Raise a cheer: the City Council’s notorious local veto on land use decisions is no more! This week, Vickie Paladino, a staunchly anti-development councilmember from Queens, reluctantly backed a plan for a 248-unit housing project in Bay Terrace. Her support helped the rezoning proposal pass unanimously through the Council.
In years past, Paladino could have easily halted this modest eight-story building, thanks to the local veto power, known as “member deference.” This practice, which allowed a single council member to reject any project within their district, was a long-standing norm.
As Paladino explained in a video discussing her decision—amidst warnings about the potential influx of lower-income residents—her stance was influenced by the new affordable housing appeals board. This board was established following the passage of several pro-housing ballot measures in last year’s election.
The board, which includes the mayor, Council speaker, and relevant borough president, effectively curtails the ability of individual members to block housing developments in their districts, fulfilling its intended purpose even without formal meetings.
In Paladino’s case, her opposition stemmed from concerns about increased density and the perceived impact of new tenants. Other council members, however, have resisted projects by demanding levels of affordability that developers are unwilling to accommodate, often resulting in no development at all.
This was the unfortunate outcome for the stalled project on 145th Street in Harlem. It remained in limbo for years after former Councilmember Kristin Richardson Jordan opposed it, expressing a preference for an empty lot over what she viewed as a gentrification effort, despite the plan including around 500 affordable units. Her opposition ensured the Council blocked the One45 project.
In either case, it is this inability to see the forest for the trees that has helped put us in this acute housing crisis. No single unceremonious strangling of a potential project has created this issue, but all of them in sum have led us here. No one is arguing that local members should reflexively give the OK on every proposal that comes across their desks, but this moment demands that they at least be, in sum, pro-housing construction.
They can and should negotiate on behalf of their districts’ sometimes competing interests about things like building height and affordability set-asides, but this is a crisis in which everyone has to do their part, and no neighborhood gets to opt out just because its denizens don’t want any new neighbors. This is not the countryside nor suburbia; this is New York City, the greatest city in the world, and one that desperately needs the aggressive pursuit of new homes.
This is the mandate of the voters, too, who listened to the arguments and approved all three housing-related ballot questions amending the City Charter by significant margins. They are fed up with years of their representatives kicking the can down the road as rents continue to rise and their friends and neighbors head to Pennsylvania or farther afield.
We hope that the speedy approval of the first expedited land use process in the Bronx and this acknowledgement by a right-wing councilwoman that the days of one person derailing dozens or hundreds of potential residences are over make clear that we’re in a new era.
