CM Krishnan Q&A: Mangin on holistic planning and displacement lens

Thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon, Mr.

Mangin.

It's good to see you.

Good to see you, too.

I appreciated our good conversation and get together a few weeks ago to talk about the issues.

And, you know, it's interesting, as we saw from our conversation, we sort of were on parallel tracks.

While you were a lawyer in city planning, doing a lot of impressive work over the years, I was a lawyer representing communities in North Brooklyn and Western Queens hit hardest by displacement.

And, you know, my first case out of law school was the Broadway Triangle Fair Housing Litigation that lasted 10 years.

You wrote about that in your second Law Review article.

I read your Law Review articles.

You read mine.

We traded thoughts.

And it was interesting to see our perspectives during that time.

And I think, you know, as we saw from our conversation, we both saw from our work in different spheres how urgent the housing crisis is today, how much we need to build and build quickly and build faster.

And, you know, one of the things that I wanted to do was just take a little bit of time to get there, but I do have a couple questions.

But before going to those questions, just to zoom out for a second, apart from your nomination, but the larger context that I think you and I have both seen over the years and where we are today,

you know, we're in this urgent housing crisis, and at least what I've seen from my work.

And looking now at the public.

discourse around housing, which I of course pay attention to in some spare time.

It seems to me like in the public discussion, like we've come to a sort of binary point in how we talk about housing.

And kind of the views are put into two different boxes.

One is

being against development and anti-development, which I don't subscribe to and I reject.

And another one, which is how we need, because we are in such an urgent crisis, we have to build much more, we have to build faster, which is all absolutely true, but there's sometimes strands in the public discourse about how to do so.

We have to

limit or reduce community engagement because that can slow the process down and how we have to focus really exclusively on the number of units we build and supply as the way out of the crisis.

And I believe absolutely we have to build more and we have to build quickly and cut out all of that

red tape where we can.

But my own experience has shown me that things I think are more nuanced about how we address the housing crisis.

That community voices, like in Broadway Triangle, can strengthen development and make sure they comply with fair housing laws, for example.

But that, you know,

There's a missing perspective that from my work, I think, is different from the binary that I see in public discussion today, which is,

that we need to focus more on displacement as we think about the housing crisis, that as we build more and build new, we have to make sure we keep people in their homes and keep people in their communities that they've lived in for generations.

And I've spent far too much time in tenants'kitchens and in their lobbies with buildings crumbling around them because landlords are destroying them to get them out of their homes, and especially that's the case in Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Bushwick.

And to me, it seems like we have to build quickly and build fast, but also do so from a lens of displacement.

And when you think about it from a displacement standpoint, I think there are two ways in which community voices can combat displacement.

One is because we can make sure when we develop and we build that

the housing is affordable to the neighborhoods that it's in.

And two, I think it helps us to think about housing in a more holistic way, where we're thinking about building new housing, but also about the services that should accompany that new housing build.

You take Jackson Heights, for example.

We're very dense, but our schools have been overcrowded for a very long time.

We have the least amount of green space in all of New York City.

We and many communities have a major child care need, too.

And so when we think about housing, we think about, well, how do we build and also the services to support that housing?

More schools, more open space and green space.

more better transit infrastructure.

There's so much community infrastructure that I think should be folded into a more holistic and comprehensive view of how we think about building housing.

And I think that perspective, at least for me, has been missing from a lot of the public dialogue, and it comes from my own work.

And I suspect you also agree with that, too, from what you've seen in your work over the years, too.

And so my first question is, you know, given how...

Given our work over the years and what we've seen and how the housing crisis has been exacerbated over time,

And I outlined all of this in the op-ed that I wrote very recently that I think you read too.

But given where the housing crisis is, I think that our views have been shaped by all that's been happening over time, and we have to address all of these things together.

I'm curious, you know, in how you see your potential role as the head of leading BSA, how do you think, or even outside of BSA really, just in general, how do you see...

The importance of holistic planning today, where we think about housing and also all the services that support the housing that come in.

How do you think about housing and community infrastructure together as we develop and as a solution to the housing crisis?