Charter Revision Commission Hearing on Land Use and Housing

Good afternoon, Chair Buery and Commissioners. My name is Howard Slatkin, and I am Executive Director of Citizens Housing and Planning Council, an 87-year-old policy research organization. Prior to this, I spent over 20 years with the Department of City Planning, including as Deputy Executive Director for Strategic Planning (a position mandated by the Charter). I am pleased to be with you to share lessons from CHPC’s research on the ULURP process, and from my own experience.

I am submitting as part of my testimony a report CHPC has released today on the subject of ULURP, housing, and Charter reform. In the interest of time, I will focus my remarks on three topics: the skewed political incentives embedded in the current structure of ULURP, how the 1989 Charter revisions got us here, and finally, some principles to guide reform.

ULURP

ULURP has many strengths – including firm deadlines, transparency, and a level of public participation and open debate that far exceed the ordinary legislative process. But it also contains built-in political incentives skewed against housing.

This problem is rooted in two intertwined factors: NIMBYism and member deference. We need to understand these not as irrational behaviors or personal failings that can be resolved through individual effort, but rather as rational, systemic phenomena that we need to account for in the design of our decision process.

NIMBYism is the common, self-interested resistance of residents to local changes that are beneficial to others but not necessarily to them. NIMBYism is naturally louder than the voice of those in need of housing. At the time of rezoning, the future occupants of new apartment buildings are unknown (even to themselves!) and cant speak up for their interests. The millions who benefit a little bit from the addition of housing don’t typically come to public hearings. This quiet majority is represented by officials with a broader geographical purview.

Member deference is an unwritten agreement that enables each Council member to effectively wield the authority of the full Council regarding matters in their own district. But it introduces a systematic bias against new housing and the equitable distribution of housing.

Under member deference, local elected officials who oppose new housing have the power to bar the door. And electeds who might favor new housing are consigned to a Thunderdome-style battle with local project opponents, where they face harsh political penalties if they dare advocate for citywide needs.

Simply put, the system is skewed to make it too difficult to say yes, and too easy to say no (or not now). As a result, proposals are cut back, delayed, or often never introduced at all, because the local member has made it clear that this would be a futile investment of time and resources.

The key question is not whether residents or Council members are behaving rationally, but whether our decision process is designed rationally. A system that defers to local opponents will predictably fail to meet citywide or societal needs, and will reproduce geographical inequities as individual communities opt out of changes.

1975 and 1989

The ULURP process wasn’t originally conceived this way. The original idea in 1975 was to set up a transparent, public discussion with “local voice, citywide responsibility” – locals get the first say in the process, but decision authority rests with officials who have citywide or borough-wide purview.

In 1989, the City Council replaced the Board of Estimate in the ULURP process. This effectively broke the original concept of ULURP. The practice of member deference means that the final vote in the process is effectively delegated to the only elected official who could potentially be fired by local opponents. Instead of contextualizing local perspectives through a citywide lens, this process elevates localism above citywide interests.

(It’s important to highlight here that land use items are an outlier within the Council’s authority – they’re the only actions of a strictly local nature on which the Council votes.)

CHPC’s analysis of data on ULURP shows that indeed, there have been fewer rezonings since the 1989 Charter revisions, and that neighborhoods that have resisted rezoning have typically added less housing in recent decades.

Here are a couple of additional reasons for today’s Charter Revision Commission to reexamine the 1989 changes to ULURP:

• Our housing shortage is vastly more severe. The city’s main housing challenge in the 1980s was restoring neighborhoods following the devastation of the 1970s. Today, decades of population growth and limited housing production have produced sky-high housing prices and vanishingly low vacancy rates. It’s understandable that the 1989 Commission might not have seen the addition of housing as a top priority, but today it is an issue that cannot be ignored.
• Demographic changes. The 1989 Charter revisions were animated by the imperative of improving representation for communities of color in a majority-white city. Today, however, the demographics of the citys population have changed dramatically, as has the composition of citywide elected officials. The “minority” communities protected by member deference today are often whiter, more affluent homeowners.

Principles for Charter Revision

This Commission has no more power to prohibit NIMBYism or member deference than it does to prohibit the common cold. But it can propose modifications to the ULURP process that empower officials with broader perspectives (and geographically broader constituencies).

We will offer more detailed proposals for reform in the near future, but for now propose these principles to guide reforms:

• Return to the original ULURP concept of “local voice, citywide responsibility.”
• Build into the process a check against member deference.
• Promote cooperation rather than stoking conflict or rivalry.
• Make minor actions faster and less resource-intensive.
• Accelerate urgent affordable housing investments with procedural relief.
  • Disposition of City-owned land for affordable housing, and
  • NYCHA campus investments made through a resident partnership model

Thank you, and I will be happy to elaborate on any of these points, and to answer any questions you may have.