. The continued rise in the Puerto Rican population led other racial groups to fear they would lose political power. As a result of these other groups banding together, Garcia Rivera lost his position some years later.
Through the decades, gerrymandered districts largely prevented Puerto Ricans in East Harlem from winning significant elected offices. But then in 1962 (over twenty years after Garcia Rivera), the Puerto Rican Carlos Rios won the East Harlem Assembly seat, only to be outdone by reapportionment a few years later. It wasn’t until Angelo Del Toro won this seat in 1974 that Puerto Ricans cemented their hold on it and in East Harlem politics more broadly for decades to come.
Del Toro proved to be a canny and successful Assemblyman, holding on to his seat for 20 years until his untimely death in 1994. In that time, he was appointed chair of the social services committee and then the education committee in the State Assembly. Del Toro was perhaps the first Latino to be appointed to prestigious chairmanships in the state legislature.
Just two years before Del Toro’s death, the ambitious, young attorney Nelson Denis attempted to dethrone the powerful Del Toro machine in East Harlem. Denis, with a young 34-year-old Mike Nieves as the consultant guiding the campaign, took on Del Toro and almost beat the 20-year incumbent in the 1994 primary. Del Toro’s death a year later spurred a special election, and Denis having been bounced off the ballot opened the path for another young East Harlem leader to win the seat. Francisco Diaz, Jr., who at the time served on the local community board, served for one year, until Denis defeated him in the 1996 Democratic primary.
Adam Clayton Powell, after having served in the City Council for some years, took on the now incumbent Nelson Denis four years later and went on to defeat him handily. Powell served as the East Harlem Assemblyman for 10 years. When he decided not to run for re-election in 2010, the path was open for Robert Rodriguez to win the coveted East Harlem seat. Rodriguez, whose father served in the City Council for a number of years, went into the race with name recognition and a record of community service, serving as chair of the local community board before his electoral victory. He has kept his seat for a decade and will leave office with an impressive record of legislative accomplishments.
With Rodriguez’s tenure, Puerto Ricans have held on to this Assembly seat for almost 50 consecutive years. So I return to my opening question: Could Rodriguez’s upcoming resignation lead to Puerto Ricans losing the seat for which they have fought so long?
Similar to the drastic demographic changes in East Harlem that Puerto Ricans initiated in the 1920s, one that saw a shift from a largely Italian-dominated community to a Puerto Rican one, a significant demographic reality seems to be engulfing East Harlem today. Like other Latino neighborhoods in the city, East Harlem is suffering from years of gentrification, which has caused the unfortunate displacement of many Puerto Rican families. To be sure, gentrification is not the only factor leading to a decrease in the Puerto Rican population in East Harlem, but it is a significant one.
These demographic changes now seem to be having an electoral consequence. Among all registered voters in East Harlem, whites are now just 3,000 shy of reaching the same voting bloc size as African-American voters. There are currently 20,006 registered white voters in El Barrio, almost a 50% increase within the last 15 years. Latinos, mostly Puerto Ricans, come in at 34,232.
Perhaps more significant is the fact that white voters seem to be voting in greater numbers. For instance, the past June primary saw a whopping 1,000-vote increase from the previous primary in 2020 among white voters, with whites coming in just 300 votes shy of the total Latino vote in East Harlem. Truth be told, the apparent significance of this increase is as much a matter of low voter turnout among Latinos as it is the number of white voters in East Harlem. Nevertheless, the increase of white voters in East Harlem cannot be discounted when we consider the potential dynamics that may be at play in with Rodriguez out of the picture.
The Black vote in East Harlem has historically been a significant one. And Blacks continue to play an important part in East Harlem elections. The significant presence of Blacks in East Harlem has always had the potential of pitting one group against the other. Fortunately, Blacks and Latinos in East Harlem have, for the most part, managed to work together for decades, as can be seen by the alliances made through the leadership of officials like Charles Rangel, Keith Wright, Bill Perkins, and others. More recently, newer Black leaders in East Harlem, like local leader Nina Saxon, have intentionally built alliances between these communities.
Nevertheless, because of their sizable presence in East Harlem, Blacks can also play a role in Puerto Ricans losing this Assembly seat. Several African-Americans have already expressed interest in vying for the soon-to-be vacated seat.
Much is at stake for Puerto Ricans in East Harlem. Will more than a half century of Latino representational struggle soon come to a head in East Harlem? We shall know before long.
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Eli Valentin is an adjunct lecturer at Union Theological Seminary. He writes regular columns for Gotham Gazette, largely focused on Latino politics in New York City, and is a frequent guest political analyst at Univision NY. On Twitter @EliValentinNY.
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Eli Valentin is a political analyst and author of the forthcoming book, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Political Life. On Twitter @EliValentinNY.
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Voting on the line (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
Last Tuesday night was full of stunners — a nailbiter in New Jersey, a rout in Virginia, a sweep on Long Island — but no electoral result shocked me more than New York’s failure to pass ballot proposals 3 and 4.
New York voters had an opportunity to broaden voting access by striking some of the most suppressive clauses in the state constitution. The measures would have eliminated the constitution’s bans on registering to vote within ten days of an election and on voting absentee for any reason (rather than restricting absentee ballots to those who are traveling or have a medical condition that prevents them from appearing at the polls).
More simply, proposal 3 would have permitted passage of same-day voter registration, so that New Yorkers who become interested in an election close to its date can still participate; and proposal 4 would have allowed any New York voter to cast a mail ballot just because they prefer the convenience of voting from home — on their own schedule — over going in person to a polling place.
Same-day registration and no-excuse absentee voting are among the country’s most common-sense and common voting protocols: 34 states allow anyone to vote by mail and 20 offer same-day registration. Yet when the results came in, New Yorkers had rejected these measures by double-digit margins.
The excelsior state’s failure to keep up on ballot access and competent election administration should no longer be surprising. Still, as a voter protection professional and democracy advocate, I remain shocked by our misguidedness.
Wednesday morning quarterbacks have rightfully criticized Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs for deciding that the right dollar amount to invest in these measures, passed by two consecutive classes of the Legislature, was zero. Jacobs explained that the lack of a party-funded ad campaign in support was due to lawmakers not asking for it — an unacceptable answer for a lack of proactive investment in electorate expansion.
However, fault lies far beyond the top leadership of the state party. Beyond making tepid statements in favor, lawmakers also failed to stump for this rare opportunity to reshape the state constitution in a more pro-voter direction. Democratic politicians who were happy to vocally choose sides in the Buffalo mayor’s race stayed relatively mum on the ballot measures.
The mistakes started earlier: Democrats in Albany bundled improvements to registration and absentee voting rules with proposal 1, a polarizing step to reform redistricting conjoined with several other changes. That measure would have shifted the Legislature’s threshold for passing its own maps from a supermajority to a simple majority — helping the in-party control the process.
This threat activated Republicans and Conservatives wholeheartedly against the package, with state GOP Chair Nick Langworthy leading a “Just Say No” campaign that included stops around the state and Conservatives making an investment of $3 million to oppose the measures. No on 1, 3, and 4 signs sprang up statewide, complemented by a barrage of incendiary ads.
In addition to galvanizing the opposition, this bundling muddied the clarity of support for the clearly pro-voter proposals 3 and 4. Advocacy groups like the League of Women Voters and Common Cause took opposing stances on proposal 1; their consensus on 3 and 4 was overshadowed by the fully united interests supporting the status quo.
This faceplanting is par for the course for democracy in New York. In June, the New York Board of Elections mismanaged the ranked-choice voting process; worse, progressive leaders who should have been standing up for its benefits of increased participation and representativeness instead cast doubt on it.
Last year, upstate administrators badly bungled vote-counting in the razor-thin Congressional rematch between Claudia Tenney and Anthony Brindisi for the 22nd House district, while the city botched distribution of absentee ballots.
By now it’s redundant to point out that New York’s Board of Elections system is patronage-addled and inefficient. Worse, though, is the lack of legislative energy behind reform — and the absence of clarion argumentation in favor of improvement from party leaders far beyond Jay Jacobs.
There are some bright spots. State Senator Zellnor Myrie has spearheaded a set of hearings about how to improve the state’s election administration and Senator Liz Krueger is carrying a bill to professionalize the Board of Elections. Since the ouster of the “IDC” in 2018, a unified Democratic state legislature — riding a wave of insurgent energy — began playing catch-up on voting laws, introducing early voting, provisions for voters to cure minor errors on their absentee ballots, and automatic voting registration (coming in 2023). But these minor steps forward and green shoots of reform only throw into relief how much more New York could accomplish with more pro-voter energy in the upper echelons of state power.
It’s time for a real democracy movement in New York. The Governor, leaders in the Senate and Assembly, the Democratic Party statewide — yes, ideally under a new chair — and advocacy groups must pull together and strategize about how to finally make our elections live up to our declared ideals of inclusivity and progress.
Judging by administrative mismanagement, the failure of these ballot proposals, and our persistently low voter turnout, our needs far outpace the solutions that have been proposed so far. In addition to overhauling the Board of Elections system and rerunning these failed constitutional changes, we should add another that moves all elections to higher turnout even-numbered years.
We cannot let the failures of this fall, last June, and last November be repeated. Nationally, democracy is under threat and voting access is under siege.
Here at home, every election that is mismanaged — with voters deprived of greater options for when to register and how to vote — gives New Yorkers another reason to distrust the democratic process. The stakes are far too high to let that happen any longer.
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Ryder Kessler, a member of Manhattan’s Community Board 2, served as the Maine Democratic Party’s 2020 Voter Protection Director for Joe Biden and down-ballot Democrats. On Twitter @ryderkessler.
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Climate change has many impacts (photo: governor's office)
Several weeks ago, when Hurricane Ida devastated New York, one thing became painfully clear: we are still not prepared for the climate crisis. At least 45 people were killed by the storm in the New York area, many of whom were low-income people of color, and the storm caused at least $50 million of physical damage to infrastructure and over 1,200 homes in our state alone.
This disaster happened in the midst of a fight raging in Congress about protecting the American public from the perennial threats posed by climate change. That fight continues right now in the form of the reconciliation bill pending before both houses of Congress. It is my firm belief that we cannot treat these disasters, which occur in every state, as isolated incidents: we need a comprehensive approach to ensure our infrastructure and communities are prepared and that resources for rebuilding are readily available when the next great climate-related disaster inevitably strikes.
To that end, I support the creation of a federal Polluters Pay Climate Fund, a bill that is currently part of the negotiations for upcoming reconciliation legislation in Congress but that needs our support to ensure it passes. We must persuade the Democratic leaders in Washington that this legislation is essential. While the necessary preparations for climate change must be spurred by the work of government, I do not believe that taxpayers should be solely responsible for funding it. Instead, we must look to the companies who have been profiting to the tune of billions of dollars each year from the fossil fuels that first caused, and every day exacerbate, the climate crisis.
A federal Polluters Pay Climate Fund would raise billions of dollars from polluting corporations to fund infrastructure and begin to mitigate the impact of the ever-worsening climate crisis we confront. In New York State, this funding would pay for us to build the physical infrastructure we need to fight disasters like Ida. Forty percent of the fund would go to communities disproportionately affected, which in New York would mean lifesaving efforts like fortifying our massive shoreline, weatherizing mass transit, repairing our antiquated drainage systems, and addressing our most dangerous flood zones.
The need for this funding is not theoretical; it is urgent. Recent research shows that at the current rate, our state will need to spend $10 billion annually to mitigate climate change impacts. Someone is going to pay for the costs of climate change: if it isn’t the polluters, it will continue to be the public. Currently, big polluters get to pollute for free while reaping enormous profits. I support a plan that makes them pay for the mess they’re making.
I recognize the importance of this fight because I have been involved in these battles for a long time. As a member of the New York City Council, I spearheaded the passage of a forward-thinking and comprehensive rewriting of New York City’s residential recycling program. As public advocate for the City of New York, a position that includes membership as a trustee on the city’s largest public pension fund, I led the push to divest New York City’s pensions from fossil fuels. Today, as the state’s attorney general, I have taken on the fossil fuel industry in court and continue to wage other critical environmental justice battles such as holding accountable those responsible for the contamination of PFAS, taking on – and winning against – the Trump administration’s EPA over smog pollution and “dirty power,” and assisting in the implementation of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) here in New York, the most ambitious clean energy and climate law in the nation.
With every catastrophic natural disaster that occurs, the reality becomes more undeniable: we must do more to prepare for the next weather-related crisis and to prevent future ones. Simply cleaning up after the fact and hoping to avoid future disasters will only make matters worse. We must be proactive and forward thinking in our preparations and planning for our new climate reality.
To fund these endeavors, we cannot allow the companies responsible for the climate crisis – that have profited so much for so long – to avoid responsibility any longer. We have an opportunity in Congress to advance our climate preparedness while holding polluters accountable. Let’s let our leaders in Washington know that the Polluters Pay Climate Fund is the right solution at the right time. Our planet depends on it. Our country depends on it. Our future depends on it.
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Letitia James is the New York State Attorney General. On Twitter @NewYorkStateAG.
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Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, the author (photo: NYC Department of Transportation)
Every day, our court system loads New Yorkers down with additional fees that further criminalize poverty while doing nothing to make us safer. In fact, these court fees are among the government’s most effective means of extracting money from New Yorkers most at risk of poverty and least able to bear the financial burden.
How much money are we talking about? Every single day, New York’s courts levy around $14,000 in regressive administrative surcharges, fees and fines, on top of the money people are already paying for whatever minor violation they are accused of. These fees add up quickly and devastate low-income individuals.
These nuisance fines and fees are not intended to make our state safer, they are simply a way for the state to take in more money. And they are vastly profitable, raking in millions every year from some of our state’s poorest residents who are struggling to make ends meet and lift themselves out of poverty.
This isn’t just a story of poverty, it’s directly tied to the structural and racial inequities in our court system. In my district, which includes Chinatown, New Yorkers who face language barriers often find themselves facing late fees for fines and penalties levied in a language they can’t understand. Those fines ripple through communities — $175 for a misdemeanor here, $95 for a speeding ticket there — and are one reason why immigrant communities like those in Lower Manhattan fear seeking legal remedies in our courts. For them, the city courthouse is a place best known for draining their bank accounts (if they are banked). In fact, according to the New York City Bar, a third of all surcharge revenue comes from violations of the Vehicle and Traffic Law, not including DWI violations. And no offense is too small to be padded with multiple, opaque fees.
No matter what your economic status, if you are called before the court for any of these minor infractions, you’re likely to leave the building with your pockets lighter and your sense of justice dented. For the wealthy, that’s an inconvenience and a story to tell over dinner. But for the poor, especially those raising small children or caring for elderly loved ones, those fees mean the difference between making rent and searching for a homeless shelter.
What possible justice is that?
These fines disproportionately hurt lower income people, and the effects can easily snowball into perverse mockeries of how our justice system should function. At a recent press conference hosted by the economic and racial justice coalition No Price on Justice, Brooklyn Defender Services Staff Attorney Dane M. Fioravante laid out the horrifying case of one individual trapped in a cycle of fines and fees that ended at Rikers Island.
As Fioravante explained, in 2019 “Mike” (not his real name) was fined $200 for driving on a suspended driver’s license. Over the last two years Mike, like so many others, has worked hard to make ends meet. Unable to pay that fine, Mike found himself trapped in a debt cycle that ensnares too many New Yorkers. Earlier this year, police raided Mike’s home on Staten Island, terrifying his family and young child. What violent crime could have justified a full-on nighttime raid? Failure to pay his $200 civil fine during a pandemic that devastated low income communities.
Mike was moved from holding cell to holding cell, first on Staten Island and then in Brooklyn, where he waited until the next morning to see a judge. Still unable to pay his fee, Mike wound up on Rikers Island, one of our nation’s most violent institutions, all for a single suspended license infraction and the fees that came with it. Mike’s nightmare stay in the Rikers intake area would spiral into a four-day ordeal that unfolded in the midst of the jail’s ongoing humanitarian crisis. Our distorted fines and fees regime has turned Rikers into a debtor’s prison, and criminalized poverty on a scale that should disgust anyone interested in proportional and equal justice.
We’re making real progress in Albany toward limiting the scope of these extortionate fines and fees, but we must act faster and more broadly to correct this systemic injustice. Sometimes the slowdowns are unintentional, like when other criminal justice reform bills took priority. In other cases, right-wing media outlets pumping up a bogus “crime surge” narrative have actively scared lawmakers away from addressing issues like nuisance fees. But trapping low-income people in an endless cycle of debt and incarceration will never reduce crime or make our communities safer and may well have the opposite effect.
Fortunately, some elements of fine and fee reform are already improving the lives of New Yorkers. The Driver’s License Suspension Reform Act went into effect on June 29, ending driver’s license suspensions for unpaid traffic tickets. Even better, the measure allows New Yorkers with unpaid traffic tickets to set up payment plans that get them right with the law without destroying their financial stability or means of getting to and from work and taking other essential trips. No one’s life is made more stable by taking away their means of earning an honest living.
That’s a good start, but New Yorkers deserve better. That’s why I’ve partnered with my colleague, State Senator Julia Salazar, to introduce the End Predatory Court Fees Act prohibiting mandatory minimum fines for penal law and traffic offenses. In addition, our legislation also tackles probation and parole surcharges, a cruel set of fees that almost exclusively punish low-income people unable to pay for their freedom even though they are otherwise eligible for a termination of sentence.
Our legislation would finally end the inequitable financial burdens placed on defendants by statutory provisions that pad New York’s public finances with complete disregard to how they undermine our communities and public trust in our judicial system. We do this by empowering the courts to significantly reduce or eliminate outright many of the onerous fees New Yorkers have grown to hate. In its place, we must focus on policies that actually yield positive outcomes for our residents and our state. The exploitative fees that fill up our courtrooms only make that job harder.
New York can get serious about building a justice system that strengthens our communities instead of siphoning off their hard-earned money through administrative trickery. By reforming our courts to be free from the profit incentive, we can guarantee better representation and more productive outcomes for all.
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Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou represents New York’s 65th Assembly District, including Lower Manhattan and Chinatown. On Twitter @yuhline.
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A new mom (photo: Edwin J Torres/Mayor's Office)
While the media has started to connect heat-related deaths to climate change over the past few years, one particularly vulnerable group is too rarely discussed in reporting and not reflected in policy: pregnant people and newborns. As the climate crisis gets worse, we need policies to prevent dangerous outcomes and to undo vast inequities in pregnancy.
After centuries of disenfranchisement, many pregnant people of color living in New York City sit at the intersection of systemic racism, health inequity, and the dangers of our already warming planet.
The body’s ability to regulate temperature is compromised during pregnancy, meaning that increasing temperatures caused by climate change pose a particular risk to pregnant people. This is especially true in New York City, where maternal mortality rates and increased heat from climate change are high and experienced unequally.
In areas of the city that are already hotter on average because of the urban heat island effect, like the South Bronx and Harlem, the impact of increased heat can be especially harmful. Due to a long history of racism, disinvestment, and environmental injustice, many of these hotter neighborhoods are home to majority people of color.
In addition to exacerbating these inequities in heat, climate change worsens pre-existing health risks related to birth outcomes. Black women in New York City are also up to 12 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts. Increased heat has been connected to both preterm birth and low birth weight, and Black women living in the Bronx already experience higher rates of both.
Despite the linkage between heat and pregnancy outcomes, pregnant people are largely kept out of discussions about those vulnerable to heat. What’s more, health providers don’t always share the risks of heat with their pregnant patients. Even if they do, there aren’t many options for reducing heat exposure at an individual level. Air conditioners are expensive, often prohibitively so, as are electric bills. Public housing buildings are often older and hold more heat. Employers aren’t required to offer cooling options and many jobs require long-term exposure to high heat levels that are impossible for workers to avoid.
This is a huge, multifaceted issue, but luckily, there are things we can do about it.
For everyone to have the healthy pregnancies they deserve, our leaders must ensure that all people are set up well to withstand the heat and access the care they need. In addition to more general climate responses, we must pay specific attention to pregnancy-related heat issues. We need policies that provide funding for healthcare worker training on the issue, further research on climate change and pregnancy, improved breathability conditions in NYCHA buildings, better protections for pregnant people on the job, and better access to air conditioning for low-income families.
As the climate crisis worsens, pregnancy-related outcomes will get worse with it. The difference between acting effectively and not will be measured by the life and well-being of future generations.
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Isabel Levey-Swain is a graduate student at CUNY School of Public Health. She has worked and researched at the intersection of gender and health equity for several years.
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Housing (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
East Flatbush is a neighborhood rich with history, culture and architectural charm and it is cherished by our tight-knit community. It was only a matter of time before everyone else figured that out. We are in a period of dramatic change as developers have set their sights on our area, like they have in dozens of neighborhoods across New York, and Black and Caribbean families are being displaced. Seniors are especially being targeted by aggressive solicitors who are trying to buy their homes and many have been forced to accept in order to avoid foreclosure.
As a single mother and recent retiree, I am very familiar with these financial pressures, but I won’t let them push me out of my home. When I needed a way to supplement my retirement income so that I could afford to pay the bills and stay in the neighborhood I love, I turned to Airbnb.
Home sharing brings needed income to local residents by connecting us with folks who want to visit New York City, but cannot afford the price of hotels in Midtown Manhattan. My guests always comment on how lovely East Flatbush is and they’re excited to visit authentic local restaurants and shops. Short-term rentals lift up our entire community when visitors spend their money supporting our small businesses that wouldn’t otherwise benefit from the tourism economy, given the limited number of hotels in our area. On that matter, Airbnbs allow visitors to stay close to their East Flatbush relatives.
Of course tourism has slowed down due to COVID-19, but things are finally starting to turn around. Short-term rentals and the economic activity they generate will be even more important during our post-pandemic recovery. In East Flatbush, we lost more friends and neighbors than many other communities, and we suffered a worse economic hit. Our businesses are at risk of getting left behind like they have so many other times in the past.
Just as we’re starting to see tourism pick up again, some elected officials are trying to set us back. The City Council is considering legislation that would severely restrict what I can do in my own home. I am speaking out against this bill because it represents an unreasonable burden on New Yorkers like me and it would be incredibly harmful to our local economy. I went to City Hall this month to tell City Council Members why I’m against this bill. There are many others like me who may be afraid to speak up.
There are a number of problems with this proposal. It requires all hosts to register with the city, even if they are only renting part of their home one time. It makes an extremely confusing system even more complicated through vague language that doesn’t explain who is eligible for a permit, the availability of those permits, or even the process for obtaining a permit.
It also adds burdensome barriers including requiring sign-off from an architect or engineer before we can host guests. If someone turns to home-sharing because they can’t afford their mortgage, how are they supposed to pay for the cost of a $500-plus personal home inspection? The bill also includes massive fines of up to $15,000 for non-compliance. That is absolutely ridiculous. It would be impossible for most New Yorkers to pay that amount, and a law like this would force many people out of their homes entirely.
If tourists are ready to come back to our city we should do everything we can to encourage them. That means providing a range of options for places to stay at different price points and in different areas. Home sharing is one way we can make sure the money tourists bring makes its way out to communities like mine in the outer boroughs.
Instead of creating more obstacles, the City Council should support both New Yorkers who depend on the supplemental income from home sharing as well as the small businesses that benefit from the tourism economy. Airbnb gives me financial security and it’s good for my community. Don’t take that away.
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Victoria McLeod is an Airbnb host in Brooklyn.
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Housing in New York City (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)
New York City has approved a requirement for racial-equity studies to inform the city’s land-use rezoning efforts. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, one of the proponents of the requirement, has expressed that “the more we have tools like this one, the more we can sift through what’s just noise and what’s actually serious and needs to be addressed. People have told us that these rezonings are going to be for the betterment of the city but, collectively, they have sped up gentrification, and they’ve been a fundamental failure.”
This requirement comes in response to long-voiced concerns over rezoning-induced displacement during both the Bloomberg and de Blasio eras — concerns that have effectively derailed a significant component of Mayor de Blasio’s rezoning agenda.
Producing and preserving 200,000 affordable homes by the end of the administration and 300,000 by 2026 has been one of Mayor de Blasio’s signature issues. His administration has pointed to its success toward meeting these targets. Most of this plan is supported by government-assisted housing programs but one key component of the de Blasio housing agenda was a goal of 15 neighborhood-wide rezonings accompanied by a Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program (MIH) that requires between 20% and 30% (depending on the applicable income levels) of the units to be permanently income-restricted.
As a matter of policy, MIH is also attached to private applications that substantially increase residential zoning density. Only six of the administration’s proposed rezonings, concentrated in lower-income communities and communities of color, have been adopted. Two others, in the comparably higher-income and whiter neighborhoods of Gowanus and SoHo/Noho are currently in the public review process. The others are effectively dead.
For example, a proposed area-wide rezoning of Bushwick, released in 2019 after a planning process that sought a consensus between the city government and neighborhood residents, failed to garner adequate public or political support. The community came up with its own plan in 2018 and both City Council members that represent portions of the Bushwick community (Council Members Reynoso and Espinal) came out against the city’s version of the proposed rezoning.
Under the New York City Charter, the final vote on proposed zoning changes is up to the New York City Council and the Council has near-uniformly deferred to local Council members in approving, denying, or modifying proposed zoning changes in their districts. Council members often used their effective veto power to get the mayoral administration to include changes to a proposed rezoning or to achieve other commitments from the city that would benefit the affected communities. Without the potential of an agreement between the city and the local Council members, there was no path forward for the city’s proposed Bushwick zoning plan.
In the Bronx, Council Member Salamanca effectively ended another of the administration’s proposed 15 area-wide rezonings— a proposed Southern Boulevard rezoning – when he publicly came out against it. Salamanca cited a study by the Churches United for Fair Housing (CUFFH), which he said showed that “neighborhood rezonings are directly responsible for displacing thousands of residents of color in primarily low-income communities.”
The CUFFH study has received plenty of press coverage, which, for the most part, has accepted its findings as gospel. It provided intellectual support for the requirement for racial-impact studies that culminated in the City Council legislation. Requiring these studies makes perfect sense given the implication of the CUFFH study in a city that is predominantly Black and Hispanic undergoing significant local area demographic changes (more on this later).
The CUFFH study looked at two rezonings, Park Slope in 2003 and Greenpoint/Williamsburg in 2005, and, with regard to its examination of racial change, concluded that:
“While displacement trends existed before the zoning changes, they were significantly accelerated during this time, implying the zoning changes exacerbated previous displacement pressures rather than alleviating them.”
A quick read of the CUFFH study will show that it concludes that the data is “implying” the neighborhood rezonings worsened racial displacement but, in the all-too-common way of the world, this has been interpreted by the press and many readers as shown to be “directly responsible.” But does the study show or even imply that the rezonings are responsible for displacement?
In summing up its findings, the CUFFH report notes that what it refers to as the Latinx population (and the Census describes as Hispanic) declined by 15,000 between 2000 and 2015 in the Greenpoint and Williamsburg neighborhoods and a 5,000 person decline in the Black and Latinx population of Park Slope between 2000 and 2013, while the overall populations of both communities were increasing – by over 20,000 in Greenpoint and Williamsburg and over 6,000 in Park Slope.
Racial disparities have a long, and way too often, horrendous history in the United States beginning with slavery, one of America’s original sins that are, sadly, still expressed in New York City’s housing market. The racial change described by many as zoning-induced is real, as we will see later, but is it induced by zoning changes?
When the CUFFH study appears to provide intellectual heft to the notion that public zoning policies are exacerbating racial disparities, it is not surprising that those policies are being called into question and challenged.
The discussion that follows looks at Census data over several decades in both communities that were the subject of city-sponsored areawide rezonings and those that were not. The discussion that follows necessarily includes lots of numbers as it looks at four different demographic groups in multiple neighborhoods over several decades. For those that don’t want to wade through all those numbers, the short summary is that:
Park Slope
I’m a 46-year resident of North Park Slope and a former urban planner with the city’s Department of City Planning, and have seen the enormous economic and demographic changes that have altered this neighborhood over the years.
It has been my observation over the years that market-rate development follows demographic shifts toward more affluent residents rather than development leading the market.
After reading the CUFFH report, I decided to spend some time exploring demographic change in Park Slope. There is no precise date by which what is now called gentrification began in Park Slope. One potential starting date would be 60 years ago when the Park Slope Civic Council began its House Tour showcasing the neighborhood’s brownstones. Another might be 1963 when Evelyn and Everett Ortner bought their brownstone and began proselytizing about the neighborhood. It was certainly well under way in 1975 when I scraped together every dime I could and purchased my home from the couple that did the original renovation. No rezoning was needed to trigger gentrification.
The CUFFH study looked at three time periods and concluded that the faster rate of change in the second time period (in which the rezoning occurred) implied that the acceleration of change was caused by the rezoning. The CUFFH study examines three periods that it refers to as “before the rezoning” (1990-2000), “the decade the zoning was passed” (2000-2010), and “after the rezoning” (2010-2015).
By CUFFH’s own analysis , the Latinx population continued to decline but the decline was much, much smaller in the “after rezoning” period after two decades of steeper decline. During the decade in which the zoning was passed, the Black population moved in the opposite direction from the Latinx population, increasing slightly, followed by a very small decline in the “after rezoning” period. Essentially, the CUFFH-compiled data shows that within a short period after rezonings are adopted, the previously rapid decline of Black and Hispanic people comes to a virtual halt. This is exactly the opposite of the conclusion that the CUFFH study reaches. If these changes imply anything about rezoning and racial change it is that racial change does not closely track zoning changes.
I looked back another decade prior to the CUFFH study period and found that racial change was well underway even then and that some of that change was at least as fast as any found in the CUFFH study. For this exercise, I looked at all ten census tracts (shown outlined in red in Figure 1) that were entirely or mostly within the boundaries of the 2003 Park Slope rezoning (shown outlined in gold). It does not include census tracts in which the rezoned area accounts for half or less of the census tract. For the periods examined by CUFFH, the Census data for my study area roughly match those of the CUFFH study.
Figure 1: Park Slope Study Area
But in the prior decade (1980 and 1990), the white population was already growing as a share of the population, reaching, at 76%, its highest share of the area’s total population. In the recently-released 2020 Census, it stood at 70.8%. Seventeen years after the Park Slope rezoning in a neighborhood that could be a poster child for gentrification, the white share of the population was 5% lower than it had been in 1990.
In spite of an overall population gain of 2,758 over 30 years, the white population declined by 237. By 1990, the Hispanic population was already declining and experienced its most dramatic decline (30%) in the prior decade, well before the city contemplated any areawide zoning changes*.
The Black population declined by 11.5%. The Asian population, beginning from a small base, showed an absolute and percentage gain as it will in every tabulation of the city’s population up to and including the most recent Census.
*This author excepted, there was no speculation about future rezoning in the years of greatest racial change. In 1982, I approached the then-director of the Department of City Planning’s (DCP) Brooklyn office and suggested that the rising values in Park Slope could support or would soon support new construction and that the DCP should rezone Fourth Avenue to accommodate new development. The director did not believe the zoning was an obstacle to new development and no rezoning was proposed. In the very late 1980s, years before the Park Slope rezoning, construction began on a few market-rate apartment buildings, many or all of which ran into financial trouble during the city’s 1989-1993 recession.
Greenpoint/Williamsburg
The Department of City Planning (DCP) has conducted its own follow-up to the Greenpoint/Williamsburg rezonings of 2005 and 2009 comparing data from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses, the 2006-2010 ACS and the 2013-2017 ACS. The two ACS data points are roughly a before-and-after measure of the rezonings. The population changes in both rezoning areas do not support the conclusion of zoning-induced racial change.
In the area of the 2005 waterfront rezoning, the population jumped by over 41% following the rezoning, adding over 13,000 residents between the two ACS periods. Each population group increased in absolute numbers while many of their relative shares changed. The white population gained the most people but its share remained static with 62%. The share of Hispanics went down from 27% to 23% post-rezoning but, contrary to all the recent publicity, actually went up in absolute numbers. This is more striking because the Hispanic population declined in the two periods preceding the rezoning: between 1990 and 2000 and again between 2000 and the first ACS average for 2006-2010.
The Black population also increased post-rezoning with absolute numbers and its share of population rising slightly from 2% to 3%. The Black population had been relatively static in the two periods preceding the rezoning. The Asian population increased with each new Census total and it increased its share from 6% to 8% post rezoning. For each of these population groups, the increase in the post-rezoning period is considered statistically significant, which is to say that it is not attributable to chance.
In 2009, the city approved an areawide rezoning inland of the 2005 waterfront rezoning. This rezoning was largely about imposing contextual zoning regulations (which permit shorter and bulkier buildings as compared with tower-type buildings) although some areas within the rezoning were upzoned (that is, rezoned to permit greater density). In this contextual rezoning area, all four population groups registered numerical growth although only the Black population’s growth was statistically significant.
What is striking about this area is that the Black population had declined modestly in the two periods prior to the rezoning and the Hispanic population had declined dramatically in the period mostly preceding the rezoning. As in Park Slope, racial change existed in the period before the rezoning, accelerated during the decade in which the rezoning occurred, and stopped after the rezoning. The data does not imply rezoning accelerates racial turnover. Indeed, the data presented in the CUFFH study would also be consistent with a conclusion that, in the period following the rezoning, the pace of racial change slows once rezonings are able to lead to increases in the supply of housing. (Truth be told, there isn’t sufficient data in the CUFFH study to draw this, or any, conclusion.)
One need not be a data junkie to understand why rezonings that increase the allowable amount of building do not have the effect of creating the racial change ascribed to it.
The DCP reports that the housing supply in the study areas increased by 17,100 apartments (after accounting for 650 lost through demolition). Of these, about 2,100 were income-restricted (another 1,070 income-restricted apartments were preserved but those do not increase the housing supply). So, 15,000 market-rate units were added. Opponents of rezonings assert that rezonings generate change when, in reality, it is the demands for housing created by these and other extra households that create change.
Anyone looking at the effect of rezonings should ask what would have happened if the rezonings did not occur.
In the case of the Greenpoint/Williamsburg rezonings, there would be roughly 15,000 fewer market-rate apartments. Almost all of the households that today occupy these new apartments would remain in the housing marketplace. A small share might conclude that New York doesn’t offer what they want and choose to go elsewhere but most just join the rest of us in competing for the existing housing stock. More competitors for a static supply drive up prices in all the locations they seek to live resulting in higher housing prices in Greenpoint/Williamsburg and in other communities where these households may seek to live.
If there is a valid criticism relating zoning changes to racial displacement or displacement in general, one could certainly be that past zoning changes were too modest to promote adequate housing production. Another could be that the voluntary Inclusionary Housing Programs were not as aggressive as the more recently adopted Mandatory Inclusionary Housing Program.
Most areawide rezonings, dating back to the Koch era, were a mixture of upzonings, often on a modest number of underbuilt commercial streets, and downzonings or contextual rezonings where the permitted density was lowered or held constant. The downzonings and contextual rezonings were usually on the more numerous, mostly built-up, residential streets.
In 2010, NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy published a paper that looked at early Bloomberg–era rezonings. For the 188,000 lots that were rezoned between 2003 and 2007, almost 63% were subject to a contextual-only rezoning (no significant change in permitted density) while 23% were downzoned and 14% were upzoned.
The Furman Center calculated the net effect of these rezonings as increasing the city’s residential development capacity by 80,000 apartments but that represented an increase of only about 1.7% in the potential development capacity of the city. In short, the city’s timidity in creating additional zoning capacity minimizes the beneficial effects of creating opportunities to increase the supply of housing in the city. If, as an example, Greenpoint/Williamsburg, the Lower East Side, or other neighborhoods serving this more affluent and perhaps whiter demographic had been rezoned to create even more capacity, either by permitting increased density on more lots or by permitting modestly higher densities on upzoned lots, fewer people who could not find housing in Greenpoint/Williamsburg would have moved on to the next available neighborhood.
Bushwick
In the case of Greenpoint/Williamsburg, the next available neighborhood is Bushwick, which is just to the east and served by two of the three same subway lines as Williamsburg. With opposition from the community and both local City Council members, there has been no areawide rezoning in Bushwick so it is a good area to examine as a comparison for control purposes.
Between 2000 and 2010 Censuses, Bushwick’s total population increased by over 8,000. The Hispanic population rose by 3,500 even as the Hispanic share of the population declined, but the previously small white population more than tripled, increasing by over 6,500. In the most recent decade, the Latino population declined over 15,000 while the white population almost tripled again, increasing by over 14,000. In contrast to Park Slope, which was rezoned and saw a modest decline in the white population, Bushwick – without the city’s proposed rezoning – added close to 23,000 white residents. The Black population in Bushwick declined between the 2000 and 2010 Censuses by about 2,000 and by almost 5,000 in the last decade.
The driving force behind racial change in Bushwick is not a zoning change but the spread into the next community of the Greenpoint/Williamsburg more affluent and whiter demographic that cannot be accommodated there. Greenpoint/Williamsburg’s change was similarly triggered, in large part, by the overflow of this unaccommodated demographic on the Lower East Side. Similar demographic changes have pushed through brownstone Brooklyn from Brooklyn Heights in the 1950s, to Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Cobble and Boerum Hills and Fort Greene, and later to Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, and Bedford Stuyvesant. The common denominator is a generally capped supply of housing in one neighborhood pushing up prices there and shifting some of the housing demand to nearby communities.
East New York
Another way to look at the effect of rezoning on neighborhood racial makeup is to look at communities rezoned that were not already undergoing significant gentrification pressure. The East New York rezoning, approved in April 2016, was the first of the de Blasio era neighborhood rezonings.
Comparing the 2010 and 2020 Censuses for the core** of the neighborhood shows population loss of 1,535 (5.6%). During this period, the Hispanic population grew by 3.7%; the Black population declined by 26.3%, and the much smaller Asian population grew by 71.5% but still accounted for only 4.2% of the total population. The even smaller white population grew by a dramatic 38.6% but still only accounts for 2.7% of the total population.
A 2020 paper from the Manhattan Institute on the de Blasio era Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) program provides an indication about what development-related changes may be happening in East New York. It found that 30 of the 36 MIH projects citywide on which construction had started or been completed are 100% affordable projects. All the projects that appear to be in East New York are 100% affordable, meaning that there will be no market-rate apartments.
Income distribution is not the same as racial makeup but there is a correlation between race and income. It would be helpful to know the racial makeup of those occupying apartments produced under the Inclusionary Housing Programs. Nevertheless, 100% affordable housing is hardly the stuff on which gentrification and racial change are likely to be built.
**Census tracts east of Pennsylvania Avenue that are entirely within the rezoning area.
Contextual Zoning
Contextual zoning regulations were developed at the Department of City Planning in the 1980s in recognition that many neighborhoods in the city have distinct characters and that often residents have chosen to live in these communities, at least in part, because of those characteristics.
Contextual zoning provided an alternative to the 1961 regulations that sought to promote often context-busting tower-in-the-park developments. The values that inspired the creation of contextual zoning are still widely held today.
But contextual zoning was developed at a time when the city had over a million fewer residents than it does now and more than a million fewer jobs than it had pre-pandemic. Since many of the earlier contextual rezonings were prompted by a concern about randomly located out-of-scale buildings, and those concerns were expressed primarily in neighborhoods where the market was producing new buildings, the earlier contextual rezonings were disproportionately concentrated in relatively affluent areas. This has left a legacy of comparatively protective zoning in affluent areas that are centrally located and well-served by transit. The balance struck in the past between preserving neighborhood character and accommodating change needs to be reevaluated in light of current needs.
Other Factors
The odd thing about racial displacement is that, at least to date, it does not represent an expansion of the city’s white population. That population peaked as a percentage of the population decades ago and has been declining since. It stood at 63% of the population in 1970 when the concept of “white flight” was very much in vogue. The 1980 Census put the non-Hispanic white population at 51.9%, the last Census in which it was a majority. By 2010, the white share of the city’s population had declined to one-third and the 2020 Census shows a further decline, dipping to 30.8%, representing a modest numerical decrease of 3,000 (0.1%) from the 2010 count.***
Even as the city’s overall enumerated population has grown, the city’s Black population has been in modest decline since 2000, dropping by 26,000 by 2010 and another 84,000 in the last decade from 22.8% to 20.2% of the total. The Hispanic population increased by 52,000 between 2000 and 2010 and a further 154,000 by the 2020 Census, increasing its share of the population by about 1.5%. The fastest growing of the four major groups is Asians, fastest growing of these four groups is Asians who increased in 20 years by 595,000 and increasing its share of the population by 9.9% to 15.68%.****
So, if the white population is not growing where is the fuel for displacement coming from?
Given that the citywide Hispanic population is both larger and growing faster than the Black population is declining while the white population has been in long-term decline, the increase in the white population in some neighborhoods necessarily means that it has declined elsewhere. This change can be loosely described as a declining white population in the outer ring of the city, a growing white population in the center of the city, and a growing Black and Hispanic population in the middle being pushed out by the center and pushing out against the outer ring.
It can be seen clearly in locating the blue (increasing white population) and red (decreasing white population) areas in Figure 2. The notable exception is a large white area on the map in southeast Queens that was 98% nonwhite in 2010.
Figure 2: Growth in White Population Pushing into New Areas (Source: DCP)
These changes can be seen in a look at the outer ring community of Bay Ridge, which was the subject of an area-wide rezoning in 2005.
The overall population declined slightly between 2000 and 2020. If the CUFFH theory were valid, the white and Asian populations should have increased and the Hispanic and Black populations should have declined between the 2000 and the 2020 Censuses. The Asian population did grow, as it did throughout most of the city and as would be expected for a community next to Sunset Park, a heavily Asian community. But the Hispanic share of the population rose from 11.7% to 18.9% and the Black share of the population rose from 0.8% to 2.1%. Only the white population declined, going from 70.6% to 59.3%.
The CUFFH study looks at changes in racial composition and the presence or absence of a zoning change and, in its view, finds correlation between the two and concludes that this implies causation. It does not look at any other possible factors. This is like saying that increases in the sale of ice cream increase the sale of sunglasses (or the incidence of murder) since all these increase in the warmer months.
An Alternative Explanation
I would posit that the gain of a million residents and a million jobs explains much of the population trends of the last two decades.
For example, the L-train connection to the growing tech and media employment center in Chelsea supports the changing demographics of the Lower East Side, Greenpoint/Williamsburg, and Bushwick.
So has changing tastes among different demographic groups. In 2010, New York magazine published an article about the best New York City neighborhoods to live in. Brownstone Brooklyn, Dumbo, Greenpoint, and Williamsburg accounted for half of the top 20. It ranked Park Slope number 1. Personally, I view any such ranking as arbitrary but these efforts are an indicator of forces shaping where people seek to live. The Beyond Times Square website currently lists Greenpoint as the city’s hippest neighborhood followed by Bushwick, which it describes as “another up-and-coming hipster hotspot, teeming with art, music, food, drinks, and more.” Zoning does not draw a mention for either neighborhood.
This is not to argue that race does not play a role in gentrifying neighborhoods. It is not accidental that gentrification moved from the Lower East Side through Greenpoint/Williamsburg to Bushwick or from Brooklyn Heights through much of Brownstone Brooklyn to Bed-Stuy in that order and not in reverse even though less expensive housing was available in places like Bed-Stuy when Park Slope or Prospect Heights were gentrifying. Gentrification moved out from neighborhoods where the “gentry” would feel comfortable, whether that’s because they want to be close to amenity-rich neighborhoods or people similar to themselves.
Perhaps the current ground zero for the conflict between an expanding white demographic and a shrinking Black demographic encompasses the communities in and around Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Bushwick, and into East New York (roughly highlighted in the yellow ovals on Figures 3 and 4 below) where there has been a particularly striking racial turnover.
The younger white demographic typical of gentrifying neighborhoods is joined in parts of the area by a white, Ultra-orthodox Jewish community that has large families which, when the children reach adulthood, results in high levels of new household formation. Both groups have been expanding locally for at least the past two decades and created significant housing pressure on what have historically been communities of color.
Figure 3: Changes in White Non-Hispanic Population
Figure 4: Changes in Black Non-Hispanic Population (Source: DCP)
Although I do not have data on the racial makeup of occupants of new construction in these areas, based on the average incomes of the various demographic groups and the Census-documented demographic changes, it seems reasonable to assume, to at least some extent, the expanding white demographics have been accommodated by newly-built housing, some of which was made possible by both city-sponsored and privately-initiated rezonings and the state-facilitated Pacific Park development (formerly Atlantic Yards), while the remainder of the white demographic soaks up an increasing portion of the existing housing stock, replacing or displacing the prior, predominantly Black and, to some extent, Latino population. It is important to ask again, where would the households now occupying the new housing be if this new housing had not been accommodated.
Conclusion
While earlier generations of New Yorkers lived in a constantly growing, constantly redeveloping city, since the mid-twentieth century, more recent generations had become accustomed to a physically more static city. Through the ups and downs of half a century, the city’s population grew by just over 100,000 between the years 1950 and 2000. Nevertheless, even when the city’s population was declining in the 1970s – and in some areas housing was abandoned – permits were issued for more than 150,000 new dwellings and 22,000 more dwellings were added than lost.
New York City is now coming off 20 years of remarkable population growth. Since 2000, the population has grown by almost 800,000. This growth has created enormous pressures in the housing market citywide, but perhaps most acutely in the areas where the expanding gentrifying core has been pushing into communities historically home to largely Black and Latino populations.
The City Council has now mandated that zoning changes to accommodate the city’s housing needs must examine the anticipated racial consequences of these changes. This essay shows that racial change mostly takes place independent of zoning changes: sometimes there was more racial change prior to rezoning; sometimes there were racial changes in areas that were not rezoned; and sometimes areas that were rezoned did not have significant racial change.
What might be a prototype of the mandated racial impact studies, for the proposed Gowanus rezoning, has now been completed. A collaboration among the Fifth Avenue Committee, Columbia University Professor Lance Freeman, and City Council Land Use division staff, it is an extensive look at the historical and current racial divisions in housing – both citywide and locally — and how the proposed rezoning would alter them within the community.
I am not going to attempt a complete summary of the report but just touch on a few points it makes and one it does not. The report avoids debating whether new development helps to address or exacerbates the city’s housing problems. Instead, it observes that evidence of new development causing indirect displacement “is sparse” and that evidence that increased supply would lower prices locally “rather than regionally” is “murky.”
It concludes that, while in this specific market the risk of displacement by rising market-rate rents for Black and Latino families is low because most such households are already living in protected affordable housing, the market-rate housing would “perpetuate” existing racial patterns where high-income white households predominate. It also found that adding nearly 3,000 “new low-income affordable housing…within a high-cost, high-opportunity neighborhood, both in regards to the number of units and percentage of the overall projected development (35%), is unprecedented in recent decades in New York City” and that “the added population from the Gowanus Neighborhood Plan is likely to meaningfully reduce segregation in Community Board 6.”
The Council-mandated studies are not required to examine any racial impacts of not rezoning to accommodate more housing, so, unsurprisingly, the Gowanus Racial Equity Study did not consider what, if any, impact not adding over 5,000 market-rate units has on the overall housing market. Those households remain in the regional housing market, even if there were to be no Gowanus rezoning.
Where would they go? One of the basic arguments of this paper is, if Gowanus is not rezoned to accommodate more development, these households will create housing pressure in comparable markets, push up prices and threaten other unprotected lower-income households. The effects of the city’s tight housing market are felt more across existing buildings than new ones because so much more of the housing supply is in existing buildings. Everyone who is displaced or replaced was a resident of an existing building.
New York City needs more housing to accommodate its population and it needs zoning changes to facilitate housing production. It needs housing to be built across a wide variety of neighborhoods, even those that received relatively protective zoning when the city’s population was less than it is today. I don’t think it means the city must permit unlimited building, but, together with community residents, it should re-evaluate the current constraints on housing production.
While it needs housing throughout the city, it particularly needs it in the areas where the housing pressures are the greatest, which are often areas where a comparably affluent and predominantly white population is up against communities of color with lower incomes. Thanks to the de Blasio administration’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, every upzoning to permit more residential development comes with a requirement for 20-30% of the new apartments reserved as permanently affordable housing so that every new building — in gentrifying neighborhoods or not — can also contribute to maintaining diversity within communities in perpetuity. In some communities, the city has been able to increase the share of affordable housing by dedicating city-owned sites in or near the rezoning area.
Only a small share of the housing market can afford newly-constructed market-rate housing and the accompanying MIH units can never fully satisfy the need for affordable housing. Smart use of available publicly-owned land and public subsidies are essential but will still likely leave much undone. Rezoning is not a magic bullet that can solve the city’s myriad housing issues, but not rezoning is sure to make our current housing woes worse.
***The Bloomberg administration challenged the 2010 Census results, alleging undercounting in Brooklyn and Queens. The Census Bureau rejected the challenge and the population and housing unit counts for the City remained unchanged. I believe that it is reasonable to assume that some part of population changes reported in the 2020 Census represent shifts that occurred in the 2000-2010 period but were underreported in the 2010 Census.
****One common approach in examining racial change has been to lump the Asian population in with the white population to show gentrifying racial change in “high-opportunity” areas. There has certainly been a growing Asian population in the New York City areas where the white population is increasing. However, the Asian population growth is widespread with only a small share in the areas with an increasing white population.
The New York City Department of City Planning has created Neighborhood Tabulation Areas (NTAs) as a means of aggregating Census tracts into somewhat larger neighborhood areas for analytical purposes. The city is divided into 197 NTAs. Of these, the white population increased by 5% or more in 37 NTAs (18.8%) and by more than 500 people in 48 of them (24.4%). The white population decreased by more than 500 in 92 NTAs (46.8%) and by 5% or more in 62 of them (32.5%).
The Asian population increased by 500 in 136 NTAs (69%) and by 5% or more in 79 (40.1%) of them while decreasing in both number and percent in only 3 NTAs, all in and around Manhattan’s historic Chinatown. There is a high correlation between the growth of the Asian population in NTAs where there has been significant increase in the white population. By my count, 36 NTAs experienced an increase of both whites and Asians of 500 or more, but these 36 NTAs account for only 28.6% of the 136 NTAs where the Asian population increased by 500 or more people. Only 10 NTAs had an increase of 5% or more of both populations and these 10 account for only 16.2% of the 62 NTAs where the Asian population had this significant growth.
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Sandy Hornick is a land use and zoning consultant and a former urban planner (Director of Strategic Planning) for the New York City Department of City Planning.
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A vaccine block party in Rochester (photo: Rachel Barnhart)
On a recent Saturday in Rochester, New York, dozens of people lined up to get vaccinated against COVID-19 at a neighborhood festival. The event featured the opening of a new playground, free lunch from food trucks, and $100 gift cards for receiving a first dose of the vaccine. To celebrate the approval of child vaccines and of boosters, we can have national and state Block Party Weekends for children and their caregivers. These fun events can play a key role in reaching the one-third of Americans who remain unvaccinated.
State and local governments should scale up family-friendly block parties. To do so, governments need to disperse American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to community organizations with proven track records of distributing vaccinations. The effort must center those who face structural barriers to traditional vaccine delivery strategies, but are often willing to get vaccinated. Bringing vaccines directly to people in the community and offering incentives to get vaccinated helps support everyone.
When delta hit, it exposed the fact that Rochester, a majority Black and Latino city where one in three residents lives in poverty, had a vaccination rate below 50%. Meanwhile, affluent, white suburbs reached vaccination rates topping 70%. While many people worked hard to vaccinate city residents, it was clear we needed to try new strategies.
Organizing a block party in Lowell, Massachusetts helped Dr. Hannah Tello vaccinate up to 10 times more people than would typically show up to a community clinic. Replicating this approach in Rochester, Connected Communities added a vaccination clinic to its “Fall Extravaganza” celebrating the opening of a new adventure course for children. Connected Communities lined up food trucks to serve free lunches, ran ads on the top city radio station, and placed lawn signs around the neighborhood. The total budget was about $9,000, funded through nonprofit grants.
Community clinics had been vaccinating a dozen or so people at a time, but the Fall Extravaganza vaccinated 76 people in three hours, 74 of them first doses. People arrived by car, bike and foot. Seniors had questions about how the vaccine interacts with their medication. A few people expressed fear of needles. Many said the $100 incentive got their attention and encouraged them to show up and get their questions answered. People said they heard about the festival from the lawn signs and radio ads, not from the internet. Everyone enjoyed food and music after getting vaccinated.
The Fall Extravaganza hit on the right formula: $100 incentives, marketing, fun, and accessibility. Community groups that are most familiar with the people they serve should be able to readily access ARPA dollars to put on block parties and festivals that feature vaccination clinics. Not only do these events provide life-saving vaccines, they build community and offer healthy and safe activities. Despite the proven success, too many localities in New York are relying on failed approaches to vaccination.
Governments should make $100 incentives available in under-vaccinated communities. Though President Joe Biden encouraged using ARPA funds for $100 vaccination incentives back in July, many state and local governments were skeptical. Rochester area leaders instead used the United Way to privately fund $100 incentives over a two-week period in September, which ensured their availability at the Fall Extravaganza. The incentives worked so well to increase vaccine uptake, the benefit will now go through November 23, this time using federal funding.
In contrast, New York City acted quickly on $100 incentives, vaccinating 80,000 people in the first few weeks the incentive was offered back in August. New York City continues to offer $100 vaccination incentives today. But even incentives are not enough, as the city continues to see disparities in vaccine uptake. The block party model further breaks down barriers to vaccination.
We’ve heard objections to “paying people to do the right thing.” But poor communities -- rural and urban -- have been let down in many ways by our government, which has largely failed to protect them from covid. Offering people money and providing block parties won’t fix the damage that has been done, but it will improve and save lives. The more people that are vaccinated, the safer we all become.
Public health and joy go hand in hand. As we head into winter in New York, covid will certainly come for those who remain unprotected. They deserve our best efforts to reach them quickly — and our thank you.
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Dr. Julia Raifman is an assistant professor at Boston University School of Public Health. Rachel Barnhart is a Monroe County Legislator in Rochester. On Twitter @JuliaRaifman and @RachBarnhart.
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State legislators and survivors of abuse discussing the Child Victims Act (photo: NY Senate)
Last week, advocates rallied in Albany to call on the State Assembly to pass the Adult Survivors Act, a landmark law that would create a lookback period allowing the adult victims of sexual assault and abuse whose claims are now time-barred to pursue those claims in court.
The advocates are right: Passing the Adult Survivors Act is absolutely essential if we are to provide justice to the countless people, mostly women, in New York State who have been assaulted and abused.
The Adult Survivors Act was passed unanimously by the State Senate back in June. However, the Assembly, for reasons that remain unclear, failed to even bring it to a vote at that time. It is imperative that the Assembly does so now.
The Adult Survivors Act is modelled on the Child Victims Act, which created a lookback window for survivors of sexual assault who were under the age of 18 at the time of the assault. The Child Victims Act resulted in over 9,000 lawsuits and has been incredibly effective at holding institutions accountable for long-ago abuse of children.
To understand the importance of the Adult Survivors Act it is worth looking at the details of the Child Victims Act. In February 2019, New York State passed the Child Victims Act, extending the statute of limitations for survivors of child sexual abuse in criminal and civil cases in New York.
Previously, in criminal cases, the statute of limitations for felony offenses ended when the survivor turned 23 years old; now, the Child Victims Act increases the statute of limitations until the survivor turns 28. For misdemeanor offenses, the statute of limitations had ended when the survivor turned 20, but has now been increased to 25 years of age.
In civil cases, prior to the Child Victims Act, the victims of child sexual abuse had only a short window of years, after turning 18, to bring a civil lawsuit against their abuser. The Child Victims Act created a “lookback window” for those cases as well, allowing any victim of sexual abuse whose claim was previously time-barred to bring an action up until August 14, 2020. That window was later extended to August 14, 2021. For claims that have not yet expired, the survivor now has until they turn 55 to file a claim.
The Child Victims Act allowed survivors of sexual abuse to hold powerful institutions liable for abuse that they tolerated for years. It helped more than 9,000 survivors seek justice for the wrongs committed against them. We’ve seen that first-hand. We’ve represented survivors of child sexual abuse and understand how empowering it can be to assert a claim and confront an abuser and finally get justice.
So why do we need the Adult Survivors Act? The Child Victims Act only applied to cases of abuse where the victim was under 18 years of age. The Adult Survivors Act would create a similar one-year lookback window for survivors of sexual abuse who are over 18 and whose claims are presently time-barred.
For civil cases, right now, adult survivors of sexual abuse generally have three years to file a claim. For criminal cases, the statute of limitation is generally five years for felonies, and two years for misdemeanors – some of which can be quite serious.
There has been some progress: In September 2019, the New York Legislature extended the limitations period for some rape and sexual assault cases. That was good news, but the 2019 Law did not extend all limitations periods and, more important, it did not create a lookback window. Therefore, sexual assault claims involving adult survivors that were time-barred in 2019 remain time-barred. Only the Adult Survivors Act will fix this problem.
The Adult Survivors Act should be seen as a necessary companion bill to the Child Victims Act. Given the historical stigma attached to sexual assault, as well as the career threat that reporting assault by a superior at work can entail, it is no surprise that many sexual assault survivors did not report their assaults at the time they occurred or in the years immediately following. With time, however, some survivors are able to come forward. Unfortunately, by the time they do so, the statute of limitations has often passed, and so legal redress is unavailable.
The Adult Survivors Act, by creating a lookback window, would solve this problem. Like the Child Victims Act, it would allow survivors to finally hold powerful institutions and individuals accountable for their conduct.
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Lesley Brovner and Mark Peters are the founding partners of the law firm Peters Brovner and have represented multiple victims of sexual assault.
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Ready for a bill-signing (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of the Governor)
Even before the pandemic, domestic violence was a leading cause of family homelessness in New York City, where a majority of shelter residents are single women of color and their children. In large part, this is because for single mothers, the city’s sky-high housing costs have been a major barrier to fleeing to safety. While New York State offers rental assistance to domestic violence survivors in shelter or at risk of losing their housing through the Family Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement (FHEPS) program, rental assistance levels are set so far below market rates that vouchers tend to go unused for years.
Currently there is not a single neighborhood in New York City where the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment is affordable with the existing voucher. As a result, thousands of families have been left behind by this failing program.
COVID-19 has only intensified financial insecurity for many low-income households and deeply exacerbated the challenges facing survivors. Meanwhile, the increased isolation and stress due to the pandemic made even more women at risk of domestic violence.
Now many of these families are facing their second covid winter with these twin emergencies that force them into an impossible choice – staying with their abusers or leaving and becoming homeless.
New York State has an opportunity right now to change that and help mothers and children across the state access the housing they need to stay safe. In June, state legislators passed a bill (S6573/A8009) to permanently raise the FHEPS rent cap to Fair Market Rent (FMR) and ensure more recipients can utilize their vouchers to increase housing support for families leaving an abusive home so they can afford the ever-increasing rent and have a safe place of their own.*
The FHEPS program provides support to families with minor children who receive cash assistance and allows them to relocate to housing away from their abusers and bypass the shelter system. Months later it still awaits the governor’s signature.
We are urging Governor Kathy Hochul to make a meaningful difference in the lives of survivors by signing the bill into law. While Domestic Violence Awareness Month has come to an end, it is essential that we send survivors a message that their stability and safety is important and we will support them by ensuring that leaving an abusive partner doesn’t mean they must become homeless. However, without the supplemental housing raise to Fair Market Rate, these families risk homelessness or will be stuck in the shelter system without a permanent way out.
The voucher program also contains unique eligibility guidelines intended to address the needs of domestic violence survivors who are unemployed. Many survivors are prohibited from working by their abusive partner and many others are forced to quit their jobs when they flee their abuser. This makes the housing voucher, which does not require an abuse survivor to work, a critical resource for the many survivors who don’t have additional income. By raising the supplement amount to fair market rent, the state will provide much-needed rent relief to address housing stability for thousands of women and children, not just during the pandemic, but long-term.
Over 100 organizations this year worked together to get the higher rent supplement passed in Albany. With Governor Hochul’s signature, this change has the potential to profoundly reduce homelessness in New York State and provide a lifeline to survivors of abuse who would not be able to escape without housing support.
The pandemic has taught us that we are only as safe as the most vulnerable among us. It is a
moral and public health imperative that we ensure all New Yorkers have a stable roof overhead
and that we work to stem the homelessness crisis.
Governor, we applaud your clear-sighted leadership amid the COVID-19 crisis. Now thousands of families urgently need you to help them get the meaningful rent assistance that will enable them to build a safe and healthy life in a home of their own. Sign this bill without delay.
*Note: Even as Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Banks recently released new regulations for CtiyFHEPS that raise rent levels for the city program, which primarily serves working households who reside in shelters and allows them to renew assistance if they earn up to 80% of AMI, the changes we seek to the state program would prevent homelessness entirely for families fleeing domestic violence and parents with children facing eviction who receive public assistance. The state can and must step up to do its part to ensure that these families, who are not eligible for the city program, can achieve housing stability and avoid homelessness.
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Catherine Trapani is the Executive Director of Homeless Services United. Liz Roberts is CEO of Safe Horizon. On Twitter @HSUNYC and @LizRobertsSH.
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