As important as it is to show up to the Community Board meetings on Sept 9 and Sept 12, it’s vitally important that you email Community Board 7 with your opinion about Arrow Linen’s rezoning proposal.
Please send email to bk07@cb.nyc.gov with the subject “Arrow Linen Rezoning”. Please make sure to include your name and street address so you can be heard. Include a statement that you recommend the Community Board rejects the rezoning proposal – we can do better for our community!
Here are emails you can send with one click:
- Limit Rezoning to Allow for 100% Affordable Housing: We have been working with nonprofit developers of affordable housing. If the rezoning is limited to 7 stories or less, they can make a strong market rate offer for the property to build over 200 units of 100% affordable housing at only 7 stories. Click here to send this mail
- Renter Displacement: The block around Arrow Linen has 59 units of rent-stabilized housing, and Prospect Ave has the most affordable rents in the neighborhood. If Arrow is able to build 13-19 stories of luxury high-rises, this will encourage speculators and developers to buy everything around, and price our neighbors who rent in the area out of their homes. Click here to send this mail
- Private Profit over Public Need: This rezoning is a move by the owners of Arrow Linen to put hundreds of millions of dollars more in their pockets than if they built the 5-6 stories they’ll be able to build as of right. The scale of the benefit to the owners of Arrow Linen is so far out of proportion to the scale of any possible benefit to the community as to be an insult to the community. Click here to send this mail
- Non-Democratic Process: It feels arbitrary that a land use decision of such impact for the future of our community can be made primarily by a landowner and a council member. There are over 20,000 people in Windsor Terrace and over 20,000 people in South Slope, including families who have lived here since these houses were originally built 120 years ago. How is it possible that this community, who has so much more at stake in our own future, has no say in that future? Click here to send this mail
- Trickle-Down Housing is Not Right for NYC: Developers would have us believe that the only way to pull ourselves out of our dire housing shortage is by building new construction. For-profit new construction is overwhelmingly geared toward the luxury market. But it’s lower-income households who face the most severe affordable housing shortfalls. New construction takes decades to depreciate down to rents that are actually affordable to most renters and fuels displacement in the short term, even when no already existing housing is knocked down. Numerous studies show that market-rate housing development drives up rents and increases the burden on lower-income households. Many residents in communities transformed by gentrification can already attest to the connection between for-profit development, rising living costs, and the mass exodus of lower-income residents. This includes our own neighbors on Prospect Avenue who have been displaced from Greenpoint, Crown Heights, and other neighborhoods where luxury development has priced them out of their homes. Click here to send this mail
- Character of the Neighborhood: I welcome new housing in the community, and I think that we can build significant new housing at 7 stories or less that will be at the scale of our neighborhood. When 4th Ave was rezoned, an avenue as wide as Park Avenue in Manhattan was rezoned to build 12 story buildings. Propsect Ave is less than half as wide as 4th Ave, and cannot support 13-19 stories of luxury high-rises. The tallest buildings in the neighborhood today are 7 stories tall, and we know from the development at the site of the former Grand Prospect Hall that significant new housing can be built, even at 5 stories. I value the feel of my neighborhood, and want to welcome new neighbors to enjoy this community. Click here to send this mail
Please feel free to write whatever you like, but please write to the Community Board!
Make sure to include a statement that you recommend the Community Board rejects the rezoning proposal, because we can do much better for our community. Click here to write your own email