References

The Right to Housing

The Right to Housing

The right to housing must be understood as part of an integral and universal struggle for dignity and justice and for freedom from want. National, State, and municipal governments too often misunderstand the right to housing as merely a commitment to housing production programs and ignore the adverse impacts of racial, social, economic, cultural, and environmental discrimination and the absence of access to equitable and judicially just support systems. The right to adequate and affordable housing is a product of the intersection of economic, social, and cultural justice. It should be conceived of as a common good, universally available, and not as a commodity accessible only to a privileged few. The commitment to ‘housing as a right’ was articulated in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Universal Declaration) and again in the 1966 United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). They can be summarized as follows: The difference between these 1948 Universal Declaration and the 1966 ICESCR documents is that the Universal Declaration is not binding on nations; while the ICESCR requires those nations that ratified it to “take appropriate steps to ensure the realization” of a right to housing. By ratifying the ICESCR, states not only accept the principle of a right to housing, but also have a binding obligation to uphold and promote this right.

The United States (U.S.) Congress in the Housing Act of 1949, declared:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in Article 25 (1)]: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for [the] health and well-being of himself [or herself] and his [or her] family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.”

ICESCR, Article 11(1): “The States party to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself [or herself] and his [or her] family, including adequate food, clothing, and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The States parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent.

(Byrne and Culhane, Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository, 2011)

SEC. 2. The Congress hereby declares that the general welfare and security of the Nation and the health and living standards of its people require housing production and related community development sufficient to remedy the serious housing shortage, the elimination of sub-standard and other inadequate housing through the clearance of slums and blighted areas, and the realization as soon as feasible of the goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family, thus contributing to the development and redevelopment of communities and to the advancement of the growth, wealth, and security of the Nation.

As long as 50 years ago, Sharon Segretta Sutton spoke to the dissonance between these two documents. “We need to reorient the 1949 construction industry stance to human well-being and then we can refine that stance to reflect the effects of climate change and racism on 2 people’s ability to secure their needs.” Sutton explained that the focus historically has been on brick-and-mortar development, responsive to the hegemony of the construction industry inclusive of developers. The deviation and slippage from the international focus on human well-being is significant and should be specifically acknowledged and addressed, period. This is more pressing than ever with banks and others buying houses as a place to park capital.

Beyond righting a misdirection, all these foundational policy statements must be refined and updated to meet the needs and challenges of tomorrow. The interrelated

impacts of climate change and racism have forced millions to be uprooted, while countless other lives are lost and many more are threatened by gentrification, homelessness, poverty, and inadequate housing. These violations of human rights, in particular the right to housing and the right to life, as well as other rights, such as the rights to health, physical integrity, privacy, water, and sanitation, are rarely addressed as such by governments, human rights institutions, or our judicial systems.

The reality is that climate change will force increasing numbers of people to be displaced due to what many are calling climigratory (climate change related) issues. Given that already and increasingly grim reality, our responsibility in 2021 is to guarantee future generations their right to housing and to make sure that their rights can be met without dramatic disruptions. If we are barely able to meet the ‘right to housing today,’ how will we be able to address that right in the future given the expected dramatic increases in the numbers of people being displaced due to climate change? How will we be able to assure our children and their children their right to housing and the ability to live lives where dignity and justice coupled with the enhancement of one’s ability to satisfy their basic needs exists?

Present programs and policies are not designed to address the wicked challenges that face us. The level of funding to address the issues, while a fraction of the cost of not acting, is nowhere near what it needs to be. Failure to act today, in turn, will be costly in terms of lives lost and in the uncontrollable disruptions that will inevitably cascade throughout our planet, disrupting lives and uprooting nations.

The Right to Housing underlies all of the other policy papers presented here: Decarbonization—as part and parcel of what we think of as quality housing; housing choice for those to be relocated as a result of carbon change, including the ability to relocate as a community; and desegregation as a framework for providing affordable housing.

Ibid.2 image 3

Decarbonization and New Housing Models

Decarbonization and New Housing Models

Building and construction paradigms are changing thanks to the ability to employ and reuse old materials in new ways (timber in particular), as well as greater understanding of the impacts of past practices and potential to retool for the better (building energy in particular). So must our approach to codes, construction, and incentives. The goal should be to promote housing production and modifications that take advantage of more sustainable practices, coupled with added, significant benefits for owners, builders, and tenants, as well as with primary consideration for social and economic equity.

This policy brief covers two such topics:

Mass timber construction for new buildings and additions (through adaptive or in-kind reuse)

The support and expansion of energy codes - especially Local Law 97 - accompanied by incentives and technical assistance.

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For both topics, New York City is the case study. We are attempting to provide greater impetus and ability for the City to succeed in its goal of reducing New York City’s carbon emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050. Action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in our city involves reduction in vehicular travel and conversion to electric vehicles. But as a transit-oriented city, the surprising fact is that the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions is from buildings. We applaud the 80 percent target and view it as reachable with doable (however radical) immediate action, such as that outlined below.

Mass Timber Construction

A large source of New York City’s greenhouse gas emission problem involves building construction – especially the use of steel and concrete that use a great amount of energy in their production.

The alternative is greater use of engineered wood. Wood is a sustainable material that uses little energy in its production and can be replenished by forestry. Engineered timber products (for example of ‘cross-laminated timber’ or GluLam) have increased the material strength of wood such that high-rise buildings can now be built using these engineered wood products. Contrary to intuition, timber performs better than steel in a fire (steel buckles while timber protects itself with the charring of the outer skin).

So why is New York not building with timber? It is mostly because the City’s Building Code and related regulations are outdated. The International Building Code now permits mass timber construction, and the City should adopt it.

The rest of this section goes into more detail and lists the changes we propose to allow the expansion of mass timber construction in New York City. The vision is to significantly reduce embodied carbon emissions in building materials and products to meet New York City’s and global climate crisis targets.

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Objectives Challenges

Transform New York City’s new construction (including adaptive reuse and additions) into massive carbon sinks by using structural timber building materials that sequester CO2, rather than emit CO2.

Implement mass timber construction technologies as well as regulatory and economic policies that promote mass timber building in New York City and the sustainable management of source forests in New York State—furthermore creating tens of thousands of high and low-tech jobs.

Provide high-quality, healthy, and energy-efficient buildings. Buildings are a significant source of CO2 and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, not only in their operational energy consumption (for heating, cooling, lighting, etc.) but also in the embodied carbon emissions released before construction begins. These upfront carbon emissions are created by the manufacturing, transportation, and product installation.

Research shows that for new buildings and additions, policy efforts should primarily focus on reducing the embodied carbon emissions of structural building materials (steel, concrete, and aluminum) to meet New York City’s and global greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets. If nothing is done to lower the embodied carbon emissions that are locked in place as soon as a building is built - those GHG emissions released will represent half of the entire carbon footprint of new construction between now and 2050 - threatening to consume a large part of our remaining carbon budget.

Policy Proposals

New policies that encourage mass timber are needed to meet New York City’s and global climate targets and to catch up to other cities around the world where millions of square feet of engineered mass timber buildings have been built since the 1990s. From 2021 onward, the New York City Building Congress expects that at least 56 billion dollars of new construction per year, most of which will be mid-rise construction. New York City’s mass timber policies should be formulated to carry out the following:

Incentivize new construction and adaptive

reuse of residential and commercial buildings with mass timber as a primary structural material. Mass timber can also be employed in combination with steel and/or concrete.

Adopt the International Building Code 2021 that permits mass timber mid-rise buildings

from two to 18 stories (or 270 feet high). Mass timber can be used to build walls, floors, roofs, and interior partitions of buildings. Examples: prefabricated Cross Laminated Timber solid panels, GluLam beams or columns, and other engineered timber products.

Create thousands of new jobs in an emerging mass timber market in New York City. New jobs will be created in design, manufacturing, and construction. Added jobs will be created in the region’s forest areas where the timber may be sustainably harvested, as well as in factories where timber products are engineered, prefabricated, and assembled.

Offer mass timber worker training to prepare for implementation of the International Building Code 2021, and to develop a skilled workforce in partnership with labor unions and manufacturers of timber worker training is offered in environmental justice and low and moderate-income communities, to equitably distribute the economic benefits of building decarbonization.

Action Items

It will take considerable effort to implement these policies and bring timber-based construction to scale in a city of over 8 million people. We believe that the following actions are the first steps to be carried out in the immediate future—such as the next mayor’s first term in office.

The Right to Housing underlies all of the other policy papers presented here: Decarbonization—as part and parcel of what we think of as quality housing; housing choice for those to be relocated as a result of carbon change, including the ability to relocate as a community; desegregation, as a framework for providing affordable housing; accompanied by quality education, as the key ingredient defining whether a community provides equitable opportunity for future generations of those most egregiously discriminated against in the United States: black, indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC)—whether it be for housing (the topic of this paper) or employment, education, upward mobility, access to resources, political power, and more.

Table 1. Action Items for Mass Timber Construction

Action Items

New York City - all Public Agencies

New York City (NYC) Department of Buildings (DOB) and the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) Problem Solution

New York City’s building codes do not yet allow mass timber, and the required material supply chains and labor practices have yet to be developed. Therefore, owners, builders, and designers are hesitant to adopt mass timber building systems since the established supply chains are found far from the region. Lead by example by encouraging mass timber on larger public projects, since Local Law 86 already requires City building projects over $2 million in construction costs (public funds) to be Lead in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certified. Mass timber can contribute to achieving LEED and other sustainability goals.

To date, only a handful of mass timber buildings and additions have been completed in New York City, each of which required their owners/developers to apply for variances from the Building Code.

The City’s current Building Code 2014 is based on the International Building Code 2009 (IBC 2009), in which most Mass Timber is illegal to build, and Cross Laminated Timber is not allowed.

The NYC City Council intends to adopt its version of the International Building Code 2015 (IBC 2015); this code allows Cross Laminated Timber for buildings up to five stories. Swiftly adopt the latest International Building Code - IBC 2021 - which allows mass timber buildings from two to 18 stories or 270 feet high. As precedents: The IBC 2021 has already been adopted in the states of Oregon and Washington, as well as in Denver, Colorado.

NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) Owners, builders, and designers are reluctant to adopt new mass timber building systems.

NYC Department of City Planning (DCP) Owners, builders, and designers are reluctant to adopt new mass timber building systems. Lead by example by establishing HPD pilot projects that showcase mid-rise mass timber affordable housing—perhaps in tandem with architectural design competitions.

Consider tax incentives (such as real estate tax abatements) tied to mass timber construction, especially for mid-rise affordable housing construction.

Employ incentive zoning contingent on mass timber buildings and additions, applicable to all buildings but especially mid-rise, affordable housing construction.

NYC Mayor's Office of M/WBEs (OM/WBE) and the NYC Department of Small Business Services (SBS) Developers have a tough time meeting Minority / Women Business Enterprise (M/WBE) labor goals for mass timber construction.

NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC) Mass timber fabrication plants are hundreds of miles away from New York City. On publicly funded projects, consider creating a M/WBE training program to meet potential labor goals. Also, encourage owner/developer investments in mass timber by allowing a reduction of M/WBE labor goals in exchange for the use of mass timber. This is practical since on-site construction labor will be reduced due to prefabricated building components.

In partnership with the forestry industry in New York State, consider the development and investment in a City-sponsored prototype mass timber production and prefabrication facility to jump-start the adoption of mass timber in the city and state.

Outcomes

Since mass timber stores, rather than emits CO2, it can be one of the most effective ways of meeting New York City, regional and global greenhouse gas emission reduction targets while significantly modernizing and decarbonizing the city’s construction industry.

Local Law 97

New York City has committed through the Local Law 97 (adopted in 2019) to reduce its carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. LL 97 primarily applies to buildings over 25,000 square feet. That is an excellent start. Half of the building-induced CO2 (one-third of the total emissions) is from larger buildings.

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Summary of Local Law 97

Local Law 97 of 2019 (LL97) is the centerpiece of New York City’s landmark Climate Mobilization Act of 2019 (CMA), also known as the NYC Green New Deal. LL97 and subsequent amendments will place strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from all buildings larger than 25,000 square feet. Limits effective from 2024 through 2029 will affect the largest emitters, about 25 percent of properties. Stricter limits will affect 75 percent of properties from 2030 through 2034. Emission limits for the period from 2035 onward are being developed by stakeholder working groups organized by the NYC Department of Buildings (DOB).

Here are several key components of the law: (A) Covered by LL97: Most buildings larger than 25,000 square feet that report their energy and water data to the City (LL84). LL97 covers about 40,000 (or 4 percent) of the city’s one million buildings that currently contribute 33 percent of New York City’s

GHG emissions. These include commercial, residential, healthcare, hotel, and other use-groups. Each year, starting in May of 2025, building managers must prove to DOB that their actual yearly building GHG 2 emissions were lower than LL97 GHG emissions limits, or be subject to violations and steep fines. LL97 supplies guidance on how to calculate GHG emissions (CO2e) for each building.

(B) Flexible LL97 compliance paths are offered to buildings that cannot meet the required limits by (1) purchasing renewable energy credits generated in NYC, or directly feeding renewable energy into NYC’s electric grid (deductions up to 100 percent of GHG limits); and (2) by purchasing greenhouse gas offsets (i.e., tree planting, etc. - deductions up to 10 percent of GHG limits); (3) carbon trading, where buildings that exceed their GHG goal can sell to buildings that cannot. NOTE: Details for these compliance paths are not yet completed.

Energy efficiency measures to reduce building energy consumption are often limited by building insulation restrictions for a host of technical reasons or due to historic preservation protections. For these buildings, LL97 has supplied renewable energy and alternative compliance paths to meet its GHG emission goals. (See above.)

Public buildings: While City-owned buildings do not have to report their emissions to DOB, they are not exempt from the law. City-owned buildings are required to reduce their emissions by 40 percent by 2025, and by 50 percent by 2030, both relative to such emissions for the calendar year 2006.

Federal and State buildings are exempt from LL97. Alternative paths to LL97 compliance are offered to affordable and subsidized housing buildings that are larger than 25,000 SF with more than 35 percent rent-regulated units, HDFC cooperatives, some tax-exempt multi-family rental properties, New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings, and buildings that take part in a project-based federal housing program, as well as religious houses of worship. These mid-size and large buildings - many of which are concentrated in the City’s low-income communities of color - currently contribute 34 percent of New York City’s GHG emissions. LL97 stipulates that these buildings undertake a set of energy conservation prescriptive measures (or meet their LL97 2030 caps). These prescriptive measures include the installation of insulation, sensors, or controls for existing HVAC equipment, as well as a series of other energy efficiency measures - to be completed by the end of December 2024.

Local Law 97 Now

We strongly advocate for the implementation, enforcement, and strengthening of Local Law 97 as well as related policies and incentives. Yet, to fully achieve the underlying intention of LL 97, we believe that New York City can and should do more as soon as possible.

Objectives

Reduce operational greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of mid-size and large existing buildings (heating, cooling, lighting, hot water, etc.) to meet New York City’s and global climate commitments.

Expand the energy retrofit market by $20 billion dollars from now until 2030, which will create approximately 140,000 design, engineering, and construction jobs.

Provide valuable building upgrades and energy savings to building owners and tenants.

Dense urban buildings are a significant source of CO2 and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Two thirds (67 percent) of New York City’s GHG emissions are caused by buildings - the equivalent of about 37 million metric tons of CO2e.

Challenges

Local Law 97 (LL97) places stringent GHG emission limits on building greater than 25,000 square feet, which today handle 33

percent of New York City’s GHG emissions.

Note: Local Law 84 of 2009 (and later amendments) mandates that energy use data for buildings greater than 25,000 square feet be collected by the City.

More decarbonization measures will be needed to reduce the emissions of one million buildings that are smaller than 25,000 SF. These buildings contribute 34 percent of New York City’s GHG emissions; the remaining 33 percent of GHG emissions are caused by other sectors including transportation, waste, etc.

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Policy Framework

Support subsidized housing by expanding the use of LL 96’s Property Assessed Clean Energy Program to supply low-interest loans to buildings.

Further support subsidized housing by expanding and encouraging the use of New York City’s Retrofit Accelerator, which provides low- and no-cost technical advisory services to building owners.

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Action Items

The City of New York and all its agencies need to acknowledge, respond, and resolve various barriers to the implementation of LL97, both political and technical by addressing the following:

Continued Commitment to Local Law 97

The concern: Strong political leadership and resources will be needed to successfully implement, enforce, and strengthen LL97 and meet the City’s and global climate commitments from now until 2050.

The solution: Publicly commit to the goals and implementation, enforcement, and strengthening of Local Law 97 as currently written, and invest in adequate budgetary, staffing, enforcement, training, and educational resources.

Table 2. Action Items for Local Law 97 (Now)

Action Items

Information and Political Buy-In Problem

At present, there is still a lack of understanding of the goals, strategies, timeline, and expected benefits of LL97 by many building owners, managers, professionals, non-profits, and tenants across the city. In addition to the expansion of the NYC Sustainable Buildings website, invest in a massive information campaign about the Climate Mobilization Act and LL97’s paths to achieving the City’s climate goals, through building stock upgrades and a low-carbon energy mix. Educate, inform, and engage citizens by highlighting the benefits to owners, tenants, professionals, and labor - and the planet. Outreach and education partnerships with community organizations across the city will be required to achieve these goals.

Solution

Predictability and Transparency Many details of LL97 have yet to be identified. These include details about renewable energy credits and carbon trading, greenhouse gas offsets, distributed energy resources, and other alternative compliance paths, and whether these measures will result in an equitable share of benefits for all New Yorkers. Swiftly develop the remaining details for all compliance paths. Clear rules will remove uncertainty and allow owners to start their long-term planning, design, and implementation work.

Ensure that the fines collected from LL97 violations are equitably re-invested into technical and financial support programs to help owners comply with LL97. Also, some money could be equitably re-invested into ‘green’ industrial development, labor training, and public education.

Continue to fine-tune, improve, and monitor the LL97 program, based on feedback by owners, tenants, building trades, unions, and the general public.

Building Owner Costs of Meeting LL97 GHG Limits LL97 imposes financial hardship on those building owners that are not able to recapture their investments with energy cost savings and other decarbonization benefits. Building owners need to invest in building upgrades to meet their LL97 legal requirements. However, COVID-19 has created hardships for many owners. DOB needs to aid these property owners with additional financial and technical support.

Commercial Tenant Share of Emissions The belief that the owners of covered buildings (4 percent of the city’s existing building stock) disproportionately bear the brunt of the City’s decarbonization strategy.

For large commercial buildings, up to 40-60 percent of energy use is due to tenant-managed energy expenditures. Right now, LL97 penalties cannot be passed through to existing tenants, making it difficult for property owners to meet LL97 goals.

Education About Residential Steam Heat Retrofits Multifamily housing represents 64 percent of buildings over 25,000 square feet, and 76 percent of these units are heated by steam. Data shows that tenants often experience excessive heat and open their windows. Many steam systems function poorly, with clanging pipes, lack of temperature control by tenants, and simultaneous cold and hot apartment environments. Steam can only be generated by fossil fuel boilers, and electrifying steam is prohibitively expensive.

Local contractors, consultants, and engineers do not have adequate training to electrify steam buildings. Similarly, building owners and managers have little access to educational materials about converting from steam to heat pumps. Secure added funding through President Biden’s American Jobs Act to fund the implementation of LL97.

Provide existing and new commercial tenants with pathways for reduced consumption and ‘green leases.’ Note: A recent Carbon Trading Report suggests that allowing commercial tenants to own, buy, and sell carbon credits in the future, could incentivize tenant actions to reduce emissions.

The DOB and its affiliates should invest in a significant expansion of their steam replacement training and education programs for multifamily housing projects, as part of the City’s Retrofit Accelerator and other programs. This means heat pumps either as a complete solution (mini-splits, VRF, etc..) or drivers for hydronic heat, converted from steam systems.

Shortage of Renewable Energy Sources (Or Credits) In commercial buildings, most emissions come from electric generation, not on-site combustion of fossil fuels. Buildings cannot control the emissions of electricity provided by the grid.

LL97 does not allow the use of renewable electricity generated outside of New York City borders for compliance, which makes it currently almost impossible to purchase renewable electricity to meet LL97 emission goals. Invest in the expansion of renewable energy infrastructure - in New York City’s five boroughs, in partnership with the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) and other partners.

Related Manufacturing and Jobs There is a severe shortage of skilled workers in the building renovation, renewable energy, and related sectors and work that will be needed to implement LL97. Due to lack of adequate worker training, a majority of the estimated 140,000 building retrofit and renewable energy jobs (from now until 2030) will go to people who reside outside of the city and fail to provide the economic boost that many New Yorkers need, especially in marginalized communities of color.

There is a lack of New York City factories that make cost-effective products and related components for building energy retrofits and renewable energy production. Set ambitious M/WBE goals and invest in workforce development programs to train labor for the LL97 energy retrofit market in New York’s five boroughs - but especially in marginalized communities of color.

Invest in factories that support LL97 energy retrofits - i.e., ground and air-source heat pumps, triple-glazed windows, renewable energy components, etc.

Passive Shading and Cooling Devices Exterior awnings, shutters, blinds, or overhangs—if properly oriented to cut overheating—can be highly effective in reducing demand cooling loads in the hot weather months. Living green screens or walls can supply both cooling in the summer and prevent heat loss in the winter.

Historic photos show fixed or retractable awnings on most of New York City’s residential windows. Passive exterior shading devices that cut down on heat in the summer are rare in residential building energy retrofits.

Material Recycling and Reuse Ecosystem New York City’s building trades certainly recycle and re-use materials, but we believe that the building LL97 upgrades and retrofits will produce a huge quantity of materials that can potentially be recycled and reused and diverted from landfills. The City should supply financial incentives for such passive devices, perhaps modeled on Vienna, Austria, where up to 50 percent of the costs of architectural exterior shading devices for residential retrofits are paid by the City.

Work with the unions, building trades, and owners to develop a mandatory recycling/reuse program that will seek to minimize construction waste going to landfills. For example, creative uses should be found for the thousands of windows and frames that will be replaced as part of LL97 upgrades.

Local Law 97 After 2035

A strong commitment to the successful implementation, enforcement, and strengthening of LL97 as written is an excellent first step. We, however, believe that the next Mayor needs to set long-term goals for the decarbonization of the city’s entire building stock. This should happen in phases and potentially be included in LL97 updates after 2035.

We know that economic growth is not affected by decarbonization. In fact, since 2005, 23 countries have completely decoupled GDP growth from reductions in CO2 emissions - this list includes the United States. We also know that many countries and cities around the world are completely phasing out fossil fuels including coal, oil, and gas in their building sector to address the global Climate Crisis.

Our key recommendation is that as of 2035, the City should extend the full LL 97 requirements to all properties over 25,000 square feet.

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On the next page, please find additional recommendations for the expansion of LL97:

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Table 3. Action Items for Local Law 97 After 2035

Action Items

Affordable Housing Problem

Currently, LL97 performance targets are not required for affordable and subsidized housing buildings larger than 25,000 SF with more than 35 percent rent-regulated units, HDFC cooperatives, some tax-exempt multi-family rental properties, New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings, and dwellings that participate in a project-based federal housing program that collectively house over 3 million people. (Source: U.S. Census). While LL97 requires some energy conservation prescriptive measures for affordable housing, this exemption leaves a great portion of the city’s housing stock without the substantial energy efficiency upgrades that will reduce energy burdens for their tenants.

Affordable, rent-regulated, and public housing buildings are often older, inefficient, and in disrepair, resulting in a higher baseline consumption of energy than their market-rate counterparts. This places added burdens on low-income residents, many of whom cannot afford air conditioners to cool their apartments during heat waves.

Fossil fuel HVAC equipment often contributes to bad indoor air quality, which causes asthma and other respiratory diseases, particularly in low-income communities of color.

Affordable housing advocates fear that the costs of efficiency and/or energy retrofits could be passed onto vulnerable tenants as Major Capital Improvements (MCIs) and that building electrification could shift payment responsibilities from property owners to tenants, which may lead to the displacement of low or fixed-income tenants. Extend the full LL97 emission limits to rent-regulated buildings and other affordable and subsidized housing projects after 2035. This investment in increased efficiency will be essential to achieve the City’s 80 X 50 goals.

Supply financial subsidies, loans, and technical support to support affordable housing owners and managers; and expand the “Property Assessed Clean Energy” (PACE) program to provide low-interest loans to affordable housing owners.

Expand and encourage the use of NYC’s Retrofit Accelerator, which provides low- and no-cost technical advisory services to building owners.

Ensure that the cost of affordable housing retrofits cannot be passed onto tenants as Major Capital Improvements (MCIs)—and that payment responsibilities for building electrification not be passed from property owners to residential tenants.

Solution

Houses of Worship Currently, LL97 performance targets are not required for religious houses of worship above 25,000 SF. While LL97 prescribes several energy conservation measures for houses of worship, this exemption leaves churches, synagogues, and mosques without requirements for substantial energy efficiency upgrades that would reduce their operating costs. Extend the LL97 requirements to larger religious houses of worship after 2035.

Supply financial subsidies, loans, and technical support to support houses of worship to achieve the decarbonization of these semi-public spaces.

Shared Energy Infrastructure New York City lacks shared energy infrastructures, which can significantly contribute to decarbonization. We believe district heating, micro-grids, solar or heat-pump cooperatives, and other neighborhood-scale energy infrastructures should become a larger part of New York City’s energy mix. Plan for and expand the district heating share of New York City’s energy mix.

Invest in and encourage solar or heat-pump cooperatives, which could generate profits for small investors, especially during peak loads.

Embodied Greenhouse Gas Emissions LL97 primarily intends to reduce the operational GHG emissions of buildings. Right now, LL97 does not account for the embodied GHG emissions of the materials, products, and components used in these building and energy retrofits. Embodied emissions are released before construction begins.

Right now, there are no incentives for owners/managers and professionals to select locally sourced and manufactured, minimally processed, low-carbon products for their LL97 building upgrades. Research has shown that choosing materials and products with low embodied emissions can have a huge impact on lowering the carbon footprint and environmental impact of the building industry. The embodied GHG emission of the materials and products needed for building upgrades should be accounted for after 2035 - perhaps with Carbon Passports that include Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) accounting. LEED credits can now be gained by listing EPDs for building materials and products.

Small Buildings

Negative Incentives Small (less than 25,000 square feet) residential and commercial buildings are exempt from LL97. Yet, these buildings contribute 34 percent of the city’s GHG emissions.

LL97 compliance is primarily based on negative incentives including penalties and fines when mandatory limits are not met. Work with building owners and tenants across the city to develop long-term goals and strategies to extend the LL97 requirements to smaller (less than 25,000 square feet) residential and commercial buildings, potentially after 2050.

Develop and implement positive incentives and rewards for early adoption of the law.

Visualize, communicate, and reward innovative solutions - both at the building and neighborhood scales.

Engage the entire city in joyful celebrations of LL97 milestones.

Outcomes

Addressing the Climate Crisis in a swift and equitable way requires an unwavering commitment from New York City’s mayor to implement LL97 in a fair and robust way. Implementation of the law will catalyze energy efficiency building upgrades and substantial increases in locally produced renewable energy. This will not only lower building GHG emissions but will also lead to reduced operating and maintenance costs that can be reinvested in other building upgrades and repairs. It can lower utility bills for tenants and lead to quality job creation and economic development across the City of New York.

Desegregation and Implementation

Desegregation and Implementation

We need to desegregate communities and municipalities to provide more access to opportunity, while improving the resources and amenities of underinvested neighborhoods. We need more homeownership opportunities for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) families to redress a century of discriminatory practice in urban policy, while protecting the affordability and quality of rental housing, particularly public housing. We need more housing production to create a normative—not a seller’s—housing market in destination cities like New York. We need to consider all the above through a justice and equity lens that conscientiously empowers those most discriminated against and least empowered historically and at present.

The omnibus of housing proposals to address these needs ranges from single site developments to federal policy, from tweaking rules to overhauling laws, and more. The discussion and recommendations here focus on those that fall within our areas of expertise as planners, architects, and urbanists.

To be clear, we are aware of and endorse ‘game changers’ such as the following:

Guaranteed Annual Income or second income strategies, such as those proposed by proposed by Louis Kelso, and more recently popularized by Andrew Yang and others including conservative and progressive policy makers.

Reparations for slavery, Jim Crow laws, restrictive covenants, and Redlining.

Universal access to capital. But even were these adopted, virtually all the recommendations that follow in this chapter remain valid, in our view.

Funding

As is plain from reading the recommendations below and especially those in the next chapter addressing climate change and climigration, funding the ‘Right to Housing’ is an enormous undertaking. It will require a federal response, which is only now being discussed in a meaningful way though still paltry compared to the challenges.

This does not mean that municipalities, counties, or states should be idle while waiting for a national response at the needed proportion; certainly not the nation’s largest, wealthiest city—New York.

Action Items

Reactivate the New York State (NYS) Stock Transfer Tax a capital investment program to fund the Right to Housing, adaptation to climate change, Climigration, and neighborhood quality of life in the city. This tax dates to 1905 and is still ‘on the books.’ It charges pennies (to be exact: five cents per share priced at $20 or more). Since 1981, the State collects then rebates the tax, daily. Reinstating the tax would release billions of dollars for public purposes, with the further benefit of generating jobs.

First employ the Stock Transfer Tax for New York City and the State, then for the nation—as per Michael Bloomberg’s proposal

while seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for President. New York City anchors the nation’s economy and tax revenue. Assuring the city’s quality of life, competitiveness, and vitality now and in the face of climate change is in the national interest. Shifting it (soon after) to a national tax has the further benefit of removing the New York Stock Exchange’s threat to move to New Jersey if so taxed by New York.

Desegregation

Zoning in the United States (U.S.) and many other public policies are infused with racist outcomes if not intentions. In the suburbs and auto-oriented cities, the Euclidian principle of separation of land uses plus the popular dominance of single-family zoning were often designed to separate people of different incomes, races, and backgrounds—sometimes accompanied by rhetoric if not regulations that explicitly excluded Black people and to lesser 4 extents other populations.

This is a multi-generational problem. Given the balkanization of municipal boundaries, and the fact that local taxes are the main revenue sources for schools and other public amenities, to be excluded in housing choice equates with being denied access to superior parks, public services, and especially quality education—the linchpin for upward economic opportunity for the next generation.

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Rothstein, Richard, The Color of Law: The Forgotten History of How Our 4 Government Segregated America, 2017. fhttps://research.steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/media/us-5 ers/dk64/SeparateButUnequal_20171023.pdf Ibid, and Fullilove, Mindy Thompson, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City 6 Neighborhoods and What We Can Do About It, 2004. The story above is acute in but not exclusive to the suburbs. New York City, too, is sorted by race and economic standing; and the unevenness of 5 school quality follows accordingly. In our city and across the nation, government is not blameless for segregated cities, as per both Redlining (a government-induced discriminatory practice that put financial services and insurance out of reach for residents) and highway construction blasting through Black neighborhoods. Both prompted physical disinvestment and ghettoization. 6 The New York City government (‘the City’) has carried out numerous policies to promote affordable housing, most recently Mayor DeBlasio’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) program, which offers density bonuses if 30 percent or more of the units are deemed affordable at the federally determined benchmark of up to 80 percent of area median income (which is as high as $80,000 for a family of four, since ‘area’ includes the wealthy suburbs of New York). While exemplary, three major criticisms have been leveled at MIH. In increasing order of relevance to our concerns: First, it smacks of ‘spot zoning’—from an urban design point of view, it is often random, driven by a transaction not sound planning. Second, it can be gentrifying—the mixed-income projects often replace affordable, lower-scale housing with luxury housing, in which the ‘affordable units’ rent at a higher price point than what neighborhood residents can afford. Third, it has not been directed to the wealthier (and politically more powerful) neighborhoods, thereby it has not resulted in integration and given BIPOC families better access to superior schools, parks, etc. Pratt professors have been in the forefront of discussions about mandatory inclusionary housing of all kinds (including MIH) in both studies and in studios. Professors have been associated with the Pratt Center for Community Development—the city’s leading technical assistance organization for community planning,

and an activist voice on housing affordability. Pratt professors have been in the forefront of promoting desegregation of the suburbs. Two, Ron Shiffman and Eva Hanhardt, started their career collaborating and working with Paul Davidoff—the founder of ‘advocacy planning’ who coined the term exclusionary zoning. Most recently, Shiffman joined professors Jonathan Martin and John Shapiro to work on applying Fair and Affordable Housing principles to Westchester County, on behalf of a Court-Appointed 7 Monitor. The Consortium Committee also closely followed the work of Desegregate Connecticut, which is seeking to build on the seminal Mt. Laurel Doctrine involving affordable housing policies of New Jersey. The recommendations below build on this experience and the Committee’s deliberations, differentiating between New York City and its suburbs.

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Tri-State Suburbs Action Items

Enact State laws that the wealthier, less integrated suburbs supply meaningful opportunity for affordable housing. The States of New York and Connecticut should emulate and improve on the ‘Mt. Laurel’ legislation of New Jersey. At present, Connecticut’s legislation simply says that municipalities cannot reject housing proposals because the unit mix includes affordable housing. New York State requires that municipalities allow multifamily housing—irrespective of the fact that most are for local, luxury markets. We need to move beyond merely allowing for a mix of housing to affirmatively require a mix of housing opportunities to encourage racial and economic integration.

The legislation proposed by Desegregate Connecticut requires that municipalities (as is the case in New Jersey) provide opportunities for affordable housing. The municipality can determine how, potentially including multifamily apartment buildings, garden apartments, ‘over the store’ apartments, three- and four-plexes (multiple units in what appears to be a single-family house), and accessory dwelling units (ADUs)—which might be apportioning part of a house to an apartment (often called ‘mother-in-law apartments’), a garage conversion to a micro-unit (something that Pratt professors have worked on, with national recognition), and accessory buildings (such as backyard cottages).

Note: As a group, we are skeptical about the ‘abolish single family’ war cry: it can be misguided in places, it is unnecessarily threatening to the suburban way of life, and thus can lead to a universal rejection of affordable housing initiatives. Further, variety of housing is key to affordability; and of all the typologies, dispersed ADUs are the hardest to monitor for living conditions and virtually never comes with affordability requirements.

The Desegregate Connecticut proposed legislation, like New Jersey, also entails a ‘builder’s remedy.’ If the municipality does not provide realistic opportunity for affordable housing, developers can sue the municipality to build that housing (typically as mixed-income housing) pretty much where they want. In New Jersey, builder’s remedy has been universally upheld by the courts, and thanks to the fear of that, municipalities have responded by planning for affordable housing. These and other provisions should be investigated, advocated, and adopted to compel municipalities to meet their ‘right to

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/nyregion/12westchester.html. 7 https://www.desegregatect.org/ 8 In the 1970s, the NAACP and others sued the Town of Mt. Laurel for 9 discriminatory zoning, leading to a series of court cases and State legislations that add up to among the most progressive policies about inclusionary zoning in the nation.

housing’ mandate.

For instance: The Desegregate Connecticut proposed legislation improves on New Jersey’s in one major respect. As in New Jersey, the State government figures out what each municipality’s ‘fair share’ should be to meet regional housing needs, weighing factors such as where the jobs are. The Desegregate Connecticut legislation also factors in fiscal wealth, which means that the obligation will be greater for the wealthier municipalities where schools are often better, and lesser for municipalities that are within easier housing-price reach for working class folk. Parallel housing initiatives efforts should be pursued to assure equitable financing of education through more progressive educational housing strategies. The idea that one’s education is dependent on their zip code must be addressed, equitably. (The housing / education link is the subject of a forthcoming policy paper by the Housing Consortium.)

Require that counties market the affordable housing created through the zoning mandates. The inclusionary zoning and resulting projects under ‘Mt. Laurel’ yielded economic diversity but not racial or ethnic diversity. The affordable housing unit counts in any single project are small; thus, best known to local workers and residents. In Pratt’s work on Westchester, a key (implemented) recommendation was for the County government to affirmatively market the units; added recommendations were for the County to partner for marketing with institutions and corporations that employ BIPOC populations, such as hospitals and colleges; as well as partner with advocacy and other groups representing BIPOC populations, including in the nearby Bronx.

Amend the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) to include racism impacts on the list of required analysis points. Alternatively, adopt, at the state-level (for all three states—Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York) legislation modeled on that of New York City and Boston, Massachusetts that mandates an ‘equitable development data tool’ considering the racial impact of rezonings—but for all municipal actions, including capital budgets. While in New York City, the primary concern is gentrification and displacement, in the suburbs the methodology could highlight real and missed opportunities to promote equitable access to quality schools and services, as well as “affirmatively further fair and affordable housing” consistent with fair-share rules and plans as per the prior two recommendations. Remedying implicit and even unintended racist government actions starts with transparency.

New York City Action Items

Make mandatory inclusionary housing universal in New York City, even for as-of-right development. Mandatory inclusionary housing is increasingly the norm across the U.S. The prevailing argument against it is that it can hurt project viability. More likely, it would diminish property values since developers (when all is said and done) adjust their bids for property acquisition accordingly—much as they would for impact fees. Thus, there is no need for a bonus in the wealthier communities, where the driving cost is less about housing construction and maintenance than property acquisition, such that the inclusionary requirement’s impact is on the speculative value of property rather than on feasibility. The bonus could remain in areas where the density bonus is a matter of feasibility. The City’s J-51 Tax Exemption and Abatement Program already employs geographic determinants for its financial incentives; the density bonus can, as well.

Prepare a fair share plan for New York City’s neighborhoods also modeled on New Jersey and Desegregate Connecticut precedents. The plan is best prepared as part of a comprehensive plan for the city. Every Community Board should be bound to plan for added development in its Community District. The City could identify the most practical sites / areas / corridors based on planning, environmental, and urban design criteria—from which the Community Board could choose. Failure to do so would trigger the City doing so with community input but without community authority. The Fair Share analysis should put a priority on integration of wealthier neighborhoods as well as where development of affordable housing would support current community identity rather than trigger gentrification. This cross-acceptance approach would not only help integrate New York City neighborhoods; it would also stimulate housing construction—as discussed next.

Expand on the recently adopted Racial Impact Study legislation that requires that all rezonings and development be subject to an analysis of the community impacts inclusive of segregation, displacement, and neighborhood change. The legislation should also consider allocation of capital budgets, site location of community facilities, etc. to make the City more accountable for the uneven distribution of parks and other amenities, as well as consistency with its own fair share rules for siting of ‘NIMBY’ (not in my back yard) uses. As discussed later, ‘housing’ is about neighborhood and context as well as about the unit and building.

See also recent proposals by Jumaine Williams /CUFHH to promote racial 10 equity - https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/new-tool-puts-racial-equity-at-the-center-of-community-funding https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/158-18/may 11 or-de-blasio-signs-legislation-extending-rent-stabilization-laws and https://www.globest.com/2021/03/16/nyc-apartments-look-poised-for-2021-rebound/?slreturn=20210601115125 The city’s population waxed and waned in the past decade. Recent 12 decreases can be partly attributed to impediments to immigrating to New York City—as the nation’s gateway city—due to both former President Trump’s immigration policies and Covid19. In-migration will grow enormously if the United States accommodated any of the giant amount of climigration/relocation expected across the globe due to climate change. Other, more idiosyncratic trends include the removal of inventory due growing number of investment apartments; and, following Covid19-induced changes in the housing market, a growing number of apartments that are now the ‘second’ (not primary) address of the tenants. Exact predictions are thus speculative. What matters is that the long-term amount of housing production—whether market-rate or social housing or public housing—can be expected to lag behind the long-term demand, putting upward pressure on housing costs to the consumer notwithstanding immediate market conditions.

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Housing Production and Affordability

The simple fact is that New York City is a destination city. The city’s rental housing vacancy rate as of 2017 was 3.6 percent; the vacancy rate is currently, during the time of Covid19, estimated at 4.3 percent. Both proportions are well below the State-mandated benchmark of 5.0 percent at which point Rent Stabilization laws can be dropped, and well below the normative 7.0 percent representing neither a seller’s nor a buyer’s housing market. 11 As a destination city with low vacancy rates, there is rampant gentrification and price inflation for units not subject to rent stabilization. At a typical construction of 20,000 to 25,000 units per year, equal to an increase of far less than 1.0 percent in comparison to the total number of 3.2 million units, this condition will take decades of construction to remedy, not counting the need to replace a giant loss of inventory because of climate change and rising seas (as discussed in another section of this paper). This means that Rent Stabilization laws are more important than ever and efforts to increase the State and City’s role in the production of social housing should be a priority. 12 The City’s solution has been to offer developers financial inducements especially for affordable housing, to upzone residential areas in working class neighborhoods that have less political clout than their wealthy counterparts, and to rezone the dwindling amount of land area available for industry. The last strategy has accommodated the spectacular building sprees in Greenpoint and Williamsburg among other places but has negative implications for the cost of living and air pollution (since more goods have to be shipped in at great cost from New Jersey, via a handful of

of Hudson River crossings), and blue-collar jobs (“replacing blue collar jobs with luxury housing for white collar workers,” as one Pratt alum says). As noted above, the incentives have also spurred gentrifying development in existing affordable neighborhoods.

Likewise, public housing will remain essential to the provision of housing for poor people in New York City. MIH and similar models are good at creating housing for the working middle class, but not the poor wherein rent rolls are diminutive. The current strategy to use federal Section 8 funds to support public housing is necessary, but in the long run will yield less housing for the poor unless federal levels of funding are increased, and rules are changed. Meanwhile, NYCHA is in a crisis created by decades of deferred maintenance and the loss of federal funding. Alone, the mold conditions in NYCHA campuses amount to a national scandal in the waiting, just as water quality in Flint Michigan was ten years ago. There are explanations but no excuse for this deplorable situation. It comes down to fact that the City, State, and especially federal governments have not delivered on the financial support that was deemed necessary from the start. Housing the poor is not profitable and must be subsidized.

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NYC Action Items

Once again: Make mandatory inclusionary housing (not specifically MIH zoning) universal in the city.

Eliminate parking requirements within (as a general benchmark) ten minutes walking distance of subway stops. Developers might still supply parking to attract the target housing market. Structured parking adds $60,000+/- to the cost of construction, per

https://rpa.org/work/reports/nychas-crisis 13

space. Reducing parking requirements makes development less costly and more realistic in many neighborhoods. Doing so at subway stops promotes transit use and reduces traffic.

Increase funding for supportive housing. Apart from the basic issue of affordability, there is a need for housing of a more specialized nature for groups such as the elderly, AIDS victims, victims of domestic violence, and the formerly incarcerated, to name some.

Allow more variety of housing typologies in New York City, not just to increase supply, but also to reflect the diversity of the city’s populations. Based on the work of the Pratt Center and Pratt studios, the Building Code should in locales—such as parts of northern Queens not subject to flooding—be amended to ease the legalization of basement accessory units. Accessory units already exist illegally; the City might supply grants to homeowners to carry out the improvements necessary to make accessory units safe. In several markets, such as the city’s Chinatowns, extended family living could be aided by allowing connected units (such as a studio attached to a one-bedroom apartment). Live-work space has been on the agenda for over 30 years, and post Covid19 will become normalized for a vast population. Those same attached studio apartments might be offices instead. And so on.

Strengthen the protections of the State’s Rent Stabilization Legislation. Mayor DeBlasio has made proposals to reduce tenant harassment and decrease workarounds that allow for escalating rents. We urge the State to recognize that the stipulated threshold of 5 percent vacancy rate for ending the legislation still falls below the normative 7 percent vacancy rate for a balanced housing market; and that sudden spikes in vacancy rates–such as those caused by ‘black swan’ events like Covid19—should be excluded from analysis. The rate should be increased to 6 percent and/or reflect a more nuanced and multi-year set of statistics (e.g., be based on income cohorts and be over 5 percent for a period of five years, further excluding second homes).

Study the impact of banks, hedge funds, and conglomerates of small-time investors increasingly buying housing units as a place to park capital. Our fear is that this commodification of housing will push out small-scale property owners who often have ethnic, personal, or other ties to tenants that lead to a check on rising rents and tolerance for missed monthly payments and such. This needs study and a response at the City and State level.

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Lobby to revise the Community Reinvestment Act’s (CRA’s) rules to help low- and moderate-income residents of an area, and not the area occupied by low-income residents. The CRA requires federal banking regulators to encourage financial institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they do business, regardless of prevailing incomes there. Written in the 1970s, the legislation increased the flow of money and investment to these areas. Given gentrification, these rules today help to displace those folks. (Housing decommodification is the

subject of a forthcoming policy paper by the Housing Consortium.)

For the same reasons, either end or redesign federal Opportunity Zone (OZ) legislation. The intent should be to benefit low-income residents, not the geography.

Supply universal free access to Counsel for renters looking to prevent eviction. Renters lose cases in housing court because property owners are represented by counsel, which renters cannot afford. The current program of free access to counsel for low-income renters should be expanded so that any qualified renter can have representation in court.

Supply emergency rental assistance to prevent eviction. In addition to ongoing rental assistance, supply up to (say) $5,000 to cover rental arrears. New York City’s congresspeople should lobby to allow welfare relocation funding to be fungible so it can be used to finance supportive housing. Such tenant assistance would also help small landlords to remain solvent. And it would reduce public expenditures: it can cost taxpayers several times more to place a family in a shelter than it would cost to provide rental assistance and prevent eviction.

Allocate $2 billion per year for NYCHA—as per the City’s capital plan—to forestall loss of public housing stock—until public housing is returned to first-rate condition. Multiple revenue sources could be tapped. As one ready source of revenue, NYCHA as well as other public housing agencies from around the nation should have access to the Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LITCH) that are allocated but otherwise go unused at the end of every fiscal year. The City’s elected officials should lobby hard for federal infrastructure dollars to be allocated for overdue repair.

Employ ‘Participatory Budgeting’ and other participatory methods to assure that the NYCHA campus and housing improvements are made in accordance with resident priorities, needs, and wants—mindful that these residents are traumatized by decades of neglect and broken promises; in addition to their having social and other networks that provide resiliency and which warrant creative support, such as through the creation of community gardens, daycare centers, community kitchens, cooperative grocery stores, etc.

As emphasized in the next chapter in this report, NYCHA should plan now for replacement of those campuses that will prove untenable due to climate change, if not initiate the relocation now using unused air rights that (in NYCHA’s financial desperation) are being eyed for revenue production that should come from government, not public-private endeavors. These are tough decisions that hinge on NYCHA taking a 50-year view to planning, beyond crisis management.

Prepare a comprehensive plan for the city that assures that every neighborhood has a beneficial quality of life. ‘The Right to Housing’ is more than a housing unit; it includes the right to live in a safe neighborhood, without environmental hazards, with ample services and amenities such as parks and good schools, and with transportation alternatives (in New York City, that means reliable transit). The plan should be predicated on robust partnership between the City and local communities—balancing mutual obligations, fair share policies, and community empowerment. Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s proposal is a step in that direction.

It should be adopted barring a better proposal (in real time). It should be followed-up with complementary revisions to the New York City Charter, such as restoring capital budget review to the Department of City Planning, further empowerment of Community Boards, diversification of their membership, etc.

Homeownership and Wealth

Owning a house has been part of the American Dream since Thomas Jefferson’s advocacy of the ‘Agrarian Ideal;’ and it has been the principle means for cross-generational accumulation of wealth. BIPOC and particularly Black people have been denied from taking part in this dream by policy.

From 1934 to the Civil Rights Act of 1968, mixed-use working class and Black neighborhoods were excluded by ‘Redlining’ from Federal Housing Authority mortgage lending and insurance. The result: “just 2 percent of the $120 billion in FHA loans distributed between 1934 14 and 1962 were given to nonwhite families.”

In 1944, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (the ‘GI Bill’) supplied guaranteed mortgages to veterans of World War II veterans but allowed discrimination. The result, by example: “In Mississippi, just two of the 3,000 mortgages that the Veteran’s Administration guaranteed in 1947 went to African Americans, despite the fact that African Americans constituted half of the state’s population.” 15

While the federal government built new highways to open the suburbs to white suburbanization, highways were built often with racist intentions

https://www.nareb.com/systemic-inequality-displacement-exclu-14 sion-and-segregation/ 15 Ibid. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/ar-16 chive/2016/03/role-of-highways-in-american-poverty/474282/ of isolating black neighborhoods or clearing the way for new development. The result: the largest infrastructure project of the 20th century United States embodied racism. 16

These and other biased policies of government were matched by private malfeasance, such as block busting, foreclosure schemes, predatory lending, prejudicial appraisals, and insurance companies denying claims; and further on top of bigotry in hiring practices, lack of access to quality education and services, and relegation of Black communities to housing and neighborhoods with environmental hazards.

Nothing short of a full-throttle reversal will do.

Action Items

Support new forms of shared ownership. These can include cohousing schemes, mutual housing models, community land trusts (CLTs), and ownership by local community development corporations.

Support sweat equity models for homeowners, including in multifamily buildings of all sies. These should learn from the successes (and failures) of sweat equity in the 1970s and 1980s as well as draw inspiration from the work of architects such as Alejandro Aravena—in which construction crews (perhaps job corps linked to training and entry into the relevant unions) create the foundations, shells, and basic infrastructure (plumbing, electricity, wastewater) and residents do the finishing and even extensions as a group or individually, all at once or over time.

Massively expand mortgage assistance, counseling, and related subsidy programs to prevent mortgage default.

Create a home ownership down payment assistance program. As proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, the program would be targeted to homeowners in former Redlined areas and in low-income areas. Interest rates are quite low at present, but new homeowners are constrained by the large down payments required. As proposed by now Vice President Kamala Harris when a candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination to be president, the program could be as large as $100 billion, targeted to Redlined areas that remain low-to-moderate income today.

Should interest rates rise, create a low-interest loan program directed to low- and moderate-income households. To promote integration, it might not be geographically constrained as per the prior recommendation nor limited to first-time homeowners.

Update the homesteading programs in places of abandonment, such as those evident in a number or Rustbelt cities. As proposed by now Cabinet member Pete Buttigieg, the federal government would buy abandoned property and then sell it at below-market costs to low- and moderate-income residents.

Tap into impact investment to fund sustainable affordable housing.

Managed and Whole Community Relocation

Managed and Whole Community Relocation

Introduction

This chapter outlines the critical forces shaping and constraining New York City’s ability to respond to the effects of increasing physical/climatic risk on New York City’s residents and the city’s existing housing supply. This document poses the considerable challenges facing the safety and welfare of current and future residents, the relationship between current actions and future conditions, and considerations for changes that maximize choice in housing opportunity. While our expertise and thoughts were primarily about New York City, many of the suggestions here have bearing on other geographies, not necessarily as complex in variety but that face much the same issues having to do with the simple fact that rising tides and more frequent storm events will render some waterfront neighborhoods uninhabitable in the long run, forcing relocation of residents, businesses, and public infrastructure.

Responding to this trajectory can take multiple forms: from a ‘managed retreat’ where swaths of housing may need to be decommissioned, to building level improvements that may reduce a building’s overall unit count to benefit most tenants, to the development of new resilient housing inside and outside communities of risk. This paper outlines considerations for New York City’s next Mayor and their successors to socialize these challenging compromises, create new avenues for effective and meaningful resident participation, catalyze improvements and dramatically increase the city’s housing supply to respond to the threat of flood risk while maximizing choice and opportunity for existing residents affected by risk. Two basic approaches are embedded in the discussion:

Giving people choice to relocate as single households

Giving people choice to relocate as community (sometimes referred to as ‘climigration’)

They interrelate: people in an ethnic, social, or public housing enclave may vary in their preference. They have common denominators: the necessity to conduct comprehensive planning inclusive of empowering communities; to create multiple regulatory and financial tools that work in concert for a place as varied as New York City; and to devote the resources necessary to the task.

This chapter may include seeming, but we would argue constructive redundancy. The relocation of people and communities from extreme risk is complex especially as it will happen over a period of decades, therefore under differing economic, market, societal, technological, and political circumstances. As daunting as this effort will be, the dangers of inaction are even more severe—in the order of dealing with catastrophes involving over hundreds of thousands of people, a great many of whom have been subject to social, racial, and economic inequities curtailing their economic and housing opportunity now and for the foreseeable future.

Problem Statment

Increasing flood risk will reduce the footprint and potential habitability of a sizable part of New York City’s residential land area. Inundation from daily tidal flooding poses an existential threat to extremely low-lying neighborhoods. Without significant investment in buildings and infrastructure, flood risk from tropical storms, high-volume precipitation events, and tidal flooding may have catastrophic consequences for the lives of many New Yorkers. While all of New York City’s 500+ miles of coastline are vulnerable to flooding, the city’s historic patterns of racial and economic segregation have concentrated low-income BIPOC (black, indigenous, people-of-color) communities in the geographies of highest hazard—such as in The Point in the Bronx, Red Hook in Brooklyn, Far Rockaway in Queens, the Lower East Side in Manhattan, and Stapleton in Staten Island. The floodplain also includes most of the city’s relatively affordable communities of home ownership, including communities in southeast

image 19 : Potential Future 1-in-100 years flood zones in New York City. Queens, the southeast shore of Staten Island, and southeast Brooklyn. To understand the scope of the challenge: 26,000 multifamily buildings with over 300,000 housing units—of which one-half are rent-regulated or in public housing developments—are in the 100-year floodplain.

Of course, many risks can be managed (though not eliminated) through building improvements, such as the elimination of basements and ground-flood dwellings, the relocation of utility systems, improvements in stormwater management and street drainage, the development of natural buffer areas, and flood management infrastructure such as berms, levees, and diversionary measures such as flood ways. The need for coordinated investment, in retrofitting existing housing and the development of new housing in the city’s upland communities, is significant.

But flood risks are not always mitigatable. In those cases, for example when water levels rise but do not recede, the only solution is for residents to move away, as per the focus of this chapter.

The administrative, legal, and regulatory structures that undergird potential public action are ill-suited for responding to a crisis at the intersection of both housing and the environment. A rapidly changing coastline combined with an irretrievably inequitable housing economy make the case for a new order. Unfortunately, the legal framework for action in planning, housing, and the environment lacks the capacity for the intensity of change needed. New York City’s regulatory systems and operational silos are problematic: from local agency structures where there is no clear jurisdiction for risk mitigation, to outmoded state governance policies for housing, tenant protections, and conservation, to a suite of federal programs that are not designed to work in tandem. At this moment, neither New York City nor citizens are

equipped with the tools for a successful response. affordable, lower-scale housing with luxury housing, in which the ‘affordable units’ rent at a higher price point than what neighborhood residents can afford. Third, it has not been directed to the wealthier (and politically more powerful) neighborhoods, thereby it has not resulted in integration and given BIPOC families better access to superior schools, parks, etc.

A Spectrum of Risk and Spectrum of Potential Response

Flood risks are not uniform across New York City, although the effects of flooding are citywide, as significant city infrastructure (power generation, waste treatment, and sanitation facilities) sit in the floodplain. The combined storm risk and daily tidal flooding challenges facing communities around Jamaica Bay and the barrier islands/peninsulas of the Rockaways and Coney Island / Brighton Beach are significantly different—requiring very different forms of interventions in the short, medium, and long term—from the storm and precipitation risks facing the riverine, canal-side, and harbor communities of Astoria, College Point, Harding Park, Linden Hill, Midland Beach, and Spring Creek in Queens; Bushwick, Gowanus, Red Hook, and Sunset Park in Brooklyn; Chelsea, East Harlem, the East Village, the Lower East Side, and Wall Street in Manhattan; and western Staten Island.

To be sure, the public sector will play a critical role in developing and supporting assistance that reduces the potential flood risk of the city’s most vulnerable communities while increasing affordable housing supply so that the city’s residents are able to make choices and find meaningful housing opportunity in areas with less or no flood risk. Yet, as there is a significant gradation in risk and physical conditions, the potential responses cannot be uniform. Portions of neighborhoods—like Bayswater, Broad Channel, Edgemere, and Old Howard Beach in Queens—already experience significant disruption and damage from daily tidal flooding, as this risk increases, portions of these communities are likely to become uninhabitable as it becomes impossible to keep passable streets. More broadly, communities on Coney Island in Brooklyn, the Rockaways in Queens, and City Island in the Bronx face significant risks from severe coastal storms that cannot be fully mitigated. In these communities, the citywide and local elected officials and leaders will face significant challenges socializing understanding of these risks and balancing critically needed short-term investment needs with long-term risks.

Flooding risks will, over time interact with market forces. A cycle can happen in which successions of owners and tenants the coastal areas most at risk increasingly house those with lesser economic and housing choice, including a shift from ownership to rental housing. This is not without precedence, as per the decline of New York City’s prosperous subway beach ‘resort’ areas following the introduction of the automobile age. Further, without transitional investments in areas of risk, the City would de-facto engage in infrastructure disinvestment. The result could be newly blighted areas, yielding a fresh injustice akin to that engendered by Redlining. Much of this chapter addresses this conundrum—avoiding the trauma of disinvestment while promoting movement away from extreme risk.

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NYCHA Housing

This conundrum is especially meaningful for residents of the New York City Housing (NYCHA) public housing campuses.

The statistics are daunting. Over a half million New York City residents in 166,000 households are housed by NYCHA. But while NYCHA units amount to 5 percent of all housing units in New York City, they account for 20 percent of the units in the present 100-year floodplain, and 12 percent of those damaged by Superstorm Sandy—which is a fair surrogate for the number of units that will be in buildings under high tide by the year 2100. That 12 percent equates with 35,000 units housing 80,000 people. Entire NYCHA campuses, such as those in Coney Island and Far Rockaway, will be subject to high tide flooding and unsustainable by 2100.

And the problem is urgent. By as soon as 2050, less than 30 years from now, one-fourth of NYCHA’s entire inventory will be vulnerable to flooding when over 500 NYCHA buildings will be within the floodplain. The Sandy damages amounted to $3 billion—$85,000 per unit, on average; this does not include remedying mold, since the Federal Emergency Management Agency took the position that it is a worsening of a pre-existing condition.

Beyond statistics, the residents of NYCHA housing represent the very poor of New York City, have negligible housing mobility, and are overwhelmingly made up of BIPOC populations who suffer from racism, limited economic opportunity, and a history of government negligence if not malfeasance as per police brutality, Redlining, and Urban Renewal. As outlined later, long-range planning now,

17 18

19 20

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nycha/downloads/pd 17 f/NYCHA-Fact-Sheet_2020_Final.pdf Furman Center for Real Estate & Urban Policy, and the Moelis Institute for 18 Affordable Housing Policy, New Yirj University: Sandy’s Effects on Housing in NYC; and The Nation, “Is NYC’s Public Housing Ready for the Next Storm” 19 https://www.togetherresilient.org/why-nycha 20 https://rpa.org/work/reports/nychas-crisis tenant/resident partnering, a variety of strategies including community relocation to maintain social capital, and considerable funding are all necessary.

Given New York City’s overall housing affordability crisis, the Bloomberg administration and then the DeBlasio administration responded to Superstorm Sandy recovery with a program known as ‘Build it Back,’ which focused the vast majority of $2.2 billion in housing recovery funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on repairing, reinforcing, and rebuilding existing housing. Although this stabilized the lives of numerous New Yorkers and supported the communities where they live, this significant investment did little to tackle the long-term challenge of coping with increasing risk. One of the major lessons learned from Superstorm Sandy is that the moment to make significant policy changes is in the immediate response to the disaster, as, without any change of course, building owners will at once begin to invest in repairs to their homes and buildings.

For this reason, it is essential that the next administrations take seriously the critical role of responding to the next disaster in a manner that meaningfully protects New Yorkers from long-term risk. This requires tackling extraordinarily challenging issues: from how to assist homeowners and tenants who live in communities where there is no way to mitigate flood risk, to making investments in existing buildings which may reduce the unit count by removing basement and ground floor dwellings, to recognizing that certain structures are simply not designed to meet the needs of tenants while protecting them from weather hazards and supporting demolition and construction of new resilient structures. As there is no one single

Moment of Truth: Recognizing Long Term Risk in the Next Disaster and Response

solution, these issues will require significant leadership and sensitivity to the challenge that risks across the city are heterogenous and will require different responses and supports.

The rest of this document explores specific housing challenges and solutions. While these focus on the physical and built environment, it is important to recognize that the challenges and solutions are on top of inequitable, often racist policies yielding trauma and understandable distrust. Responses to climate risk, therefore, must be conducted in a way that respects human rights and experiences, empowers BIPOC (Black Indigenous and People of Color) communities, and provides choice, especially for those who do not have the wealth to freely move in the housing marketplace. This can be as individuals, or as communities at large (what we call ‘whole community climigration’). Either way, it must be carried out with communities, not happen to them.

The relocation transition should be understood in the context of all forced migration or internal displacement as defined by the United National High Commissioner for Relocation (UNHCR) and should forward according to the larger framework of International Human Rights Law. (Refer to Chapter 2.) It must include sufficient timelines, which are key to the execution of a humanistic and equitable displacement. It must execute its planning and relocation process in ways that minimize disruption to daily life, economic and social well-being, and political voice. It must involve meaningful community engagement. It must be viewed as long-term, beginning well in advance of any potential relocation and continuing long after it in support of the community transition. The political/governmental temptation to employ a top-down, efficient, ‘master builder’ approach—such as that of Robert Moses to modernize New York City with highways—must be avoided lest racist history repeat itself.

Community Planning and Partnerships Are Necessary

It will also require multiple types of engagement and planning that will differ among the communities; as will the outcomes. Notwithstanding such variety, the following principles must be respected, especially but not only when whole community climigration is the choice:

Respect the great diversity within communities during the planning process-including the will of those who do not want to join in the shared relocation.

Build bridges to the whole community beyond its leadership.

Continue to engage experts and stakeholders such as environmental justice groups.

Redress historical inequities including the standards of housing and services. As part of these considerations, account for legacies of serial displacement that have afflicted communities.

Address issues of cultural identity, heritage preservation, and historic resource stewardship.

Respect community self-determination as regards cultural heritages, social structures, ways of life among other factors.

Provide meaningful responses to community needs, desires, and vision.

Consider community voices in planning for the use of the land left behind.

Account for the extended time frames of the transition through budgeting and policy.

The need for meaningful community participation (as outlined above) bears emphasis and elaboration as it is applied on behalf of working class, Black, Latinx, and immigrant communities.

The groups and stakeholders who stand for BIPOC and community interests do not necessarily have the resources to take part effectively given the complexities of climate change, infrastructure investments, and relocation; and the pressing problems of the moment (crime, housing quality, underperforming schools, under- and unemployment) perforce take precedence over contingency planning for decades in the future. The environmental justice community is rightly suspect of discussions about managed retreat in large part because of past Redlining, neighborhood disruption by highway and other infrastructure construction, and discriminatory planning policies. The City policy since the Bloomberg mayoralty to upzone working class waterfront areas for flood-resistant luxury housing sends a signal that working class folk are being displaced by higher-income residents in the name of climate adaptation. The relocation of more affluent residents from at risk prime coastal areas to inland working-class neighborhoods is a new form of (climate-change-induced) gentrification.

Discussions about climate change are difficult because they elicit the trauma of displacement. Since the specter of displacement has seemed an event that will affect future generations of residents and political administrations, the public conversation has not begun. Yet, while the unpredictability (or unfathomability) of the timeline for climate change timeline might suggest extreme impacts may not be felt for several mortgage cycles, a storm disaster could make retreat an immediate concern.

This adds up to supplying resources for the participatory planning to be community driven (not top-down) and employing a multiplicity of partnering approaches and participatory methods recognizing the justice of empowering communities to decide their own future within the context of climate change realities that need to be honestly but mindfully presented.

It is difficult to create the time and a safe space within which economically vulnerable populations can engage and confront the potential losses of displacement and the benefits of a whole community transition. Yet, because these same populations often rely on their robust social networks and their collective voice to effect change, they well understand the value of whole community action and the power and agency they will lose without it. We need to provide them with the support they need to first envision a better future and then achieve whole community relocation in pursuit of it, if they so choose.

Community engagement far in advance of any displacement will serve multiple functions especially should the population opt to relocate together. It builds the capacity for resiliency in response to short term disaster and long-term transitions. It informs and educates residents as to immediate issues of sustainability and resilience as well as longer term climate change impacts. It helps a community to self-organize and develop the capacity for decision-making and planning.

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This process requires climate experts, political representatives, and other stakeholders to help the community explore relocation options. It could require the leadership and initial participation of a smaller group of willing residents in advance of establishing a wider dialogue with the whole community. That larger dialogue has a focus on better futures for families’ children and grandchildren within a context of comprehensive planning, one scenario being whole community climigration.

Climate change will inevitably force relocation from some waterfront neighborhoods, as noted. Most of this paper postulates incremental strategies as both practical (given that the necessity for retreat will unfold over time) and desirable for most people (as it preserves individual decision making). But what about communities with strong social ties evidenced in many ethnic and beach communities as well as in public housing? We believe that within the context of providing substantive choice to those residents, whole community climigration needs to be an option if we are to achieve an equitable transition and future city.

Many if not most of the communities who favor holistic resettlement will be on the lower end of the economic spectrum, in which social capital matters even more in the absence of financial capital. Examples could include the residents of the Franklin Houses public housing in East Harlem, ethnic enclaves such as the Chassidic community in the area to the east of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and the tight-knit community of Hunts Point, the Bronx. Many of these populations often face a multiplicity of daily life-challenges from lack of economic opportunity to racism to food insecurity to environmental injustice (including the presence of extreme mold conditions). These challenges often derive from a legacy of governmental inequity that has

Why Whole Community Climigration

positioned them in low-lying vulnerable areas bereft of opportunity to begin with: It is no accident that one-half of the publicly-supported housing in Queens is in the Rockaways—the borough’s most remote locale.

As per the examples above, we have given special consideration to residents of NYCHA campuses, roughly one-fourth of which were built in such vulnerable coastal areas to rehouse residents displaced through Urban Renewal and highway construction. Over the interceding generations, the increasingly diverse residents of these campuses have often developed strong internal social networks, agency, and a political voice. Whole community relocation will support their agency to better their future and simultaneously address the inequities of the past.

This paper identifies the qualities of potential locations for community relocation. The urban design features of these ‘new towns in town’ developments might vary. Several design goals emerged, including incorporating the principles of the ‘15-minute neighborhood,’ supporting local employment and entrepreneurship, parks and recreation, superior school facilities, and we urge, a center providing socio-economic and cultural support services. It could be the focus and organizing agent of continuing community engagement.

Long-time calls for New York City to undertake comprehensive planning have gained momentum this past year thanks to legislation introduced by the NYC City Council Speaker. We fully concur with this direction given that it is necessary to proactively address climate change and relocation. Decades of investment and work will be needed to address climate change inclusive of managed retreat. The absence of a long-term plan would mean that this work will be

Towards a Wholistic Implementable Physical Plan

done late in a crisis mode, at much greater expense, with more errors, and with far greater trauma for residents.

True comprehensive planning entails an integrated vision of social and physical infrastructures, built and natural environments, and scales of community, all linked to a road map for implementation. It is predicated on cross-acceptance between the aspirations of individual communities and citywide consideration of transportation, energy, education, health, and welfare as well as housing. Directly relevant to relocation, comprehensive planning would clarify which areas face flooding or high tide conditions that necessitate relocation; it would address the fact that relocation will add to the pressure on housing supply (not even Covid19 seems to have truly diminished our city as a destination); it would empower communities to shape their relocation; and it would determine the best use of the territory that is left behind.

The complexities of managing physical relocation over time requires a robust tool kit of planning prophylactic, current, interim, and longer-term measures, as per those outlined below:

1. Prophylactic Planning: Plans should anticipate and address site vulnerabilities–flood hazard and otherwise—that produce the needs for serial displacement. One obvious planning principle would be to stop further development in flood zones; or to limit such development to low- and mid-rise structures that can be readily reassembled or moved.

2. Planning Standards: There should be standards for our shared future as part of the comprehensive planning process in advance of relocation. There should be standards for buildings, social infrastructure, and spatial amenity that correct for earlier inequity. New community planning should incorporate state-of-the-art approaches to physical and socio-economic sustainability. They should serve as models for our future.

3. NYCHA Housing: A key part of the comprehensive planning effort should be addressing the impact of climate change—especially rising seas and increased flooding—on public housing in New York City. What is the plan for the relocation of these 40,000 or more households? Will it be relocation to existing NYCHA campuses; in which case the sale of NYCHA land and development rights is premature? Will it be relocation to new campuses as per whole community climigration; in which case the question arises as to what sites should be secured or set aside now (such as Sunnyside Yards in Queens)? Will it be a dispersal strategy; in which case the challenge is how to avoid any decrease in the supply of housing for the very poor? Such and many more questions can only be addressed through coordination of NYCHA and citywide comprehensive planning.

4. Rezoning within a Comprehensive Plan: New York City has the potential to become a multicentric, resilient city through the careful re-imagining of density and bulk in less developed areas such as along under-utilized commercial corridors but also in high-opportunity (more affluent) neighborhoods. Both could include provisions specifically for relocation communities. Both the host and migrating communities must be part of this planning process.

5. Environmental Review: The City’s City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR) Act mandates a brief and often a detailed analysis of zoning, public land disposition, and other actions subject to the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP).

CEQR is poorly suited for managing the scope of district level or citywide issues created by the City’s changing flood plain. As generally adopted, the 20-year horizon for analysis is simply wrong

when it comes to dealing with climate change, since zoning is rarely changed in terms of land use once enacted, and buildings last hundreds of years—both well beyond the period of impact under logical consideration: the years 2050 and 2100. This would simply require that the NYC Mayor’s Office of Environmental Coordination modify the CEQR Technical Manual that guides CEQR reviews.

6. Assessing Sites of Relocation: In a city that is already so dense and built, how will we find sites for relocation that do not jeopardize our ecology, landscapes, and valuable open space? Appropriate sites of relocation are not just about allowable and available development potential under zoning—as per Floor Area Ratio (FAR) in the Zoning Resolution. We need to address what is needed for communities to reposition not just their households but also their related physical assets of open space, amenities, and social infrastructure. In assessing a potential site, we need to consider:

7. Underutilized Urban Fabric: There are underused typologies of sites that could serve the needs of large-scale whole community development. Some typologies, like under-utilized office buildings, offer pre-existing infrastructures and central locations; others, like parking garages, dead malls, and under-tenanted shopping centers, could breathe new life into

The environmental impact of its development on natural, historic, and cultural landscapes.

If it can provide sufficient social as well as physical infrastructure.

Potential burdens on a host community

The ability to provide economic/ job opportunity and the ability to build equity.

The potential to intensify gentrification or the displacement of BIPOC or other marginalized households. shopping centers as well as aging and obsolete urban locales. Commercia corridors are inviting—especially those parallel to subway lines or where trackless tram or bus rapid transit (BRT) are practical. Examples include Coney Island Avenue and Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, and Liberty Avenue and Northern Boulevard in Queens, Bay Street and Victory Boulevard in Staten Island. In such cases, while the pre-existing urban services like schools and libraries could fill some community needs, there will also be the need to provide additional facilities in support of the community transition and future.

8. Available Land for Whole Community Relocation: There are underutilized publicly owned sites, such as Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn and Aqueduct Raceway in Queens, that could be considered for ‘new town, in town’ development. Brownfield sites, like railroad yards, also present opportunities for development with funding via environmental mitigation and other sources. These sites provide the opportunity—but also requirement—to build not just housing but a complete community with new social and physical infrastructures, including schools, social and recreation centers, commercial uses, places for religious institutions, parks, and a robust public realm.

9. Sites Left Behind: Within the context of a comprehensive plan, the City needs to beware of policy that disinvests in communities and housing slated for relocation, thereby increasing their economic and physical vulnerability in advance of relocation. Consideration must be given to when and how infrastructures are abandoned. As discussed earlier in this white paper about timber construction methods, this might involve methods of construction where needed facilities (and even housing) are built using typologies that allow for their ready relocation.

The sites abandoned to water are not without value. The former residents should be key players in deciding their future use—which might

be ecological, recreational, or even memorial.

10. Regional Considerations: The ultimate count of those in whole communities displaced by climate change could be upwards of 100,000 units affecting hundreds of thousands of people. Likewise in the region, hundreds of thousands of more housing units will be affected. For instance, most of Hoboken, NJ and all of Long Beach, NY, in addition to many other smaller oceanfront communities in the region, will be below high tide in 2100 according to current projections. Upland places where higher densities might be plausible (like Secaucus, NJ) may prove workable as areas to promote relocation to, thanks to excellent transit; as might other places where major transit improvements have been proposed (like Roosevelt Field, Long Island). A regional perspective will prove necessary.

Multi-jurisdictional authorities, policies, financial structures will be needed for such a regional approach. For this reason, we should be strengthening our regional connections as part of comprehensive planning for New York City. Municipal and even state boundaries may prove irrelevant.

1. Thinking “Beyond” Relocation: Now is the time to conceive of alternatives to the status quo understanding of community in transition. Why can’t the transition be not out of place but out of poverty—i.e., instead of publicly building and buying new housing, increase the wealth of lower income resident so that they can afford to decide for themselves where to live? If we invest in alternatives to poverty and inequity now, the burdens of climate-change related relocation will dramatically decrease. (Refer to the opening chapter on the Right to Housing.)

2. Planning Timelines: The time frame for a community transition could be between 30 and 50 years, or two mortgage cycles, as long as a

Funding the Just Transition

catastrophe such as Superstorm Sandy does not accelerate the timetable. This timeline supports rational investment in a resilient present even as we plan for future migration. We need to invest in existing building stock in ways that redress unsustainable and unhealthy conditions for the current residents and increase the resiliency of building stock for its projected inhabited life future use—which might be ecological, recreational, or even memorial.

3. The Full Costs of Relocation-Related Development: Billions of dollars will be needed to buy property in high-risk areas as well as to build or subsidize replacement housing. But there is more at stake than just housing units.

We urge that a different financial outlook be used in connection with relocation—one that recognizes the full complexity of what is involved. These added costs include:

Land acquisition of the site left behind, not just the relocation site

Support for social services for the community in transition.

Interim uses for this land that maintains the quality of life in the community over the decades during which relocation will take place

The permanent repurposing of the land left behind

Relocation of heritage assets wherever possible

The honoring of historic narratives and identities

Compensation for disruption of livelihood and other dimensions of daily life

Social and physical infrastructure investment in the host communities For most BIPOC and working-class neighborhoods accommodating new development, investments that assure a net improvement in the neighborhood, recognizing that these neighborhoods are often deficient in public investment and amenities such as parks and newer schools.

Note that these reflect the true costs of relocation. A simple housing replacement approach creates the logic to build in BIPOC communities that have few amenities (such as Bushwick in Brooklyn, which is severely deficient in parks and open space), since the cost of land is less there. The more complete cost profile above (especially the last item) creates the logic to find opportunities to supply replacement units in more expensive neighborhoods that have greater wealth of amenities and services. This could promote greater integration across the city, consistent with one of the major thrusts of this white paper.

4. Funding Instruments: Money is not the issue: New York is one of the richest cities in one of the richest nations of the world. There have been any number of taxing ideas that have been raised and might be employed to raise the revenue needed for relocation. Listed below are such ideas (some of which were also raised in the earlier chapters).

A tax on nonresidents / absentee owners / second homes

A floor of 1 percent of assessed value as Real Estate tax, including for property owned by nonprofit institutions

A graduated real estate tax in which the higher the value of the property, the higher the mill rate.

A real estate transfer or flat tax at point of sale for all manner of property, graduated or pegged to start at a specific value

A tax on stock transfers devoted to infrastructure, as discussed elsewhere in this white paper.

Each of these (or other) funding strategies would need its own feasibility and trade-offs analysis. This should be done simultaneous with the comprehensive planning process, not after. While 2050 and 2100 seem far away, time is still of the essence. Construction of flood mitigation in addition to relocation will prove necessary and will take decades to implement. We cannot count on the federal government since climate change—droughts, fires, extreme heat, coastal flooding, increased storm actions—is a growing national problem, unlike singular events (such as Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Katrina) that neither add up to budget-busting nor compete across the nation for emergency funds.

Raising taxes (in whatever form) is always unpopular and lobbied against. But waiting just assures draconian money revenue strategies later. The long-term nature of this planning requires that policies and funding be crafted in acknowledgement of the need to persist across many election cycles.

Covenants, Easements, and Transfer of Development Rights

The strategies above mainly addressed financial mechanisms to raise the necessary billions of dollars needed to finance relocation. There are also mechanisms that can allow these public funds to be employed in ways that take advantage that relocation can unfold over time rather than happen as a single event, with benefit to both the people to be moved and the communities in which they now live.

1. Covenants and Easements: There is significant potential in using a combination of

New York City Department of Environmental Protection. New York City’s Land 21 Acquisition Program: Protecting Water Quality in the Catskill, Croton, and Delaware Watersheds. Accessed Online: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dep/downloads/pdf/watershed-protection/assistance-for-homeowners-landowners/2010_lap_brochure.pdf covenants and easements to provide compensation and maintain some community continuity in the interim. The NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) already employs covenant and easement programs, in the lands surrounding the City’s water supply reservoirs within Catskill, Croton, and Delaware watersheds upstate. This existing program illustrates a 21 potentially useful compensatory model for managing development over time in the most vulnerable sections of New York City’s floodplain. Purchasing covenants and easements can, over time, allow the City to manage risk while supplying financial resources to property owners.

Easements could be used in multifamily rental projects to compensate for decreased unit counts in a gradual relocation scenario. As units of multifamily housing naturally turnover and become vacant, owners could be compensated for permanently removing vulnerable units from service, through a public purchase of an easement that prohibits reoccupation.

Easements might also be used at all scales for requiring building or site improvements that better protect the building or even the neighborhood from the impact of flooding (such as moving utilities)—i.e., these improvements are not just subsidized, they must be maintained thereafter. Note that this begs the issue of enforcement.

Covenants might be used in which the City (State, others) buy an option on the property for its present value contingent on the primary tenant/occupant moving or the tenant being forced to vacate due to an extreme weather event / fire / etc.

Given that many owner-occupants of properties may have significant balances on mortgages, the development of new easement and covenant programs must work with the lending community on new forms of flexibility to allow potential mortgage subordination.

2. Transfer of Development Rights: Additionally, pairing conservation easements and even purchase of flood prone property with some expanded transfer of development rights (TDR) program could provide a way to maintain housing supply in the City over all while providing some compensation for homeowners in severely risk prone areas.

For legal nexus issue, this approach can only work if the TDR sending and receiving sites are within the same neighborhood, and where the value of the TDR is greater at the receiving than at the sending site. A City-sponsored TDR ‘bank’ would be needed to carry out the recommendation given the legal and other transaction costs associated with TDR; even so, TDR works best where the values to be transferred are the greatest.

Thus, this tool could be effectively used in places like Chelsea and East Harlem in Manhattan, and Columbia Street and Gowanus in Brooklyn; more so than at all in places like in Red Hook in Brooklyn, southeast Staten Island, and Jamaica Bay / Rockaways in Queens. Nonetheless, these are the neighborhoods where the purchase of easements, convenants or outright ownership of units is most expensive. Thus, using TDR here freeds up more money to be spent on other less affluent areas, inclusive of the social, physical, and economic compensations called for earlier.

An Equity and Justice Approach to Buyout Programs

Although buyout programs and managed retreat initiatives may be a logical and fiscally responsible solution to changing landscapes in high-risk communities over the next decades, without a significant investment in the development of comparably priced housing in communities without flood risk, reducing the available housing inventory displaces the problem and does not reduce overall human vulnerability. The next and later administrations must spearhead a substantial and radically inclusive affordable housing construction program in areas with limited risk, while also supporting programs to help physically vulnerable communities in the near term.

To place economic equity and racial justice at the center of these incremental and new long-term plans, several considerations and approaches follow.

1. Programs Driven by Property Values: Most public investment programs use some form of cost-benefit analysis to figure out whether an improvement is a reasonable use of public funds. Using property values as the significant driver of cost-benefit analysis, as done by the FEMA, drives mitigation (flood walls, etc.) investments to real estate-rich locales, such as Lower Manhattan and Chelsea, instead of lower-value locales, such as Red Hook and the Rockaways. This makes it impossible to resolve prior inequities and legacies of disinvestment. Instead, public programs (especially FEMA) should consider the significant costs of temporary and permanent damages and disruptions to low- and moderate-income households that will not have the resources to weather climatic shocks or stresses, and instead, will depend on emergency resources to compensate for unmet needs.

Similarly, property purchase programs, which transition high-risk properties into open space, are designed around compensating owners based on their property’s market value rather than the actual cost to rehouse in an area with fewer physical or social vulnerabilities. Instead, such programs should be designed around the actual costs of rehousing, recognizing that newer property owners may have significant mortgage balances and that disasters can also create a significant amount of financial distress. As New York’s real estate market is subject to significant national and international speculative pressures, it is also possible that market actors could, at certain moments, inflate property values. For this reason, property purchase programs cannot exist alone and need to pair with comprehensive

changes in land use and building controls.

Finally, as noted earlier, the public programs should employ a broader financing definition, inclusive of the repurposing of the land left behind, relocation of heritage assets, and compensation for disruption of livelihood and other dimensions of daily life, in addition to the typical combination (for condemnation) of only property purchase and direct relocation expenses.

2. Programs for Rental housing: Over 65 percent of New York City’s residents live in rental housing, yet there are no robust examples of public, climate transition programs for tenants or for rental units at risk. Helping permanent relocation prior to a disaster will reduce the substantial socio-emotional risks as well the financial costs of aiding families in the aftermath of a disaster, particularly in consideration of extremely challenging to rehouse supportive and senior populations. Pre-disaster relocation programs can supply incentives while also supporting families and communities in making the choices that are most appropriate to meet their own needs. Rather than creating programs with a single option or requiring consensus on a community move, public programs should have the flexibility and resources to promote housing choice.

For owners of medium and larger size multi-family housing, particularly rent-regulated (non-public) housing, there is a substantial gap and limited regulatory flexibility in allowing the decommissioning of the ground floor and basement dwellings most at risk to flooding to allow improvements that reduce the overall building unit count but allow retrofits that promote the safety and well-being of tenants in most units. The City must work with the State Department of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) to create and manage flexibility to protect most units through thoughtful retrofit programs. As there are few incentives for owners to remove units, since reductions in unit count will also reduce building revenues while not reducing a proportionate amount of operating expenses, there is a need for new subsidy programs to help with this thoughtful transition.

Innovation variations in the spirit of Section-8 housing choice vouchers could provide low-income tenants with the resources they need to rehouse while also supplying revenues to an owner to remove a unit. Expansion of and modifications to the Section-8 program could also be used to supply greater housing choice for tenants, as described later.

3. Private Financing: Private owners of market-rate and naturally affordable units will be looking for aid and direction from traditional sources of capital. As a national and international center for financial institutions, New York City has the potential to work in partnership with conventional and institutional lenders to incorporate equity-minded flood risk standards and limitations into local lending practices. A natural place to start may be within the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) practices of local lenders, as well as with Program Related Investments and Impact funds at philanthropies working locally. As a part of these discussions, substantial attention must be paid to issues of mortgage/debt subordination on existing properties in extremely high-risk areas, so that there can be greater alignment between community planning outcome, owner liabilities, and capital markets.

4. Flood Insurance: Another challenge is finding a productive way to interact and influence changes in flood insurance. Small building owners (buildings under ten units), if they carry flood insurance, only buy flood insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Established in 1968, NFIP supplies federally subsidized flood insurance for property owners who could not get flood insurance from private insurance companies. Problematically for places like New York City, the NFIP insurance products have capped payouts, thusly primarily

assist the owners of small homes and buildings and leave owners and renters in larger multi-family buildings with limited financial protections from flood risk.

As changes in the insurance market can diminish the potential for new construction and reduce investment in the maintenance and improvement of existing structures, while also creating challenging affordability considerations for existing owners, the City will have limited regulatory avenues for providing assistance. Potential interactions with the New York State Department of Financial Services, which regulates the insurance markets allowed to operate within New York State, could allow avenues for short-term affordability or continuity of service issues. But as the primary insurance market is federally subsidized and regulated, changes to this market will require significant federal lobbying.

5. FEMA Mapping for Insurance Coverage: NFIP also promotes unified local floodplain management to reduce property at risk in flood areas. The pairing of insurance and floodplain management was meant to make it easier and more affordable for existing property owners in high-risk areas to buy flood insurance while helping communities to better prepare for and avoid damage from flooding. But the combination of subsidized insurance rates, out-of-date and increasingly inaccurate flood maps, and policies that fail to discourage repetitive loss risks have effectively subsidized development and redevelopment in high-risk areas.

New York City is updating its flood insurance rate maps for the first time since they were created in 1983 in coordination with FEMA as required for continued participation in NFIP. It is projected that the geography of flood risk in the city will expand significantly, nearly doubling in size, creating a new affordability challenge, particularly for owners for small homes—while also still potentially not capturing the full extent of the city’s flood risk. The City has adopted the preliminary flood insurance rate maps for purposes of its Zoning Resolution and building codes. This effort assures that, at a minimum, newly constructed buildings will be designed to minimize damage from flooding.

But these maps are snapshots in time. As the global climate evolves, New York City’s floodplains will expand in response to rising seas and increased frequency and intensity of storm events caused by the rise in global temperature. Each new Mayoral administration should systematically update correct flood maps for the purposes of the zoning and building code so that new development and substantially improved structures are required to meet contemporary flood risk safety standards and continue to coordinate with State and federal regulators to ensure the accuracy of these efforts in order to ensure the safety of New Yorkers.

Public Subsidy of Existing and Future Housing

Policies, regulations, and housing subsidies can be powerful signals to the housing market about the severe need to consider risk management in the development and maintenance of housing. Potential affordable housing tools to consider are as follows:

Modifications to the City’s Qualified Allocation Plan for Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC). The City should consider disallowing the use of 9 percent credits for new construction in the floodplain, or the creation of geographically specific flood risk requirements that exceed the current code for projects in the floodplain. The City should consider requiring that 4 percent projects in the flood plain include flood mitigation work, such as utility elevation; and the City should allow the reduction or relocation of existing units to benefit the long-term safety of the total number of units.

Expansion of Section-8 Housing Choice Vouchers could provide significant opportunities for residential mobility out of the flood plain. Housing Choice vouchers allow low-income residents to find housing in communities they select. Within the operation of the voucher program, modifications to the Decent-Safe-Sanitary standard used to inspect potential units for Section-8 could include flood risk mitigation requirements including disallowing habitation of basement or ground flood dwellings, requiring elevated utility systems and installation of backflow preventers. Expanding the availability of Section-8 Assistance, while, over time, restricting the use of vouchers in the most vulnerable of units and/or neighborhoods can support low-income renters and help in their transition away from the areas of highest physical risk. A successful expansion of Section-8 or creation of another form of Housing Choice Voucher would require changes to allow broader access to the city’s housing supply in high-opportunity areas, enforcement of the City’s source of income discrimination laws, and the development of new affordable housing.

Adjustments could be made to assure the availability of units in the lottery system for publicly supported housing units and affordable units created through mixed-income housing, such as those enabled by Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH). The units are marketed citywide with some weighting in favor of neighborhood residents. The weighting could also be in favor low- and moderate-income households relocated as a result of managed retreat.

Modification of Project-Based Section-8 Housing Choice vouchers and the lottery system for a portion of the affordable units in mixed income projects could help transition specific units or even entire buildings out of use while granting tenants housing mobility and compensating owners. But only if there is expansion of both the Housing Choice vouchers and number of units available through the lottery system. Employment of these tools for people relocating out of the high-risk areas should not be at the expense of other high-need populations, such as the homeless.

Modification or expansion of project-based conversions to finance substantial renovations could also encourage necessary investment in flood-prone structures. Local Congressional representatives might join the City to argue for change to federal regulations to allow HOME funds to be deployed in this manner.

This incremental approach to relocation is not without tradeoffs that would need addressing. As noted earlier, the City must, with the affected communities, plan for a transition that does not yield disinvestment as well as depopulation, and instead lead to improved preparedness for

flooding. For instance, it is possible to imagine how removing several floors of units will allow movement of utility systems so that the rest of a large multifamily building could better absorb flooding from a significant event.

Opportunities to Improve Existing Housing

As much as 17 percent of the City will by the year 2100 be under high tide unless safeguarded with floodworks like sea walls and berms, and vast new areas now outside of the floodplain will be in the new floodplain. Truly little of this housing was built since floodproofing (aka waterproofing) was incorporated into either the Building Code or Zoning Resolution. All of it will be newly vulnerable.

As a housing code regulator and enforcer, the City has the potential to pass legislation and make updates to the Building Code that require compliance for new structures, not just in the existing floodplain but in the future floodplain as well. The legislation and updates can also be fore existing construction, requiring compliance within a specified timeframe; for instance, New York State legislation allows for municipalities to require compliance with regulations for pre-existing signs after a specified time associated with the ‘life’ of the investment. Thirty (30) years may be reasonable for existing buildings as it coincides with the typical mortgage cycle.

Such regulations add to cost. In the city’s present hyper real estate market, most of the impact will be on the speculative and inflated value of property (due to the practice of calculating the residual value of property after factoring all revenues and expenses). But what about affordable and rent-regulated housing—in which such regulations can have punitive effects for owners, higher rents for tenants, or create financial insolvency? In these instances, it is critical to pair these regulations with incentives and subsidies to help finance these improvements in affordable and rent-regulated housing. As always, it will be necessary to figure out how to make the most of limited incentives and subsidies for the upgrade of existing housing versus the development of new housing. It is essential that existing residents have access to quality housing that supplies a safe space to shelter during and after extreme weather events—not limited to flooding. For instance, in addition to allowing for the relocation of building mechanicals in buildings with moderate flood risk, spaces may need to be retrofitted or developed new to allow residents to stay cool during extreme heat events. There will also be the unintended consequences of undesirable inflation in housing rents as the costs are amortized across rental units, or conversely the inability of property owners to remain solvent if the costs exceed what can be passed on to tenants (i.e., exceed the thresholds of substantial improvement). The City should develop flexible incentive programs, including density bonuses, to allow the replacement of housing that has exceeded its useful life while ensuring that existing tenants are affordability rehoused in the new and improved structures.

Socializing and Messaging Change

Finally, it is critical that elected officials, advocates, as well as residents all develop awareness and literacy in the challenge and need for action in response to flood risk. Socializing a shared understanding of flood risk and its relationship with the broader housing crisis will help foster more inclusive and comprehensive community-led solutions.

Socializing and communicating how to mitigate manageable risks versus unmitigable risks will facilitate broaching issues of increasing (like erosion and natural transformation of barrier islands/peninsulas – the Broad Channel, Coney Island, the Rockaways) versus geographies where combinations of neighborhood scale improvements (berms, levees, etc.) and building improvements can reduce risk to a more

manageable (less disruptive, less likely to be fatal) level?

The post-disaster context is ill-suited for thorny long-term planning discussions, as it is extremely hard to meaningfully consider long-term needs while facing urgent recovery. It is critical that the City use pre-disaster mitigation and potential compliance with FEMA floodplain regulations to socialize and unify potential responses in the next disaster. To productively create plans for growth, it will be necessary to connect low-risk communities with higher-risk communities, to foster dialogue and understanding around changing community needs across the City. Transparency and public process are a critical part of successful change, and the City’s current tool kit provides a limited way to recognize the scope of challenge or incorporate the substantial extents of affected people and neighborhoods.

To conclude: Climate risk demonstrates the limitations of New York City’s existing built environment and housing stock. The City’s prior efforts to produce and rehabilitate housing neither meets local demand, nor supplies housing that is safe, high quality, and affordable. No one rationally chooses to live in unsafe conditions, rather, the conditions of New York City’s housing reflect the dearth of choice and opportunity. Climate risk mitigation is a necessary and right opportunity to improve the quality of existing affordable housing.

References

image 1: https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/entry/nycha-design-guide-public-housing

image 2: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/housing/action/housing.page

image 3: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/us-states-most-prone-to-flooding.html

image 4: https://www.dezeen.com/2016/12/02/michael-green-architecture-t3-largest-mass-timber-building-usa-min neapolis-minnesota/

image 5: https://www.firefighterclosecalls.com/proposed-wood-hi-rise-in-nyc-illegal-under-curre nt-laws/

image 6: https://netgen.io/blog/bird-s-eye-view-on-ez-publish-future-the-new-york-trip

image 7: https://ny.curbed.com/maps/nyc-architecture-world-trade-center-brooklyn-bridge

image 8: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/air-pollution-makes-you-less-smart/

image 9: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/01/16/green-new-deal-in -empire-state-doubles-distributed-solar-power/

image 10: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/plans/retrofitting-buildings/retrofitting-buildings.page

image 11: https://www.centralparknyc.org/articles/central-park-lawns image 12: https://www.differencemakersny.org/programs

image 13: https://andrewprokos.com/photo/midtown-manhattan-skyscrapers-3/

image 14: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/naacp-silent-protest-parade-new-york-city-1917/

image 15: https://ny.curbed.com/2020/6/12/21287712 /new-york-city-eviction-housing-court-reopening-coronavirus

image 16: https://inhabitat.com/coastal-areas-of-nyc-could-be-underwater-if-another-sandy-like-storm-hits-in-2100/p rint/

image 17: https://ny.curbed.com/2017/12/20/1679299 0/new-york-affordable-housing-mitchell-lama

image 18: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-any-nice-panorama-illustration-of-a-skyline-144058117.html?irclickid=S UnV8hwKNxyIWE81SHXeNRLDUkG2U80Zxz Q%3A2U0&irgwc=1&utm_source=77643&ut m_campaign=Shop%20Royalty%20Free%20a t%20Alamy&utm_medium=impact

image 19: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans-studies/climate-resiliency/flood-risk-nyc-info-brief .pdf

image 20: https://www.usnews.com/dims4/USNEWS/e088304/2147483647/thumbnail/640x420/quality/85/?url=http%3A%2F%2 Fcom-usnews-beam-media.s3.amazonaws.c

om%2Fd2%2Fdd%2F603245e146c4af1c97e57f46840b%2F1 90419-nyc-editorial.jpg

image 21: https://assets.teenvogue.com/photos/6025461655dea667f5038529/1:1/w_128 0,c_limit/GettyImages-1171576155.jpg

image 22: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4Fq6FOyoZH2B6AX-jD2LdX4ZBKs=/1400x1050/filters:format(jpeg)/cdn. vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/192 15804/GettyImages_1146326587.jpg

image 23: https://nypost.com/2020/01/28/feds-to-finally-start-long-due-cleanup-of-brooklyns-toxic-g owanus-canal/

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