Before becoming Council Members, we first met years ago while organizing with tenants, fighting egregious rezonings and gentrification that was disempowering communities of color. We understood then, as we understand now, the need for affordable housing – we were in court rooms with tenants who were getting evicted after their rents skyrocketed. Our city’s diverse communities, especially our Black, Latino and Asian communities, have a major stake in the need for more affordable housing, and their voices matter as we make decisions about the development of our city.
It’s why we, as representatives of these communities, have been among those leading the Council to approve the creation of historic amounts of new housing.
The Council has approved over 94% of housing applications that have come before us to produce over 130,000 homes, and we have successfully pushed for these homes to be more affordable for the families and residents in our neighborhoods. As part of approving this new development, we have also secured billions of dollars in critical investments to confront persistent racial inequities in economic opportunity, health outcomes, and overall well-being in communities.
Yet, it would be easy to find yourself confused about these realities based on the arguments being advanced to support Mayor Adams’ misleading ballot proposals 2, 3, and 4 in this election.
The misleading language voters will encounter on ballots hides the proposals’ impact: to take away communities’ power used to hold developers accountable for delivering truly affordable homes and investments for residents who molded our neighborhoods.
The core argument in support of these proposals, like so much of the recent conversation about housing, has been deceptively simplified to be about creating homes. Those arguing in support of the proposals ignore any critical racial analysis and the history of how Black, Latino and Asian communities have been hurt most when they lacked power in development decisions.
When the power to approve development was unequally concentrated in our city, Robert Moses used it to displace Black and Latino communities. Decades later, these working-class communities are still struggling to recover from the layered injustices. Mayor Adams’ Ballot Proposals 2, 3 and 4 risk leaving our city vulnerable to repeating this history.
The current democratic land use process emerged as a way to protect against these injustices, and was paired with successful efforts to increase racially equitable representation on the City Council. It took groundbreaking legal victories that were brought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to require New York City to have a City Council with adequate representation for racially diverse neighborhoods.
Now that we have the most diverse City Council in history, with record representation for women, Black, Latino and Asian New Yorkers while approving record amounts of housing with demanded investments, it should raise alarms that there is an effort to take away this hard fought-for democratic power. It’s important that we question: who benefits when power that belongs to the people is taken away and placed in the hands of a few? And who is behind this?
We know that Mayor Adams has sold our city to Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies– even going as far as to veto our bills that protect immigrants and workers of color to appease corporate interests and Donald Trump. At every turn, Mayor Adams has fought the City Council’s efforts to champion workers and make this city more affordable. These ballot proposals are more of the same.
We know that private development is needed to confront our housing crisis, and we understand that the land use process has problems that we must confront. However, powerful interests have never voluntarily ceded to the interests of Black, Latino and Asian communities without demands backed by power.
It matters what we build and for whom. Simply building housing, without investing in our communities or ensuring truly affordable homes for racially diverse and working-class people, will not solve the housing crisis. It will only deepen historical injustices and widen inequity. We want housing that delivers a more equitable future, alongside opportunities that help working families raise their children, New Yorkers advance, and seniors age-in-place, right here in our city.
Mayor Adams’ misleading Ballot Proposals 2, 3 and 4 are a false promise that will undermine these goals.
To deliver a just future for our city, we must remember our past, which is one that Black, Latino, and Asian New Yorkers don’t have the privilege of forgetting.
