Whether you’re a young family in Boerum Hill or a group of four roommates with a cat in Bushwick or an immigrant family in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn offers more opportunity than almost any other place on the planet — provided, of course, that you can afford the rent. Young people especially are being crushed under the cost of living crisis with rent being the number one cost eating up paychecks more every year. We have a unique and once in a generation opportunity to solve it and we must seize the moment now.
Right now, the average rent in Brooklyn for a two-bedroom is nearly $4,600, up more than 9% from just last year. The median income for a household, meanwhile, is just about $81,000 annually, or $6,750 per month. This means that a household would need to shell out nearly 70% of its pre-tax income to afford the average two-bedroom.
How did we get here? The path to this crisis of a 1.41% rental vacancy rate and a 70% increase in home prices since 2010 has been paved by a failure to build enough affordable homes fast enough. In the past three years, over 3,500 units of housing have been lost in the face of City Council modifications or project withdrawals.
We can fix this by making it easier, faster and cheaper to build - everywhere. What if we told you that this is possible to do without a wholesale transformation of neighborhood character - or, more importantly, kicking anyone out?
On Election Day (Nov. 4), we can vote “yes” on Proposals 2, 3, 4, and 5 to house more Brooklynites more affordably. Proposal 2 would create two fast tracks for affordable housing development — one for 100% affordable projects (paid for by all of us) and another to green-light affordable development in the areas that need the most. The process would go from eight months to 90 days - all while preserving local community board input and approval. And the years that it currently takes to pre-negotiate even buildings with 20 apartments with the City Council? Gone.
Proposal 3 would create an expedited review process for projects that do not belong in the current bureaucratic system, like buildings up to four stories in low-density neighborhoods (think some apartments above the bodega) and the addition of a floor or two of housing in high-density neighborhoods (from six floors to seven). No zoning change; no neighborhood character change. Just more housing.
On to Proposal 4 — let’s speak on it. We love the City Council, but it also has too often been “not it.” While Speaker Adrienne Adams deserves tremendous credit for shepherding generational zoning reform through the body last year, historically, the Council is also often where housing has gone to die. This is because the current system places a vise grip on individual Council Members, who are forced to contend with a loud minority of anti-affordable housing voices in the neighborhood who don’t want anyone new moving in, are faced with an impossible choice: block housing or lose your seat. To deal with this, Proposal 4 creates an “appeals board” consisting of the council speaker, the mayor, and the borough president that can potentially override a council vote to block housing - and only return a project to the number of units and the level of affordability the City Planning Commission has already approved. No new negotiations; no circumvention - just more housing for working people.
Lastly, Proposal 5 would finally bring us into the 21st century by replacing 8,000 paper maps used for zoning and housing with one official digitized one.
This crisis isn’t just impacting New York City’s present, but also its future. Between 2020 and 2023, our city lost 9% of New Yorkers under the age of 20 — or more than 186,000 people — and the population of New Yorkers under the age of five has fallen by 18%. This is not only hurting our political representation, but also impacting the funding we receive for projects we need.
We refuse to sit by and let more of our friends and neighbors be forced out of the city they call home. We need your help to safeguard our future. We need to give our next mayor the tools to build more affordable housing quickly, or it’ll be impossible to achieve any goal. Vote YES so we can all afford to stay in the city we love.
Tony Melone is the president of the New Kings Democrats and Carlos Calzadilla is the president of the Brooklyn Young Democrats.
