CM Brewer Q&A: Mangin on rent-regulated housing and zoning lot mapping

I think you explained that the only affordable housing you counted was income restrictive housing.

Most affordable housing in New York City, but particularly in Manhattan, is rent stabilized or even rent controlled.

Can you talk about the role of rent regulated housing in the city's affordability crisis?

Thank you for the question.

I mean, rent stabilization is absolutely essential to the New York that we know.

It's an absolutely essential affordability measure.

It's not the only thing that we can or should do to support affordability and affordable housing in New York City, but it's a crown jewel of that system of regulation.

So how would you support rent-regulated housing?

Because in some cases it gets torn down to build rent-restricted.

How would you deal with that?

In the post-urban renewal era, I would say that demolition of large amounts of housing is relatively limited, fortunately.

Well, Gary Barnett just did it on 96th Street and Broadway.

Entire building is empty, was 100% rent stabilized.

That's regrettable.

I didn't understand that building.

I would want to look into it more closely.

All right.

In response to a council bill that would require the city to make and maintain a map of

zoning lots, you supported the Department of City Planning's position that the making of such a map would be impossible.

Do you still believe that creating a map of zoning lots is impossible?

The reason I ask, I've done 200 some ULURPs, maybe more, and often the map that is zoning is very strangely

designed and the buildings that end up, we have no idea how they get to be merged in such a weird way.

And then we go to court and we lose.

We want to know about the lots.

Thank you for the question, Councilmember.

I mean, I personally have been involved in months-long processes.

To try to figure out whether a given set of tax lots was in fact a zoning lot or not.

It implicates historical and transactional information that can date back to pre-61, that in some instances can date back

even before the zoning resolution.

And given that in many instances, determining whether or not something is a zoning lot takes that much work, that much historical sleuthing, and may end up in court anyway,

Yes, it was and it remains completely impossible to create like a legally effective map.

of what is and what isn't a zoning lot in New York City, and DOB will certainly tell you the same thing.

But doesn't that make it hard then to fight for housing that is, in our case, too tall, bought too many lots, et cetera?

You don't have any sense of that without the lots, right, without the map.

You did have a case in your district.

200 Amsterdam Avenue.

Extremely, extremely complicated.

And that, you know, through your advocacy led to changes in how zoning lots are administered in New York City.

But you recognize through that process how intensive it can be.

Time intensive it can be just to figure out the status of one little plot of land.

So to try to do that for the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lots across the city, it's just not something that's possible.