Vote NO on ballot measures # 2, 3, and 4!
These ballot measures were written by a commission hand-picked by Eric Adams. So it’s no surprise that what these ballot measures do is give more power to the mayor to approve housing that is unaffordable to working-class New Yorkers. Don’t be fooled by the misleading ballot language. These ballot measures don’t guarantee that the truly affordable housing we need will be built. Instead, the ballot measures, if passed, will make it harder for tenants to fight back against the luxury development that continues to gentrify our neighborhood. That’s because these ballot measures take away power from our council member, who we have the power to elect and vote out, while increasing the power of citywide officials, who are not accountable to our neighborhood.
Our members have seen firsthand that when developers and council members are forced to negotiate with community boards, the number of affordable units usually increases, and the level of affordability improves. Developers always start out offering the bare minimum, but when the community pushes back, and the council member threatens to vote down the project without increased affordability, the developer always comes back with a better offer. This is because they’re afraid of getting no deal at all. This is how our leverage works. These ballot measures take away our leverage and dilute our power. If the ballot measures pass and a bad development deal is proposed (which usually happens in gentrifying neighborhoods like ours), our community is only a tiny part of the giant pool of votes the city-wide electeds want; if we don’t live in the speaker’s district (50/51 chance), our tiny leverage goes down to almost ZERO.
These ballot measures give more power over development decisions to the mayor and his appointees, and the mayor already has a lot of power through the City Planning Commission. The ballot measures are NOT about giving power to Zohran Mamdani; they give more power to ANY future mayor. Revisions to the charter and real estate development are LONG-TERM issues. We can’t be short-sighted. Developers know how to play the long game, and they are hoping to get us all confused. Even if we like the Mayor for the next 4 years, he might be immediately followed by someone horrible. We can’t allow another Adams (or Cuomo, or Bloomberg, or Giuliani) to have absolute control over development in our neighborhood.
We understand that the current system is broken and doesn’t serve tenants. The vast majority of the city’s current so-called “affordable” development happens through tax breaks for developers and the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) program, which allows developers to build luxury apartment buildings that have no price limit on 70–80% of the units and the remaining 20-30% are reserved for so-called “affordable” apartments. But, anybody who has looked at a Housing Connect lottery knows the ugly truth: the vast majority of what is labeled “affordable housing” is not affordable for working-class families. Our neighborhood, Crown Heights, has been targeted by the real estate industry for decades now, and the result has been gentrification: working-class people of color, overwhelmingly tenants, get pushed out of the neighborhood so that landlords and developers can replace them with wealthier and whiter new residents. The ballot measures don’t fix this problem. They make them worse by making it harder for tenants like us to fight for development projects that actually meet our community’s needs.
We do need change, but ballot measures 2-4 will do more harm than the status quo. The next mayor should convene his own charter commission to write ballot measures with guarantees of real affordability and centered on the needs of working-class tenants. Until then, we strongly urge you to vote “NO” on ballot measures 2, 3, & 4. Don't accept less than what we need and deserve. When we fight, we win.