'NIMBY Super District:' Housing Group Slams Congressional District 10

NEW YORK CITY — New York housing advocates issued an ominous warning Friday.

In a letter to the court-appointed special master overseeing the state's chaotic congressional redistricting efforts, Open New York, a pro-housing group, said plans for District 10 — set to cover Lower Manhattan and parts of north Brooklyn — would create a "NIMBY super district."

"The new district strings together many of New York City’s whitest and most affluent 'historic districts,'" writes the group's executive director William Thomas in a letter to special master Jonathan Cervas.

"This is, to use a colloquialism we are fond of, the “NIMBY district,” creating a constituency uniquely situated to serve the interests of wealthier homeowners in neighborhoods where City policy has severely restricted housing growth and there has been a corresponding extreme increase in property values."

Combining Brooklyn neighborhoods like Park Slope, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens — overwhelming white, wealthy neighborhood where a disproportionate number of people own their homes, data shows — with increasingly-diverse parts of Lower Manhattan would stifle housing growth efforts, Open New York said.

District 10 would create "a potential political situation in which the interests of [diverse Lower Manhattan communities] is buried underneath the political impetus to serve homeowners in neighborhoods covered by exclusionary zoning," Thomas writes.

Efforts to appease wealthy Brooklynites could stifle federal attempts to challenge exclusionary housing and land use policies under the Fair Housing Act amid the city's ever-worsening housing affordability crisis, the group warned.

"New York needs leaders in Congress committed to building New Yorkers homes – and not elected representatives beholden to a small, but powerful, minority who want to keep New York under glass and block new housing creation," Open New York said in a news release.

A growing group of liberal leaders — now including former Mayor Bill de Blasio — are starting to throw hats in the ring for the District 10 seat, which doesn't have an incumbent since longtime Congressman Jerry Nadler plans to run in the reshaped 12th District.

De Blasio said he chose to run to address growing inequity in the wake of the pandemic, and State Senator Brad Hoylman, who's represented Lower Manhattan in the senate for years, said the need for progressive leadership in Washington catalyzed his bid.

Little has been said, though, about these leaders' (and other could-be-candidates') stances on housing in the proposed district — which would be home to some of the city's most-contentious housing plans.

Cervas' draft maps are expected to be finalized by the end of the week.

Related Article:

• Bill de Blasio Is Officially Running For Congress In District 10
• Congressional District 10 Draws A Crowd: What To Know