The local authorities of any democratic city or district of a democratic city prefer to be open to residents. Therefore, various innovations are being introduced to achieve this. Active residents, in turn, are also getting involved by creating various public organizations that monitor the work, decisions, and ideas produced by the authorities. In 2024, the Center for the Urban Future and Brooklyn Org published a new report that contains a roadmap for creating a stronger and fairer Brooklyn, which presents specific policy ideas.
These policy ideas are intended to help more Brooklyn residents gain access to affordable housing, quality healthcare, well-paid jobs, and strengthen neighborhoods throughout the borough. The report contains proposals from a variety of community leaders, educators, entrepreneurs, artists, religious leaders, nonprofit executives, and health care experts. For more details, visit brooklyn-yes.com.
Housing crisis
Such interaction between the authorities and residents not only demonstrates their openness to any ideas that will make the lives of residents more comfortable, but also allows for a constructive dialogue. Not hiding problems or keeping them silent, but openly talking about them and contributing to their solution. For example, it’s no secret that Brooklyn is suffering from a housing crisis. Jonathan Marvel, the founder and CEO of Marvel, sees the solution to the problem in rethinking brown bricks for construction.
Like the city as a whole, Borough of Brooklyn is facing an unprecedented housing crisis. With median rents in the borough recently reaching $3,950, foreclosures in neighborhoods from Bed-Stuy to Mill Basin are on the rise. Similarly, high rents are forcing many residents to literally flee the city, and new housing construction is far behind demand, both from new immigrants and young professionals.
But there is a way to solve this problem by rethinking the type of housing typical of Brooklyn, namely the brownstone buildings. Brownstone buildings played a central role in the unique identity and success of the neighborhood, creating attractive, healthy, and safe areas.
And that’s true, it has a right to exist. But city leaders should turn their attention to and adopt a modernized version of brownstone to create more spacious, neighborhood-oriented housing throughout Brooklyn. Although historic brownstone buildings often house one to three families, in today’s limited housing market, such a building should accommodate at least five to eight families.
These new brown houses should also incorporate design features that preserve the human scale of the street landscape. These include construction features such as setbacks on the 5th or 6th floors and new sustainable technologies. To promote this work, the Department of City Planning will need to change the zoning of areas, allowing for greater building height and floor area ratio.
In addition, the Department of Construction should initiate a pilot project in one of the boroughs to test its effectiveness and feasibility. The city council should then establish a working group, bringing together representatives of builders, the Department of Transportation, the Fire Department, and other relevant agencies to amend regulations and zoning laws that will facilitate these new developments throughout Brooklyn.
Public councils
As you know, in Brooklyn, Community Boards have the broadest representation of local authorities, playing a key role in shaping housing policy, street design, and public spaces. They are responsible for creating safe and livable neighborhoods.
In addition, Public Councils make decisions on housing policy in their neighborhoods, street design, municipal services, public spaces, trade, etc. They submit recommendations and proposals to a wide range of city institutions and local officials, and their input can lead to the undisputed success of a project or, conversely, to its complete failure.
Members of the Public Council are often the first to learn about unfinished projects in their neighborhood, which is precisely what indicates the complete openness of their work, and their feedback on these projects is usually taken into account. For example, if the Ministry of Transportation plans to create a bike lane, they seek the approval of the Public Council before proceeding.
If new traffic calming measures are planned for an avenue, the Public Council has the opportunity to vote for or against. Thus, in order to build safe, livable, convenient, joyful, and accessible neighborhoods, it is crucial that the members of the Public Council are allies on these issues. And the fact that such proposals appear, are discussed, and are eventually acted upon indicates a good relationship between residents and those who influence the final decisions.
Legal advice
The aforementioned problem of foreclosures for non-payment of rent has led to a steadily increasing number of homeowners in Brooklyn who are facing it. Lurie Daniel Favors, Executive Director of the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College, believes that these people desperately need help. He is talking about legal advice. The man offers to provide them free of charge.
Central Brooklyn, home to some of the city’s liveliest black and minority communities, is experiencing a wave of foreclosures that is also forcing many families to flee the city. To put this into perspective, in the third quarter of 2023 alone, Brooklyn recorded the highest number of foreclosures in the city. Moreover, the highest concentration of pre-foreclosure cases was in communities of color, where, on average, more than 8% of property owners in predominantly black neighborhoods were overdue on their mortgage payments.
In many cases, homeowners have been able to defend the ownership of their homes against predatory lender practices. But too often, they are simply doomed to fail because a lawyer does not represent them. In 2022, the Center for Law and Justice, along with the New York State Foreclosure Lawyers’ Association, found that 40 percent of homeowners in foreclosure cases did not have access to legal representation.
There is something to listen to
If this does not change, many more Brooklyn residents of color will soon lose their homes, reducing the already low rate of black homeownership, destabilizing communities, and exacerbating the borough’s alarming wealth gap. To help black communities preserve their intergenerationally owned property, the city council should fund free legal representation for homeowners, modeled after the city’s Right to Counsel law, which provides legal representation to tenants facing eviction.
There are few fresh and bold ideas like these that will be needed to create a stronger and more equitable borough, which means that the authorities have something to listen to.
Sources: