Dear John,
What kind of city do we want to build out of this pandemic? It’s time to start offering a bolder vision and concrete ideas to get there.
The New York Times just published my op-ed about how the response of New York City leaders to our last big economic crises set us on a path toward rampant inequality -- and how this time, we can do things differently to build a more affordable, inclusive, and just future.
Please take a few minutes to read the piece. If you share this vision for our city, please share it with your friends and family on social media →
City leaders responded to the 1970’s fiscal crisis by cutting the social safety net and infrastructure investment, laying off thousands of workers, and turning over public land to developers who got big tax breaks.
And after the 2008 financial crisis, Wall Street private equity, hedge funds and developers -- spurred on by government policy -- swooped in and spent billions on buying up foreclosed homes, markedly decreasing the U.S. homeownership rate and paving the way for the luxury condo boom and affordability crisis we have today.
But New York City’s history shows us that this isn’t the only path forward. There are more promising lessons in our city’s past, too:
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In the 1960’s, instead of selling the decommissioned and abandoned Brooklyn Navy Yard off for scrap, or to be converted into condos, the City turned the land over to a non-profit development corporation. Today, there are 500 companies there employing 11,000 people -- including companies that organized quickly together to manufacture PPE when the pandemic hit.
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Around the same period, the city worked with unions and turned a formerly blighted property in Chelsea into Penn South, a democratically-owned, affordable housing cooperative. Penn South, along with Mitchell-Lama and other limited-equity cooperatives, has kept tens of thousands of units affordable over the years -- and made headlines when residents moved to social distancing a week before the rest of the city.
The social solidarity fostered by both of these institutions literally helped save lives.
I’ve introduced a bill in the City Council to create a NYC land bank, so we can follow the model of Penn South & the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Rather than let for-profit developers gobble up properties that fall into distress during the pandemic, we can acquire distressed properties and put them to public purpose.
We’ve got urgent work to do in the short term: to prevent a mass eviction epidemic by supporting campaigns for a real eviction moratorium and rent relief. And to save small businesses, through the “Small Business Recovery Lease” program that we’ve proposed.
But we need vision for the long-term as well. Let’s get started now, and work with NYC’s community land trusts to create permanently affordable, socially-owned housing and commercial space that create a foundation for shared prosperity.
Please share the op-ed so we can start working together to make that vision a reality.
The grounding principle of NYC’s economic recovery must be long-term investments in affordable housing and jobs that bring genuinely shared, equitable growth. We should be clear-eyed about the challenges. But that’s the path forward that we’re fighting for together.
Brad
