An Open Letter to THE CITY (and to the City)

Samantha Moldonado does her best to make Paul Graziano sound like merely an anti-housing zealot (City of No Way: Meet the Urban Planner Rallying New Yorkers Against Eric Adams’ Housing Agenda) but she, like many others, misrepresents what he and other Queens homeowners are saying. My own neighborhood in Bayside would be totally destroyed by City of Yes proposals, because what might work on the Upper West Side would not work here – not without completely changing the character of the neighborhood. Why is the city trying to treat all of its glorious, distinct, and diverse neighborhoods as if they were all the same? Why would a reporter from The City spread the misinformation that City of Yes means "a little more housing everywhere" when the proposal includes NOTHING that would limit development to "a little more." If that's all planners intended, there would be limits built in to keep it to "a little." But there are no such limits - because the end game here is not a little more housing, but the urbanization of every square inch of the city. Once our tree-lined streets become concrete eyesores, there is no going back, but the city seems intent on seizing this area for more concrete boxes filled with "housing units" instead of actual homes.

If we really wanted to create more affordable housing, we could:

• figure out why landlords are holding some 50,000 apartments off the market, and incentivize them to make those homes available
• fix the 6,000 uninhabitable NYCHA apartments and get people living in them again
• recover some of the real estate lost to Robert Moses and his road-building craze, which cost hundreds of families their homes just for the Clearview Expressway alone, not to mention the Cross Bronx and other highways. Cover over those roadways and build lovely townhome communities above them, reversing the home-killing actions of a previous generation of misguided planners.

The idea that the city owns everything is an extremely dangerous point of view, one that could easily snowball out of control, and I would urge New Yorkers to think long and hard about that before jumping on the City of Yes bandwagon. The city does not own everything! The city owns the public spaces, and landlords and homeowners own their private spaces. In between the two is the less concrete (if you'll pardon the pun) concept of community, of neighborhood, of the character and feel that attracts residents to the way of life that suits them. When I was young and single I lived in lovely but dense neighborhoods in Brooklyn, with easy access to subways. When I was choosing a home for myself and my family, I chose a neighborhood of modest homes in a modest neighborhood, with charming and healthy green space and a rare sense of community. I love my little 40x100 lot, side by side with friendly neighbors just a few feet away – it is hardly a suburb! – and I don't want to see my neighborhood ruined. Why would anyone think that homeowners here would respond to this in any other way but with a resounding NO?

If city council members from the densest parts of the city are allowed to vote to seize our neighborhoods against our will and force them all into the same concrete mold, it would be a terribly anti-democratic move that takes away the voices of homeowners in some of our loveliest neighborhoods. Sure, it's easy to write an article blaming those who would defend our neighborhoods, making us sound like curmudgeonly old "get off my lawn" types. A more thoughtful article would have examined the details of the City of Yes and shown readers exactly what is happening. A more thoughtful proposal from the city would approach our housing shortage neighborhood by neighborhood, in an effort to add what might actually be "a little more housing everywhere." As it stands now, that line is a total misrepresentation of what's in store for us if this passes. And if the shocking position that the city owns everything isn't shot down along with this proposal, we are all in big trouble.