EAST VILLAGE — Community Board 3 members rejected two citywide proposals to create affordable housing through zoning changes Wednesday night, saying they remained skeptical that the plan would create more units within the financial reach of the neighborhood’s longtime residents.
CB3’s Land Use, Zoning, Public and Private Housing Committee drafted two resolutions against the city’s Zoning for Quality and Affordability and Mandatory Inclusionary Housing amendments following a three-hour discussion that included input from locals and the Department of City Planning.
The board will formally take a position on the proposed text amendments next week at its full board meeting.
The committee reaffirmed the board’s opposition to the city’s Zoning for Quality and Affordability amendment in July — which would change building restrictions with the goal of making it easier to build affordable housing for seniors — saying that there had been “no substantive change” since the city first presented the plan to the board.
“If anybody could prove to me that these changes…really did encourage affordable housing in the ZQA, I would consider supporting it with change, but the fact that nobody has ever provided me with a stitch of evidence that proves that or gives indication of that… I can’t support it,” said member Lisa Kaplan.
The committee’s frustration with the process also emerged in its resolution against the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing amendment, which criticized the city for giving the board “insufficient time” to review the proposal and asking it to consider citywide changes even though it was a “unique community with a deep need for low-income affordable housing.”
Although it supported the idea of mandatory inclusionary housing — which would require developers to build affordable units in future projects — the committee did not agree with all the terms in the amendment, members said.
The committee recommended the board vote against the amendment unless the city sets aside at least 45 to 50 percent of the units as affordable at an average of 40 percent of the area median income.
The figure was a nod to the Chinatown Working Group rezoning plan — a seven-year effort by a dozens of neighborhood groups and Community Board 3 — which calls for a similar proportion of affordable units in new developments.
The resolution also asked the city to ensure that the inclusionary housing program would provide a “reasonable mix” of unit sizes to accommodate different types of households, with at least 40 percent of the non-market-rate units built as two-bedroom homes or larger.
It also wanted to require developers to build more affordable units if they decided to build the lower-rent homes in a separate building.
The committee’s votes put CB3 on track to join dozens of community boards citywide in opposition to the zoning changes, which are part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to preserve and create 200,000 units of affordable housing.
CB3’s full board meeting will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 24 at P.S. 20 Anna Silver School at 166 Essex St.
