Pratt Center for Community Development

Planning, Building, & Educating for Change.

Pratt Center eNews, Fall 2006

In this Issue:

A More Livable City for ALL New Yorkers?

Last month, we got our first peek at what is likely to be in Mayor Bloomberg's much-anticipated strategic land use plan. In his second inaugural address back in January, the mayor promised a bold plan for the City's growth in the coming decades. "Visions for New York City: Housing and the Public Realm" — a report by Alex Garvin & Associates Inc. (City Planning Commissioner, and former lead planner for NYC2012 & the LMDC) to the NYC Economic Development Corporation, posted on StreetsBlog in August — begins to fill out that vision.

It is encouraging to see the Mayor taking a long-term view on how to make growth work for New York City communities. The City is anticipated to grow by more than 1 million people over the next 25 years. The Garvin report identifies opportunities for over 300,000 new housing units — over railyards (Sunnyside), highways (the BQE & Prospect Expressway), and along improved transit corridors 21st Street in Queens & 3rd Avenue in the Bronx). Especially welcome is the recognition that it will take significant improvements in the "public realm" throughout the five boroughs, particularly transit infrastructure and green space.

But opportunity, affordability, and equity must also be top priorities in this plan. The million new residents will mostly be working-class immigrants, not yuppies and millionaires. Working-class communities deep in the outer boroughs are also feeling the strains of growth, so we cannot focus "public realm" investments only where they will help to boost condo prices.

We will need an equally ambitious plan to keep the city diverse and affordable, so that the mayor's dreams for the city can be shared across lines of race and class. In last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Mayor Bloomberg was quoted saying "If you're worried about gentrification, don't improve the schools and don't bring down crime." Is the mayor really so cavalier about the unacceptable choice facing so many NYC households: live in a lousy neighborhood, or get priced out of an improving one?

We hope not. We hope that the plan includes equally bold efforts to create truly integrated communities, to ensure that families can stay in their communities as the City's actions help boost market-rate housing prices ... to make room for the child care and schools that generate opportunity ... to share the benefits of growth in every instance.

Much of the Pratt Center's work focuses on these critical issues. This e-newsletter showcases some of our work over the past several months, including our efforts in Bedford Stuyvesant, the South Bronx and Queens — and even a bit far afield in New Orleans East.

Sincerely,
Brad Lander
Director, Pratt Center

P.S. We hope that you enjoy our new look, created with the generous assistance of the Taproot Foundation.

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Redefining Economic Development

Together with NYC Jobs with Justice and the Brennan Center for Justice, we have been hosting a summer series on "redefining economic development." Our workshops have featured leaders from NYC community organizations, unions, environmental groups, and policy experts on creating good jobs, building and preserving affordable housing, clean and green infrastructure, financial justice, and workforce development. The sessions serve as a space for networking, issue and strategy education, and principles development - a base for developing a broader blueprint for progressive economic development. Session presentations and materials are available online. The final session on government processes (including land use, subsidies and the City Budget) is being held on Tuesday, September 19th.

For more information and to RVSP for the final session, visit our Redefining Economic Development page.

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Sheridan Expressway: Community Vision

Sheridan Expressway: Community Vision

Community groups in the South Bronx have a homegrown and ambitious vision of transformation — no less ambitious than the one in the Garvin Report (see above) — bringing down the Sheridan Expressway and reuniting neighborhoods with the Bronx River. This spring, the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance held a series of community planning sessions. Pratt Center staff Joan Byron, Preston Johnson, and Paula Crespo facilitated a broadly representative group in drafting a set of development principles, as well as a concrete and visionary plan for the redevelopment of the Sheridan's 28-acre right-of-way.

The plan includes open space and access to the Bronx River for the neighborhoods now cut off by the Sheridan - between 900 and 1,200 units of mixed-income/affordable housing, space for community facilities, and retail/commercial development. The plan and details are available at http://www.southbronxvision.org.

The New York State Department of Transportation is moving ahead with the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) that will determine whether this vision can become reality. Unfortunately, they are proposing to expand the Sheridan Expressway, thereby further isolating and alienating South Bronx residents. But they will also consider the community's alternative. The Pratt Center and its South Bronx allies are keeping a close eye on the EIS process, and pressing NYSDOT to weigh the economic, environmental, and social values created by removing the Sheridan against the very small differences in traffic movement created by the alternatives.

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Affordable Housing In a Growing New York

Affordable Housing In a Growing New York

Seeking Affordable Housing in Queens: Over the past several months the Pratt Center (together with the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development) has been working with a new coalition of community groups, Queens for Affordable Housing, to secure affordable housing for the diverse and growing communities across Queens. Partially as a result, the City rezoned Queens Boulevard in Woodside with inclusionary zoning to create affordable housing for low- and moderate-income families - the first of its kind in Queens. On September 21st, the coalition will sponsor a Queens Affordable Housing Summit. Future efforts will focus on Queens West/Long Island City, the upcoming rezoning of Jamaica, and Willets Point.

Reforming the Luxury Tax Exemption: The Center is pleased to be working toward citywide reform of the 421-a property tax exemption — which last year cost the City over $400 million, but mostly subsidizes luxury housing in Manhattan and in gentrifying neighborhoods. The Center's report, Reforming the 421a Tax Exemption Program: Subsidize Affordable Homes, Not Luxury Development PDF icon, released with Habitat for Humanity NYC in April, was covered in the New York Times (login required), and has become part of the conversation about how to reform the program.

The Pratt Center's Brad Lander is serving on the 421-a reform task force that Mayor Bloomberg and HPD Commissioner Shaun Donovan have convened. The Pratt Center is also working with Housing Here & Now, and with NYS Assembly Housing Chairman Vito Lopez, who has introduced reform legislation in Albany. The contours of reform will be debated this fall, after the task force releases its recommendations. Success will mean not only hundreds of millions of new dollars for affordable housing, but also that New Yorkers stop paying extra taxes to price themselves out of their own neighborhoods.

Reclaiming New York State's Lost Housing Legacy: For more than a decade, affordable housing has been a distant priority in the Governor's Mansion in Albany. In anticipation of a new governor, the Pratt Center released "Time for a Gut Rehab: How the Next Governor Can Rebuild New York State's Affordable Housing Legacy." The report details the growing crisis, and offers lessons from New York's history and from other states. Recommendations include a dedicated affordable housing trust fund, a reinvigorated rent regulation program to prevent massive loss of affordable housing (made especially salient by the recent news that Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village are for sale), and statewide and regional planning to support diverse, livable, affordable communities statewide.

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Rebuilding New Orleans East

Rebuilding New Orleans East

This past winter, Pratt Institute & the New Jersey Institute of Technology received a grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to support ACORN Housing Corporation's efforts to rebuild New Orleans East and assist residents to return home. Partially below sea level and hit by breaks in two levees, New Orleans East was among the communities most affected by Hurricane Katrina a year ago. Students have helped clean homes, document conditions, create a geographic information system, and prepare applications to secure properties that ACORN Housing can rebuild.

This semester, Pratt & NJIT are working with ACORN Housing and neighborhood residents to design a sustainable and affordable "model block," including the rehabilitation of homes that can be saved, development of new affordable housing and landscape planning to reduce the effects of future floods.

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In Bed-Stuy: Community Neighborhood Economic Development

In April, the City officially launched its "Comprehensive Neighborhood Economic Development" (CNED) initiative. Launched by a coalition of New York City agencies and community organizations, CNED is aimed at promoting economic development and resident self-sufficiency in distressed low-income communities. Beginning in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the effort focuses on workforce development, asset-building/financial literacy, and business diversity/small business development.

At the kick-off event, the Pratt Center's Rudy Bryant shared the dais with Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff and Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation CEO Colvin Grannum where he discussed the Center's role in this initiative. The Pratt Center is an active part of the planning process for the effort, focusing on outreach and community input, and helping to develop the not-for-profit capacity to deliver results.

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Big City / Small Planet Energy Efficiency Seminar

Preston Johnson

In May, Preston Johnson became the Pratt Center's NYC Outreach Coordinator for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) Energy $mart Communities program. On June 8, 2006, the Pratt Center hosted a one-day energy technology conference at Pratt's Brooklyn Campus. The event, billed Big City/ Small Planet: An Energy Technology Seminar for NYC Residential & Commercial Buildings, brought together a wide range of contractors, developers, building operators, and not-for-profits. It focused on opportunities for sustainable and energy-efficient approaches to building and development. The Pratt Center will intensify its efforts to help industrial and low-income residential clients gain access to subsidies and below-market interest rates to implement energy efficiency building improvements.

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Upcoming Events

  • September 19th Redefining Economic Development NYC Session #6: 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Pratt Manhattan, Room 609 (144 W. 14th Street between 6th & 7th Ave.).
    » RSVP online
  • September 21st Queens Affordable Housing Summit: 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Citigroup Building in Long Island City. Breakfast & Lunch will be provided.
    » RSVP online or by calling Marnie McGregor at (718) 636-3496
  • November 3rd "Art and the Contested City: A Conference Exploring the Role of the Arts in Contemporary Struggles over Urban Space" at Pratt Institute Brooklyn Campus, Higgins Hall, all day (9 am to 6:30 pm).
    » RSVP online

For more information and to RSVP, visit our Events page.

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