Coming Events
Evaluating the City's Housing Framework: What does growth have to do with fair housing?
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EVENT DETAILS
Free Via Zoom
Date: Thursday, October 8
Time: 6:30pm EDT
About the Event
In 2023, the City Council adopted the Fair Housing Framework (Local Law 167), which requires New York City to produce a plan for the distribution of housing construction, using equity as its guiding principle. The result, the City's Fair Housing Growth Strategy, calls for the addition of 700,000 housing units over ten years, tripling the recent rate of construction and adding the equivalent of Philadelphia within the existing city limits. About three-quarters of the new units would be market rate, and much of the "affordable" portion would be unaffordable to most New Yorkers. The plan's underlying assumption is that increasing the city's overall housing supply will eventually make housing affordable to those most in need. But what is the evidence that a plan built on that premise will advance the goal of fair housing?
In this program, we will be joined by Chris Walters of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD), Andrew Berman, Executive Director of Village Preservation, and planner and housing scholar Alan Mallach. ANHD argues that the plan has skipped the consideration of affordable housing needs that the law requires, and that it has set district production targets based exclusively on recent production levels rather than on proper analysis. Berman will discuss what the targets would mean on the ground, and why Village Preservation questions the premise that NYC is facing a general housing shortage. rather than a shortage of affordable housing. Mallach will draw from decades of experience with New Jersey's Mount Laurel fair share housing system in evaluating the City's current approach.
Does this plan actually address equity concerns? If not, what would a better considered fair housing strategy look like? Join our event and be part of the discussion!
Meet Our Panel
Moderator:
Layla Law-Gisiko
President, City Club of New York
Chris Walters
Associated Director for Policy and Research, ANHD
Andrew Berman
Executive Director, Village Preservation
Alan Mallach
Author and researcher, The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America and A Decent Home: Planning, Building and Preserving Affordable Housing; Senior fellow, Center for Community Progress; former Director of Housing and Economic Development in Trenton, New Jersey
Will Atlantic Yards' Third Time
Be the Charm or a Strikeout?
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EVENT DETAILS
Free Via Zoom
Date: Wednesday, October 14
Time: 6:30pm EDT
About the Event
Atlantic Yards has already swung and missed twice. In 2006, Forest City Ratner won approval for the project, built the arena, then stumbled with modular construction, and needed a partner with capital to continue. In 2014, Shanghai-based Greenland USA stepped up to the plate, promising to finish the job. But its plans ran aground with the collapse of the Chinese real estate market. The scoreboard: only 40 of a promised 900 apartments for tenants earning less than 60% of area median income have been built, and the blight-inducing rail yards the project supposed to cover remain exposed twenty years later.
Now, after years of delay, a third team, led by Cirrus Real Estate Partners and LCOR, has emerged with a new vision: Thousands more apartments, towers as tall as 80 stories, and a level of density unprecedented in New York City. For this, the State is offering $700 million in new direct subsidies for platforms and additional PILOT financing to come. What extra value is the public getting for this new round of concessions? And will the State finally ensure that the development team delivers, or will it stand by yet again as the project strikes out?
Our panel of experts have been engaged with the project for years and will discuss what goals have been met, what’s been learned so far from failures to meet outstanding commitments, the merits of the proposed Phase II plan, and where we should go from here.
Meet Our Panel
John Shapiro
John is a professor at Pratt's Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, a former Chair of the program. Prior to this, he spent 25 years as a principal at Phillips Price Shapiro Associates, one of the region’s leading planning consultancies. He co-chairs the Waterfront Committee of City Club of New York
Gib Veconi
Gib is Chair of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council
and is a board member of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation, a State agency charged with overseeing the project’s public commitments. He led Brooklyn Community Board 8’s M-CROWN rezoning, approved by the City Council in 2025 as the Atlantic Avenue Mixed Use Plan.
Norman Oder
Moderator
Norman Oder, a journalist for more than 40 years, writes the watchdog Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report, with news, analysis, and commentary. He has broken significant stories about affordable housing, EB-5 financing, and modular construction, among many issues, and contributed to the New York Times, Newsday, City Limits, and other publications.
Ismene Speliotis
Jo Anne Simon
Ismene is the Executive Director of the Mutual Housing Association of New York (MHANY), where her work has focused on very low-income neighborhoods and on meeting the needs of low- and moderate-income families. Under her leadership, MHANY has increased its portfolio to over 1,500 apartments in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens. In 2005, she negotiated a community benefit agreement for affordable housing at Atlantic Yards.
Jo Anne Simon is a member of the New York State Assembly for the 52nd District, which overlaps the Atlantic Yards iproject. She is one of the founders of the BrooklynSpeaks coalitions, which has been advocating for accountability at Atlantic Yards since 2006.
Cracks in the YIMBY Consensus Part 5: A Housing Shortage? Evaluating the Evidence
Free Via Zoom
Date: Thursday, October 22
Time: 6:00pm EDT
Co-sponsored by Village Preservation and CNU NYC.
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This event is part five in the ongoing program series Cracks in the YIMBY Consensus.
Watch the recordings of parts 1-4 on YouTube.
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The YIMBY explanation for the country’s housing affordability crisis rests on three premises: that the country faces a severe housing shortage, that this shortage is driving up costs, and that those cost increases have made housing unaffordable. These premises have become so widely accepted that they have become starting points for policy, rather than theories to evaluate. But what does the evidence actually show?
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In Part 5 of Cracks in the YIMBY Consensus, we speak with Kirk McClure (University of Kansas) and Alex Schwartz (The New School) about new research that challenges these premises. After looking at housing production, vacancy rates, and household formation across decades and hundreds of metropolitan areas, they find ample reason to question the commonly held housing shortage assessment. More provocatively, their research shows that even unrealistically steep reductions in market rents and home prices would do surprisingly little to reduce the affordability problem for those who need the help most — a problem ultimately rooted in wage stagnation and inequality.
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Join us as we discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of the affordability crisis and the appropriate strategies for confronting it.
Meet Our Panel
Kirk McClure
Professor Emeritus of urban planning in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas. His research examines housing market behavior and evaluates federal affordable housing programs. He was a Scholar in Residence at HUD’s Department of Policy Development and Research.
Alex Schwartz
Professor Emeritus in the Public and Urban Policy program at the New School for Social Research. His work focuses on housing and community development in the United States. He is the author of Housing Policy in the United States: 4th Edition.
Juan Rivero, Moderator
Special Projects Director at Village Preservation and Chair of the City Club of New York's Programming Committee.
