https://ny.curbed.com/2018/9/17/1786...brooklyn-nimby
The YIMBY movement comes to New York City
Open New York, the city’s first self-style YIMBY group, advocates for more housing in high-opportunity areas
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Downtown Brooklyn and Fort Greene, currently at the center of a pitched battle between NIMBY and YIMBY activists. Max Touhey
By Sam Raskin
Sep 17, 2018
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On a Wednesday morning in August, the New York City Council’s zoning and franchises subcommittee convened for a hearing about 80 Flatbush, one of the largest proposed developments in Brooklyn.
During the hours-long hearing, residents of nearby brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods expressed their opposition to the project, which they say is too tall and out of scale with the mostly low-density neighborhoods nearby. (They also noted that its height would block much-needed sunlight from Rockwell Bear’s Community Garden.) And why, they asked, is the city always relying on huge projects by profit-seeking developers to create below-market-rate housing?
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But some people present that day would disagree: Members of the nascent pro-development group Open New York, which advocates for more housing across the city, also testified during the hours-long hearing. In their view, the project’s opponents are selfishly trying to thwart development during a housing crisis over far less immediate, parochial concerns like aesthetics, shadows, and an undue sense of control over preventing further neighborhood change. (Project opponents frequently noted how long they had lived in the area.)
Ben Carlos Thypin, an organizer with Open New York who testified that day, characterizes the proposal’s critics as “wealthy homeowners who, at best, seek to maintain the aesthetics of the neighborhood, their views, parking, and property values—and at worst, seek to maintain the ethnic and class composition of the neighborhood that they’ve gentrified over the past several decades.”
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Those factors, the group argues, ought not to trump the benefit of new housing near the Atlantic Terminal, a prime piece of real estate and optimal spot for new housing. A crucial vote for the project, from the City Council’s committee on zoning on franchises, will happen later this week.
“The bottom line is that we need to build more housing, especially in high opportunity neighborhoods like Downtown Brooklyn and Boerum Hill,” says Thypin.
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Open New York, formerly More New York, began in earnest in 2017. Having grown tired of what they regard as the one-sided nature of land use politics in New York (a developer will propose a city-backed project, neighborhood groups vehemently oppose it), Open New York seeks to add a pro-development perspective to the anti-development chorus that often commandeers housing debates.
Its core philosophy mirrors that of other YIMBY—or yes in my backyard—groups in cities like San Francisco or Los Angeles, which advocate for doing away with exclusionary zoning, and combatting the exclusionary sentiment of wealthy enclaves they believe prevents cities from becoming more equitable.
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Often, explains Spencer Heckwolf, an Open New York board member, that vocal minority is largely composed of wealthy residents who prefer to “live in stagnation and not let people build housing in the most high-demand areas.”
The group’s central focus—adding housing density in high-income, transit-rich areas—is a widely-supported approach in planning circles, but doesn’t necessarily have a natural constituency in New York City—or, at least, not one that shows up to weigh in during the city’s multi-step land use review procedure.
Open New York’s members hope to change that by attending community board meetings, City Council hearings, and other places where they can spread the pro-housing gospel.
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Amen, brothers.
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