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Fixing Fair Share

Testimony last updated July 21, 2010

Testimony to the New York City Charter Revision Commission

July 19, 2010
Joan Byron

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City Charter Revision Commission July 19, 2010

Testimony last updated July 20, 2010

The Pratt Center for Community Development helps communities across New York City engage in urban planning and promote environmental sustainability. Our partners include community development corporations, civic associations, community boards, affordable housing developers, small businesses and labor unions, all seeking to make sure development meets’ their constituents’ and neighborhoods’ needs. Through 197-a plans and the advisory vote of community boards in the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, the City Charter aims to give groups like these a say in land use decisions. In practice, however, the charter’s land use provisions fall short of providing meaningful public input.

We therefore want to express disappointment at the charter commission staff’s recommendation that land use issues be left for future consideration. We agree with the staff that proposals advanced by the Pratt Center and other groups, including Citizens Union, do indeed call for “substantial changes to the balance in the system of land use established in the 1975 Charter.” And we want to stress that those changes are both urgent and necessary. The commission must give them serious consideration.

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City Charter Revision Commission Land Use Expert Forum

Testimony last updated June 24, 2010

The City Charter’s land use provisions center on one fundamental principle: New York City needs to map out the course of its future growth, through an impartial and transparent process. However, under the current version of the charter such long-term planning for the city as a whole has not taken place. The charter puts the City Planning Commission in charge of long-term comprehensive planning, but that commission has come to narrow its focus to reviews of individual proposals for zoning map changes put forth by property holders and the Department of City Planning.

The absence of comprehensive planning leaves New York City without the foundation for sound future growth. Neighborhoods pay the price when development overloads their streets, schools and services. Government agencies do not know where their resources will be needed. When communities attempt their own planning, under charter Sec, 197-a, they have no way to connect their efforts with the city’s own plans. And developers themselves have little certainty that infrastructure and services will be adequate to support their projects.

Meanwhile other major cities in the U.S. and around the world engage in comprehensive planning, with strong public involvement. For example, civic, community, labor, business and other groups in partnership with government are currently revising the London plan, deciding the principles for Greater London’s growth.

New York City has taken an important preliminary step through the establishment of the Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability, which through PlaNYC has set ambitious objectives for improving the city’s environment and reducing its carbon footprint. But PlaNYC is a vision, not a plan. Problematically, it has been developed without either meaningful public participation or a way to ensure city agencies follow through to achieve PlaNYC’s important goals.

The Pratt Center would like to ask the Charter Revision Commission to step up to this historic opportunity and bring inclusive, comprehensive planning to New York City.

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City Contracts Need Wage Standards

Testimony last updated May 11, 2010

Intro 18: Amendment to the Prevailing Wage Law

New York City Council, May 11, 2010

We speak today in support of an important bill that is a necessary stepping stone to a more comprehensive citywide policy on prevailing wage standards. Through the development of the One City One Future platform, which brought together more than 50 diverse organizations, from across the city and across sectors, to envision what equitable growth looks like and how to ensure it, we embraced the principle that underlies Intro 18: The city should use of all of its economic development tools to create living wage jobs, by making wage standards formal conditions for the receipt of public benefits. We must move beyond a deal-by-deal approach and make it formal city policy to ensure that all jobs on all subsidized economic development projects pay at least a living wage or a prevailing wage, whichever is greater.

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Parking Rule Erects Barriers to Affordable Housing

Testimony last updated April 7, 2010

City Council Subcommittee on Zoning & Franchises of the New York City Council
Residential Streetscape Preservation Text Amendment

The Pratt Center recommended that the subcommittee reject a proposed zoning amendment that would require a new off-street parking space for every new unit of housing in residential districts zoned R3 and R4. The requirement would erect a significant barrier to the creation of new units in these zones, and make it prohibitive for owners of houses containing illegally subdivided units to bring those units into compliance with zoning and building codes.

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Pratt Center Calls for Inclusive City Charter Process

Testimony last updated April 6, 2010

On Tuesday, April 6, the Pratt Center submitted testimony to the New York City Charter Review Commission, highlighting the need for an inclusive, accessible and transparent process and the vital importance of land use -- how planning and zoning get done in New York City - among the areas the commission will need to address.

The Pratt Center called for: 

  • Comprehensive planning 
  • Meaningful community participation
  • Fair share
  • Committments to communities

See Janelle Farris testify at the April 6 City Charter Review Commission Hearing (starts at 57:00)

Click below to read the testimony. 

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Saving Independent Retail: Retail Diversity and Neighborhood Health

Testimony last updated September 18, 2009

Testimony to NYS Senate and NYS Assembly Standing Committees on Cities

During the past decade, locally owned retail businesses in neighborhoods all over New York City were on the losing end of the city’s strengthening economy. Prosperity turned into a threat as rising rents made it difficult for many of them to continue operating.

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City Point Tax-Exempt Bond Financing

Testimony last updated September 10, 2009

Testimony to the New York City Capital Resource Corporation
on $20 million stimulus bond financing for City Point retail complex

September 10, 2009

New York City is fortunate to be receiving tax-exempt bond financing under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the vital purpose of restarting stalled development projects. The issue is whether the City is driving a hard enough bargain and sufficiently advancing public objectives given its investment in providing this source of financing. In choosing Albee Development LLC to be a recipient of the bonds’ benefits, however, the New York City Capital Resource Corporation and other public authorities involved with City Point must recognize the need to make this project work as part of a vibrant and diverse mix of retailers in a shopping district that hundreds of thousands of Brooklyn residents depend on. In exchange for taxpayers’ support to make this project possible, the Capital Resource Corporation must make sure that Fulton Street continues to be a place where independent retailers can thrive.

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Coney Island Rezoning

Testimony last updated March 30, 2009

Testimony to Brooklyn Borough President on Coney Island Rezoning
March 30, 2009

I’m Vicki Weiner, Director of Planning & Preservation at the Pratt Center for Community Development. Thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony today.  The Pratt Center is a university-based non-profit organization that works for a more just, equitable, and sustainable city for all New Yorkers by helping communities to plan for and realize their future.  For decades, Coney Island has been a haven for working class New Yorkers. A century ago, it was the first place that working people could reach, and afford, for a break from their daily grind in sweatshops. It has remained for decades a place that people of every walk of life can get to by subway, and yet feel they have gone to another world. As the City of New York proposes to redevelop Coney Island, it must ensure that Coney remains a place that creates opportunity for working New Yorkers. 

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Department of Buildings Challenge Procedures

Testimony last updated March 6, 2009

Testimony to the New York City Department of Buildings Against Proposed Rule 105-05 to Change the Procedures for Challenges

Brad Lander
Pratt Center Senior Fellow
March 6, 2009

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on NYC Department of Buildings Proposed Rule 105-03.  My name is Brad Lander.  I am a Senior Fellow and past director at the Pratt Center for Community Development, former executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, and a resident of South Park Slope, a neighborhood which saw an explosion of illegal construction in the period prior to the recent rezoning going into effect.

I have been both a not-for-profit affordable housing developer -- and so have been an applicant for permits from DOB on many occasions -- and a community planner and advocate, and so have worked with many community groups concerned that DOB was issuing permits for projects that did not comply with zoning, and frustrated by their inability to be heard.

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