The City will hold a final disposition hearing about the give-away of over a dozen neglected public lots in Brownsville on Wednesday, January 11 at 10am at the Municipal Building at 1 Center Street. The give-away of these lots will add 11 to 84 public lots that have gone from the City to private for-profit developers since January 1, 2014.
596 Acres will testify specifically about four lots onHinsdale Street between Blake and Sutter where neighbors have been organizing for a different outcome. Our testimony is below. Come voice your opinion about how the City is disposing of our land. You can also submit your comments by email to Ms. Galory at the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, jgalory@cityhall.nyc.gov (feel free to copy and paste from the below).
596 Acres opposes the disposition of these lots in Brooklyn Community District 5, particularly 285, 287, 289 and 291 Hinsdale Street between Blake and Sutter (Brooklyn block 3767, lots 10, 11, 12 and 13), on behalf of 596 Acres, Inc. and neighbors who live and work nearby.
These lots are not ripe for disposition. Neither the program nor the certain properties included here been through the public review that the New York City Charter mandates for disposition of public property.
The process that led to this imminent land give away has not been transparent or accessible to the public. When Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) issued its Request for Qualifications for the New Infill Homeownership Opportunity Program (NIHOP), it stated NIHOP with buildings of four units or more would be going through the City’s standard land use review: the Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP).
This proposed project includes four separate three-unit buildings. This neatly fits below the articulated NIHOP standard for triggering ULURP (it also fits into the City Charter’s exception for the City being able to give these publicly owned lots away without following ULURP via the Urban Development Action Area Program).
Avoiding ULURP keeps the public from participating in the disposition of our land. ULURP ensures notice to local community boards, hearings in the impacted area and in the borough, as well as City Council. The abridged process the City is using, which culminates in today’s disposition hearing, has not included any such hearings or required such approvals. This disposition hearing is the first opportunity for public comment. 596 Acres is submitting this comment today in opposition to the disposition of Brooklyn block 3767, lots 10, 11, 12 and 13.
In total, the plan for which these lots are being transferred to a private developer today will include only 12 apartments. But the zoning allows many more: a single building built on all four lots could have 34 studio apartments in it. Studio apartments for seniors are badly needed in East New York and for seniors who are at risk of homelessness in every neighborhood in our housing-starved city.
When the City provides free land to house people who make much more money than those who live in the neighborhoods where that land is located, it appears to be City-sponsored gentrification. According to HPD, the median income in East New York, where this lot is located, is $34,512 per year for a family of three. The plan for which these lots are being transferred to a private developer today is to build 12 apartments for rent and ownership by families of three making between $65,250 and $106,080 – between twice and a-little-more-than-three-times what average people in the neighborhood make. We can do better.
Under the plan for which these lots are being transferred to a private developer today, restrictions on resale of the buildings will expire in only 20 years. They will then be able to be sold or rented for any amount, to anyone, of any income. If the City is going to give free land to a developer to build housing on, that housing should be affordable forever. To achieve this, the City could require the use of a community land trust or some other mechanism for permanent affordability standards.
Via 596 Acres, local activists have been advocating for the transfer of the four Hinsdale Street lots from HPD to NYC Parks for the creation of a community garden since September. A hopeful New Yorker who grew up across the street from these neglected public lots has been leading local youth through the process of improving their own neighborhood by planning for how this public land can finally serve true public good as a community green space. The hopeful young gardeners have presented their vision and gotten support from council Member Inez Barron, and Community Board 5. It is clear that their vision of an alternate public use for the site will benefit many more than 12 families.
596 Acres encourages the City to re-examine the disposition of Brooklyn block 3767, lots 10, 11, 12 and 13 via NIHOP and consider alternate plans that will benefit the local community and New York City as a whole more than the 12 units of market-rate housing proposed today. Our land can do much more.
