NYC NOW - September 6, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

The New York City Comptroller is vetoing a lucrative contract between the city and a medical services provider to house and care for migrants. U-S Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, is backing a bipartisan push for term limits. And we continue our deep dive into the role community gardens play across the metro region.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Sean Carlson. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is vetoing a lucrative contract between the city and a medical services provider to house and care for migrants. Lander rejected the $432 million contract between Docko and the city, citing the company's inexperience in supporting migrants, among other concerns. Lander says this is the first emergency contract his office has rejected. But Mayor Eric Adams has the power to override Landers veto and approve the contract unilaterally.

Doc Go did not immediately respond to a request for comment. U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is backing a bipartisan push for term limits. The New York Democrat says she's working with Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, on a measure that would enact term limits across all branches of the federal government, especially the U.S. Supreme Court. As a way to depoliticize them, I would give them, you know, a 20-year term limit. I think Congress could have similar term limits. 18 years in the Senate might work.

Maybe 18 years in the House might work. That's a lot of time to get good at your job, to become a chairman, to get things done. At the same time, Gillibrand says there should not be an age limit for serving in Congress. She also says she will not call for Senators Diane Feinstein or Mitch McConnell to resign despite concerns over their help. Stick around. There's more after the break. All this week, we're following. focusing on community gardens, the history of these urban gems, and the issues that play out in and around them. Today, we're exploring the tension that often arises between two very real

needs in a neighborhood, the need for green space, competing with the need for more housing, especially affordable housing. Housing insecurity is an ongoing threat to many New Yorkers, but at the same time, a lack of access to green space, nature, and fresh fruits and vegetables can adversely affect the quality of life in a community. My colleague Michael Hill spoke with two well acquainted with the push and pull between these two important things. Vicki Bean is New York City's former commissioner of housing, preservation, and development under Mayor de Blasio. She's now a professor with NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. And Magalie Regis is a board member at the New York City Community Garden Coalition.

Here's their conversation. The tension perceived or real is longstanding. Mayor June Leone put all the city's community gardens up for sale for developers a quarter of century ago, and similar pushes have happened across mayoral administrations. To both of you, why do you think this conversation comes back time and time again? Vicki, if you would go first, please? So one of the problems that New York City has is that it has a decreasing amount of land available for development in general. So the pressure on how we use our land continues to increase.

And so there's tension between all kinds of uses of land. but especially between community gardens and affordable housing. Megali? To give you a little bit of history, landlords had abandoned their buildings in poor neighborhoods during the 1970s fiscal crisis, and the properties became part of the city. And neighborhood residents transformed these to gardens.

And Giuliani had very strong and often controversial opinions and made very strong statements that got amplified by the press. So that's why a lot has been written about it and it persists. The city is juggling a housing crisis among senior citizens, migrants, and their families, and single adults just to name a few. Vicki, where is housing needed in the city and how much of it? Housing is needed in every neighborhood across the city. Look, the problem with trying to set a number is that,

the number of houses that are needed, the number of apartments that are needed, will vary with market conditions with what's going on in terms of things like the migrant crisis. The administration has announced that it wants to provide 500 million new homes, not all affordable, but 500 million new homes over the next 10 years. And that's a very realistic need. Vicki, is that easier to achieve now that we're kind of post-pandemic and there are so many vacant office buildings in the city? Certainly there is hope that we can convert some of those vacant or almost vacant office buildings. It's easier said than done, unfortunately. First of all, it does require regulatory change and that regulatory change did not come in the last state legislative session.

The city has proposed legislative change or rezoning, but it has to be passed. The other thing is that not all office buildings turn out to be easy to convert. They were built for huge technology, and they're often very, very difficult and expensive to convert. We need some creative and innovative solutions to try to make that happen, because keeping them empty, years after years, especially since people are not going back to the office, we have to find a way of occupying these buildings with housing without attacking our gardens. The best example of this tension between housing needs and green space accessibility is the current plan to replace the Elizabeth Street Garden in Little Italy with mostly affordable housing for seniors. Despite a decades-old fight by garden advocates against this plant, the city is moving ahead with it. Vicki, do you have a sense of why the city approved this spot to bring more housing into the area, considering the level of resistance?

Yes, and with full disclosure, I was commissioner when that decision was made. So bear direct responsibility for that. Look, the Lower East Side has a critical housing need and especially a need for its senior residents. there's very little empty space on the Lower East Side. The Elizabeth Street Garden is not one of the city's recognized community gardens. It was always scheduled to be developed as affordable housing and as senior housing. They're very, very important, but the only way to reduce this tension is to have broader plans about how we're going to house the people who need to be housed

and provide green space and community gardens. Magalie, tell me, when community gardens challenge plans will redevelopment, how likely are they to win that fight? When you've nurtured something for 20, 30 years, it's really hard for us to give it up. Yes, we need housing, but a lot of these same seniors or seniors in that area have told us that this is their only part.

A lot of our gardens that were on housing land, they were transferred by the sheer will of those politicians during the Bloomberg administration to the departments of parks and recreation. So it is possible to take a garden that's on HPD land and move it to parks. And that leads me to this question really for both of you. But Vicki, if he would go first, how do you strike a balance there with the folks who are living there don't have to walk? 10, 12, 14, 15 blocks to enjoy green space. It's a constant balancing act, but again, I think we have to really focus on how do we use the land that we already have put some development on. That may mean that you need to allow two extra stories on buildings that do go up.

Maga Lee, your response to that, please. We have 500 gardens in the city. we should be seeking a lot more. Our land mass is 0.1% of the landmass in the five boroughs. So it's really an insult to tell us that they need our gardens to put housing on when there are so many more available, either existing buildings or truly empty lots. That has to be done through legislation and innovation. So we are a drop in the bucket.

Why are they attacking us? Vicki Bean is with NYU's Furman Center and Magalie Regis is a board member of the New York City Community Garden Coalition. Thank you for this great conversation. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day.

I'm Sean Carlson. We'll be back tomorrow.