My Sixth Mayor, Your Ballot.

Ed Koch was mayor when I was born, way back in 1985, right here in Brooklyn, specifically at Park Slope’s Methodist Hospital. This year is the tenth mayoral election of my life, and the winner will be the sixth mayor I have lived under. Some would call me a “native,” but whatever the label, for better or somehow worse to some, I am a New Yorker. I was a New Yorker before anything else, and I always will be.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 4th, is Election Day. If you haven’t already voted, check your poll site and make sure your voice is heard between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. Bubble in the space next to Zohran Mamdani for Mayor, Antonio Reynoso for Borough President, and in my neck of the woods, Council Member Shahana Hanif. There’s also the matter of the ballot questions, and I think you should vote 'yes' on them, especially questions 2 through 5. I’ll explain why.

It is incredibly difficult to become mayor, and Zohran’s path has been especially difficult. Assuming he wins, it will be a great moment for the city and a true win for hope over cynicism. People should celebrate. But then it actually gets harder. Mamdani has set a goal of building hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units, and we need to provide him with the tools not just to discuss that agenda but actually to implement it. That is where the Charter comes in.

First, I must admit that I was not always aware that the Charter was the city’s constitution. The only thing I really knew about local government growing up was that Bill de Blasio was my councilman. Now I serve as a commissioner on the Charter Revision Commission, not the one that placed these particular questions on the ballot, but a different one (the City Council’s/ appointed by BP Reynoso).

The Charter serves as the rulebook for how New York City operates, outlining the processes for decision-making, the allocation of power, and the structure of planning and budgeting. It can be revised when a Charter Revision Commission proposes changes and voters approve them, as happened in 1898, 1901, 1938, 1963, 1975, 2018, and 2024. That is exactly what is happening this year. These questions are not abstract or obscure—questions 2 through 5 concern one of the most pressing issues facing New Yorkers today: housing.

And housing is not an abstract policy debate. It is the lived reality of millions of New Yorkers. In 1990, Vernon Reid (Living Colour Guitarist) said, “It is probably the sound of people looking for cheap apartments.” That, he explained, is the New York Sound. Mr. Reid was speaking the truth then, and it had been true before, and it’s even truer now. The housing search has always been part of the New York story. What has changed is that today it is not just about finding a cheap apartment. It is about whether New Yorkers can find an apartment at all. Vacancy rates are at record lows, rents are at record highs, and too many people are being priced out of the neighborhoods and the city they have called home. Being priced out means displacement.

It is about whether people can stay in the communities they have built, or whether they are forced out by a market that treats housing as a luxury. People are what give a neighborhood its vibe, and preventing displacement should be a top priority.

Simon and Garfunkel sang, in 1964, “Thirty dollars pays your rent on Bleecker Street.” Adjusted for inflation, that thirty dollars would be approximately $ 230 today. However, the median rent on Bleecker Street now ranges from $ 4,500 for a studio to $ 15,000 for a three-bedroom. That means the equivalent of Simon and Garfunkel’s thirty dollars (230 bucks) would cover mere hours of rent on Bleecker Street today.

Simon and Garfunkel themselves could probably still afford to live on Bleecker Street. Their contemporaries, or the 2025 equivalent of artists who didn’t have hits like “Cecilia,” are certainly displaced. Most wouldn’t even consider it an option.

The comparison isn’t just nostalgic. It’s not that Bleecker Street has some special claim to affordability. The problem is that there are fewer and fewer places in the city that serve that function. Places where creative people without wealth can live and shape the culture, or live however they please!

And the story is not confined to Bleecker Street in Manhattan. Across the East River in Brooklyn, and across all five boroughs, you can see the same pressures, not just in policy reports or headlines, but in everyday life. Some districts, due to the practice of member deference, haven’t built a single unit of affordable housing to help with the current crisis.

That is why planning matters. Speaking of Brooklyn, the best borough, both the CB6 District Needs Statement and the Brooklyn Comprehensive Plan make housing, and the need for it, central to their findings. At the neighborhood level, the District Needs Statement reflects the lived experiences of over 100,000 residents. At the borough level, the Comprehensive Plan connects housing to jobs, climate, and public space across Brooklyn’s 3 million residents. Taken together, they show that whether you look from the ground up or from a boroughwide perspective, the conclusions are similar: New York needs to build a lot more housing, and we cannot plan in isolation for a single block.

That brings us back to the ballot. The current Charter Revision questions are designed to address exactly this.

Question 2 would create a faster, more predictable process for approving affordable housing in districts that have produced little of it. Applications that provide permanently affordable homes would move through a streamlined review, while still receiving input from community boards and borough presidents.

Question 3 would simplify the process for smaller rezonings and infrastructure projects. A new Expedited Land Use Review Procedure would allow modest but beneficial proposals to move forward more efficiently, without sacrificing transparency.

Question 4 would establish an Affordable Housing Appeals Board made up of the Borough President, City Council Speaker, and Mayor. If two of the three agree, they could overturn a Council decision that blocks or reduces affordable housing. This reform ensures that citywide needs are not held hostage by district-level politics.

Question 5 would modernize the City Map, replacing five separate, paper-based systems with a single, unified digital platform managed by the Department of City Planning. That may sound technical, but it means clearer information, faster coordination, and more transparency in how streets, parks, and public spaces are planned.

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, am a renter, and want to remain in New York City. I am what E.B. White would call a native, one of the three New Yorkers he said comprise the whole of the city: “Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.”

These are the ingredients that make New York, New York. Policy should work to make sure that remains true. And that is exactly what these Charter questions are: a tool to give a Mayor Mamdani the ability to achieve his goal of building hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units. Flip your ballot and vote yes.