Nine Arrested During Inwood Rezoning Protest, Police Say

INWOOD, NY — Nine people were arrested Monday night during a march to protest the city's plan to rezone the Inwood neighborhood, an NYPD spokesman said.

Protesters were arrested after marching from the Dyckman Street subway station to the intersection of Dyckman Street and Broadway, police said. The nine protesters were handcuffed after blocking traffic in the intersection, police said. Eight of the protesters arrested were charged with disorderly conduct and one had an open warrant, an NYPD spokesman said.

The protest march was organized by community activists under the Northern Manhattan is Not For Sale Coalition, organizers said. The group is demanding the City Council vote to oppose a city plan to upzone Inwood for higher density to increase residential and commercial development in the neighborhood.

"I love Inwood, and can't stand by while it's sold off to the highest bidder. We have to hold our elected officials accountable, and stand up for what's important," Clay Smith, an Inwood resident who was arrested during the protest, said in a statement.

Members of Northern Manhattan is Not For Sale set up an encampment at the Riverside-Inwood Neighborhood Garden after the march and stayed the night there. The group previously occupied City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez's district office after he voted in favor of the rezoning in City Council committee meetings.

The occupiers demanded that the city postpone a final vote the Inwood rezoning proposal until it's guaranteed that the city's Mandatory Inclusionary Housing rule requires new developments to be 50 percent affordable at deep affordability levels for people making less than $25,000 per year. The occupiers also demanded that MIH use neighborhood-based income levels for affordable housing eligibility requirements instead of the currently-used Area Median Income, which pulls data from all over the city and some suburban counties.

Other demands from groups such as the laborers and iron workers unions, the Inwood Small Business Coalition, the Democratic Socialists of America and the Riverside Edgecomb Neighborhood Association include a rezoning that would cap building heights, better small business protections and include investments to the area's overtaxed infrastructure and transit.

"We reject the notion that city investments in parks and the arts must go hand in hand with aggressive rezonings benefiting big real estate. What’s the good of having all these new amenities if the very people they are meant to serve can no longer afford to live here?" Lena Melendez, a protester who was arrested Monday, said in a statement.

Photo by Brendan Krisel/Patch