City of Yes, No, Maybe So? Public Weighs in on Mayor’s Housing Initiative

“For the first time in a long time, we saw a majority of speakers speak in favor of more housing in every neighborhood, especially their own,” said Annemarie Gray, executive director at Open New York, a nonprofit advocacy group pressing for more housing.

“So many of the most well-resourced parts of the city have been off limits to being part of the solution,” Gray said. “And so we need to pass the strongest version of this, and then we need to keep going. We’re correcting for decades of bad policy here.”

Another supporter who testified, Austin Celestin, is an urban planning graduate student at New York University and a member of Open New York. He was born and raised in the city but is worried about his ability to afford it in the future. 

“If I were to go through anecdotes of friends and family members who have struggled as a result of our housing crisis and zoning policies, I’d probably end up taking up the rest of the public comment period,” he said at the hearing. “The beauty of this proposal is that it actually isn’t one-size-fits-all and actually caters to the different needs and capacities that each neighborhood has.”

Following his testimony, he spoke with City Limits further about why it was important for him to testify in person. He shared that, as a young adult, he’s fortunate to be living at home with his family, but that one day, he and his siblings will want to move out and start families of their own.

“I know soon I’m gonna have to move out. I want to have a family. I want to live, grow up, and raise a family [and] die in this city because I love the city,” he said.  “And I know I can’t do that. I just cannot rent an apartment with the money I have saved up.”