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.

72nd Precinct Build the Block Meeting

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The 72nd Precinct’s Build The Block Meeting was held on Wednesday December 13th at Holy Name of Jesus Church on Prospect Park West.

Arrow Action spoke about our work and were covered by Brownstoner.

Many thanks to our Neighborhood Coordination Officers, Det. Daniel McGrath and Det. Francis Gainey for inviting us to speak!

November 14th Community Meeting

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Arrow Action Community Meeting was held on Tuesday November 14 @ 7:00 pm at Holy Name of Jesus Church on Prospect Park West

State Assembly Member Robert Carroll addresses the community

Here are the slides from the evening’s presentation. 

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!

October 19th Community Meeting

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Arrow Action Community Meeting was held on Thursday October 19 @ 7:00 pm at the Knights of Columbus hall on 10th Ave

Many thanks to the nearly 100 community members who came to this event, and for the Knights of Columbus for making this meeting possible!