Community Board 7 Meetings about Arrow’s Proposal

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We said will let you know when Arrow Linen’s application officially starts the Land Use Review (ULURP) Process. THAT TIME IS NOW!

THE COMMUNITY BOARD NEEDS YOUR WRITTEN TESTIMONY! PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR EMAILS YOU CAN SEND WITH ONE CLICK. Only some of us can speak at these meetings, but all of us can be heard!

See the links below for details about these meetings and a link to add the meeting to your calendar:

  • October 22 @ 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

    Fundraiser At The Lonesome Club

    Please join us at The Lonesome Club on Tuesday October 22 from 6:00 – 9:00 pm for a special Ho…

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19 Stories? How Did That Happen?

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While Arrow Linen’s rezoning application was being reviewed by the Department of City Planning (DCP), the Adams administration was busy pushing the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity which purports to provide “a little more housing in every neighborhood.” If and when passed, this initiative will increase zoing across the board in NYC between 20% and 60%. Rezoning applications currently under review had to amend their applications to show the effect that passing this initiative will have on their application.

On their first pass, Arrow Linen’s owners updated their application to show that the 13 stories they’ve applied to build could be as much as 15 stories after City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. But at about the time their application entered the ULURP process, we latest amended filing for Arrow Linen’s application now shows that their 13 story application could be as high as 19 stories after City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. This means that the buildings could be 250 feet tall.

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July Newsletter

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Housing Not High-Rises Community (formerly Arrow Action), July 2024 Update

We’ve been busy since our April community meeting, and we wanted to keep everyone up-to-date:

  • We have a real proposal for 100% affordable housing at 7 stories
  • Arrow Linen’s Rezoning application is now active with the city
  • Fundraising appeal

We Have a Real Alternative and We Need Your Help!

Instead of two 13 story luxury towers, we propose building two 7 story buildings providing 268 permanently affordable apartments. We have had several meetings with an established and respected non-profit affordable housing developer who is ready, willing, and able to make a competitive market-rate offer for the Arrow Linen site, and develop it as 100% affordable housing targeted at approximately 60% of area median income. This means that people would actually be able to afford to live there! This building would be the right size for the neighborhood, provide much-needed housing at affordable rates, and would not threaten to displace the existing tenants in the neighborhood who can afford their rents today.

This solution is real, and the developer is ready to act.

Arrow Linen’s owner, John Magliocco, will not consider selling to this non-profit, because he will make millions more if the City Council approves his zoning request. As our City Council Member, Shahana Hanif, made abundantly clear at our last community meeting in April, this decision will come down to her. She is the one person with the most influence in Arrow Linen’s application, in a process that’s supposed to be democratic.

Council Member Shahana Hanif can limit Arrow Linen’s rezoning to 7 stories, which would make 100% affordable housing possible in our neighborhood!

She has told Housing Not High-Rises that she does not want to limit the rezoning, preferring to approve 13 stories of luxury high-rises. This would result in somewhere between 244 – 352 apartments, 25% of which (61 – 87 units) would have to be offered at 80% of area median income. She says that she will try to negotiate for more affordable units with the developer after the rezoning is approved, but once their application is approved, they are under no obligation.

We brought 268 units of 100% affordable housing to the table, at a scale that works for our neighborhood. Council Member Shahana Hanif can limit the rezoning to 7 stories and make this a reality.

We want Council Member Hanif to stand with the constituents who elected her and stand up for the affordable housing our community wants and our City desperately needs.

Please click here to send a pre-written email to Council Member Hanif or use our communication template to send your own message. We are counting on you!

What Is Motivating Our Council Member?

Council Member Hanif co-chairs the Progressive Caucus, whose principles include creating permanent, deeply affordable housing. She met with the non-profit developer of affordable housing. She met with Housing Not High-Rises. She knows this is real, and she knows that she can bring the results that our community and her caucus want and that our City needs.

When we pointed out that this non-profit developer can provide 268 units of truly affordable housing vs perhaps 75 units of slightly discounted housing that the proposed rezoning offers, she told us that she wants housing on this site for “all income levels.” This is a position inconsistent with the caucus that she co-chairs.

When we pointed out that it’s within her power and mandate to make this happen, she told us that she can’t dictate to whom Arrow sells their property. We reminded her that she made it abundantly clear at our last community meeting that she has the power to determine if the proposal is approved and can limit the rezoning to 7 stories. At that level, the non-profit developer’s offer would be so generous as to be the best available option. She told us that we’re overly concerned about height.

She says she stands for affordability, and yet seems to support Arrow Linen increasing their profit by tens of millions in order to bring luxury high-rises to the most affordable part of our neighborhood, threatening existing renters with displacement.

Instead of supporting profit-seeking landowners and developers, we want Council Member Hanif to stand with the constituents who elected her and stand up for the affordable housing our community wants and our City desperately needs.

Arrow Linen’s Rezoning Application is Active!

Arrow Linen’s zoning application is currently under “Community Board Review” as part of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP). We expect there to be discussion and a vote on the application at the Community Board in the first weeks of September. We will keep a close eye on Brooklyn Community Board 7’s Calendar, and we will send out urgent emails to you when we know the specific dates and locations of these meetings. These meetings are a great opportunity to have your voice heard, along with the rest of Windsor Terrace and South Slope.

We will need a large turnout from our community for the Community Board’s review, we are counting on you!

Fundraising Appeal

We are entering a phase where we need to ask for financial support from our community. If you can, please make a donation (link uses PayPal). Every bit helps! If you would prefer to donate by cash or check, please send us an email to housingnothighrises@gmail.com and we will contact you to make arrangements.

Thank you for your support!

Chris, Jack, Jay, Julia, Kate, Luz, Marty, Phil and Steph

Renter Displacement

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The owners of Arrow Linen have filed an application with the City of New York to be able to build 13 stories of luxury high-rises on Prospect Avenue in Brooklyn. They have recently updated their application to show that this could be 19 stories following the city-wide zoning changes underway with City of Yes for Housing Opportunity.

This neighborhood is today one of the most affordable places to rent in Windsor Terrace and South Slope, and there are 59 rent-stabilized apartments within a block of Arrow Linen. If 13 – or 19! – stories becomes the new norm in our community, then speculators and developers will have a strong incentive to buy every building they can in the neighborhood.

Our neighbors who rent have told us of their concerns at our community meeting. One family who moved to Prospect Ave from Greenpoint was displaced as their rent was dramatically increased following rezoning in their neighborhood. Another family who moved to Prospect Ave from Crown Heights shared stories of their landlord withholding services and not making repairs to force tenants out so that their rent-stabilized building could be sold to developers.

We strongly support adding more housing in our neighborhood, but that housing must be contextual for the neighborhood to avoid this sort of displacement of renters that massive rezoning and luxury development inevitably brings. Many studies have found that for-profit housing development leads to renter displacement in affordable neighborhoods.

Churches Unified for Fair Housing published research on the consequences of rezonings in Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and Park Slope. The most significant findings for Park Slope and the influx of high-rises on 4th Ave include losing nearly 1500 units of rent-stabilized housing, and massive displacement of Black and Hispanic residents from the area.

Please see “Zoning & Racialized Displacement in NYC” below; the 4th Ave rezoning is specifically discussed starting on p.13:

Zoning+and+Racialized+Displacement+in+NYCDownload

Update: In our July Newsletter, we updated our community about our work with non-profit developers who could make attractive market-rate offers for Arrow Linen’s property, and deliver over 200 units of 100% affordable housing at only 7 stories. We believe that this strikes the right balance of creating more housing in our community, ensuring that housing is affordable, and avoiding displacement of existing tenants.

April 16th Community Meeting

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Our latest Housing Not High-Rises Community Meeting was held on Tuesday, April 16 @ 7:00 pm at Holy Name Church on Prospect Park West. About 300 members of our community came to learn about and discuss Arrow Linen’s spot rezoning proposal.

District 39 Council Member Shahana Hanif addresses the community
About 300 neighbors came to learn about and discuss Arrow Linen’s spot rezoning proposal

We were privileged to host the following speakers:

  • Brooklyn Community Board 7’s Land Use Committee Chair, Diana Gonzalez:
    • Diana encouraged participation in the process, and acknowledged that CB7 is going to need a much bigger room when Arrow Linen’s proposal comes up for community review.
  • New York State Assembly Member for the 44th District, Bobby Carroll:
    • Bobby is a strong supporter of a compromise position that focuses on affordability and the needs of the community, and has consistently called Arrow Linen’s proposal “inappropriate.”
    • While serving at the state level and not directly involved in the zoning process, Bobby is a tireless advocate for the community he represents and has been very supportive of our efforts.
  • New York City Council Member for the 39th District, Shahana Hanif:
    • The rezoning to 13 stories is not an issue for Shahana, despite the concerns of the community.
    • Council Member Hanif acknowledged that we are not even negotiating in good faith with an actual developer, but rather with a landowner who wants to maximize profits as they sell their property, leaving the city and eliminating local jobs.
    • Please visit our How To Help page and click the link to send Council Member Hanif an email to let her know that you oppose this 13-story cash grab and her lack of consideration for the people who have elected her to represent them.

The agenda of the meeting (view the slide presentation):

  • Background & an overview of Arrow Linen’s proposal
  • Updates since our last community meeting
  • Information about the process and how new city-wide initiatives will affect it – City of Yes, a plan to add “a little more housing in every neighborhood”
  • Guest speakers – our elected officials
  • Q&A

Please see the press coverage:

Many thanks to the hundreds of community members who came to this event, and to Father Ryan and the Holy Name community for making this meeting possible!

Urgent Community Meeting April 16, 2024

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Our next meeting is Tuesday, April 16. We need you to come, to demonstrate to our elected officials that we care about housing and keeping it consistent with our neighborhood.

Our elected officials have been invited.  Shahana Hanif’s office has confirmed their attendance, and her support is pivotal in this issue.

The only way our elected officials can help us get what we want is for us to let them know what we want. Your attendance is important to deliver this message.

Please join us on April 16 at 7:00pm at Shepherd’s Hall in the Holy Name of Jesus Church (enter by way of the parking lot at 245 Prospect Park West).

Agenda:

  • Welcome and thanks to our community
  • Background on Housing Not High-Rises (formerly Arrow Action)
  • Updates on city-wide zoning efforts via the City of Yes initiative
  • Reports from subcommittees, including recent meetings with our representatives
  • Neighborhood outreach and request for more signatures on our petition
  • Q&A
  • Post-meeting committee sign-up

We are looking forward to seeing you on April 16!

Thanks,

  – Chris, Jack, Jay, Julia, Kate, Marty, Phil and Steph

Add this event to your calendar or use the event link on our Calendar page.

Housing Not High-Rises — March Newsletter

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Arrow Action Is Now Housing Not High-Rises

In response to our community’s requests, we have registered ourselves as “Housing Not High-Rises”, a non-profit in New York State.  Thanks to input from our neighbors, we now have an organization that will outlast our fight for the outcome we want for the Arrow Linen proposal.  We intend to work to make Windsor Terrace’s and South Slope’s voices heard for a long time. Please bookmark our new website, housingnothighrises.org, and visit for updates. 

Next Community Meeting

We are planning our next community meeting for April 2024. We’ll follow up with details soon!

The State of Arrow Linen’s Proposal

Update: Arrow Linen filed a Land Use application with NYC Dept of City Planning on February 23, 2024. The application is not yet certified by City Planning, and has not officially started the land use review process (ULURP). However, the filing of the application indicates ULURP may start in the next 1-2 months. 

We are paying close attention to the city’s review process so we can tell you when important hearings and meetings are scheduled. None are scheduled yet, but we think they could start in the spring of 2024. We’ll need your turn-out, especially at these public hearings:

  • Community Board 7 Land Use Committee will hold a public hearing to incorporate the community’s recommendations about the proposal. The Land Use Committee responds to community members who show up. Please attend!
  • The City Planning Commission will accept comments and hold a public hearing about the proposal. They too will be looking at the quality and quantity of our presence. We’ll need you to comment and attend. 

What Have We Been Doing?

Meeting with our elected officials: We met with Comptroller Brad Lander, who believes that the Arrow Linen application is a good opportunity for compromise, and we discussed possible approaches to negotiation.

We also met again with Council Member Shahana Hanif, who agrees with us that rent-stabilized renters in the rezoning area should be protected by displacement.  Council Member Hanif is critical to the approval process, and we need to stay engaged with her to ensure she hears our community and there is a satisfactory outcome at the Arrow Linen site.

Organizing to protect renters: We are organizing with people who rent their homes near and within the Arrow Linen rezoning site. There are fifty-nine rent stabilized apartments near and within the site. These and other nearby renters will be vulnerable to displacement, and Windsor Terrace/South Slope could lose some of the most affordable housing we have. Do you rent near Arrow Linen? If so, please consider signing our open letter from renters to Council Member Hanif asking her to Stand with YOU, not with real estate developers. Please reply to this email if you’d like to sign.  

Building a broader coalition: We have been meeting with other neighborhood groups and local political organizations to help increase our influence with Council Member Hanif.  We are working on our connections with The Park Slope Civic Council, the Cobble Hill Association, the Boerum Hill Association, and others in Council District 39 to broaden our support.

Spreading the word: We are canvassing in our neighborhood and throughout Council Member Hanif’s district. We’ll be at farmers markets, supermarkets, and other high-traffic areas. Please reply to this email or visit the Contact Us link on our website if you’d like to help us collect signatures and distribute flyers for an hour or two.

What’s Next?

We are planning our next community meeting for April 2024. We’ll follow up with details soon! 

How Can You Help?

  • Tell your friends and neighbors about us. Ask them to join: sign up for our mailing list and sign our petition. So far we have more than 1,400 signatures. We want to quadruple that! Help get more people to sign and contact Council Member Hanif and our other elected officials. They are watching the petition: signatures = votes;  and we need everyone’s support to show them we do not want 13-story high-rises that will make housing in our neighborhood less affordable.
  • We have window signs!  If you want to show your support by displaying a Housing Not High-Rises window sign, please either reply to this email or fill out the form on the Contact Us link on our website, make sure we have your address, and we will deliver one to you.
  • If you want to hand out flyers and ask local business owners to display our posters – we need you. Please reply to this email or visit the Contact Us link on our website.

Please share your ideas, such as slogans, rallies, media campaigns. If you have contacts you think can help, let us know. We need your skills and energy. Reply to this email – we’ll respond.

As always, go to our website for our latest news and information: housingnothighrises.org

Thank you for your partnership.
The Housing Not High-Rises Team (formerly Arrow Action)

Chris, Jack, Jay, Julia, Kate, Marty and Phil

Housing Not High-Rises Op-Ed for NY Times

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We submitted this essay in response to They’re Starting a New York ‘Housing League.’ NIMBYs Not Allowed., Mihir Zaveri, 2/14/24. The New York Times declined to publish it, so we can publish it here.

In Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn, Housing Not High-Rises is a community organization of renters and homeowners fighting in favor of building housing that would preserve the existing stock of rent-stabilized and affordable housing in the neighborhood. We are working towards a solution that provides housing on the site Arrow Linen is preparing to sell, that does not displace current residents.  

We hope for the support of those we have elected to represent us in finding a more comprehensive, equitable and sustainable solution to the city’s housing crisis, rather than an illegal spot zoning designed to enrich an individual landowner. The Adams Administration is certifying City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, proposing to “create a little more housing in every neighborhood.”  Vishaan Chakrabarti has published a plan to house a million more New Yorkers “without radically changing the character of the city’s neighborhoods.”  These types of comprehensive, city-wide efforts can move the needle in this housing crisis.

Unfortunately, under the pressure of current circumstances, communities are now being railroaded into accepting board-clearing changes more than anytime since the era of Robert Moses’ top-down urban renewals. As we’re learning here in Windsor Terrace, without a collective voice, existing contextual zoning guidelines enacted less than 20 years ago are just temporary; place-holders until market conditions are ripe for a bountiful harvest. This money-making scheme is aided by the current political climate eager to score ‘progressive’ bona fides and abetted by organized real estate interests.  

In August 2023, Arrow Linen Supply Company in Brooklyn, a long-time neighborhood fixture,  filed a spot zoning application which would enable their property to be built to over four times the size allowed by current zoning.  Arrow Linen is not seeking to develop the property itself, but intends to sell it to a developer as they close this site and leave the neighborhood.  The community welcomes housing on this site, and would prefer affordable housing. Under the proposal, the small percentage of mandatory inclusionary housing required would neither be affordable for the workers at Arrow Linen, nor would they offset the loss of the 59 rent-stabilized and other affordable apartments that would be in jeopardy should this application be approved.

Approving this proposal as submitted would create a citywide precedent for speculators to purchase buildings, apply for spot zoning of their properties, and displace current tenants to build more luxury high-rises. 

As noted in New York State’s Zoning and the Comprehensive Plan, spot zoning is illegal when “the change is other than part of a well-considered and comprehensive plan calculated to serve the general welfare of the community.” Arrow Linen’s application clearly benefits an individual landowner who has already taken advantage of the community; operating a commercial enterprise in a residential zone with the continued support of the neighborhood, and participating in a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) program that has saved them millions of dollars in taxes over more than 20 years, which the rest of the city has paid for.

At a recent neighbor’s meeting on the block where Arrow Linen’s property is located, long-time tenants who had moved to this neighborhood from other parts of Brooklyn shared their concerns.  A former Greenpoint resident noted that when his neighborhood was rezoned in 2005, community members were concerned that luxury high-rises would be built and that existing residents would be displaced.  That is precisely what happened then, and is what the neighbors of Arrow Linen are concerned about now.