Deputy Speaker Williams Q&A: Mangin on gentrification and displacement causes

Thank you.

Yeah, and I did appreciate some of your answers where you mentioned some of the proposals you had suggested to the commission that weren't actually achieved to address some of the

issues that you referenced and also the historical context that you provided around like term limits.

And, you know, it's true, like we kind of come and go after eight years with.

Term limits.

So it's a different type of crop of members.

So I did appreciate your thoughtful questions there.

So this is the next questions are really about your responses.

So the city's own displacement methodology treats displacement as the interaction of vulnerability, housing conditions, and market pressure.

So in your written responses, you say that gentrification and displacement in many lower income communities of color have been driven by land use decisions in wealthier neighborhoods, and you describe housing shortages in exclusionary areas as a root cause.

Are you saying that restricted supply in affluent neighborhoods is the primary cause of gentrification in New York City?

One significant cause among several or simply one contributor to broader housing market pressures?

Thank you for the question, Deputy Speaker.

I think that among members of council, among administrations, among many of the groups that work on

housing in New York City.

There's just a greater understanding and acknowledgement that the housing shortage,

you know, this 1.4% vacancy rate that we're dealing with, is what drives, on a fundamental level, high housing costs, gentrification and displacement pressures, overcrowding, homelessness, segregation, and everything else.

And so if you zero in on individual parts of the city that are experiencing significant gentrification and displacement pressures, like parts of central Brooklyn or East Brooklyn or, you know, northern Manhattan or the South Bronx,

I do think those are problems that are created by decisions that were made elsewhere, by decisions not to build in parts of the city.

Contributing to that housing shortage, which thereby contributes to the gentrification and displacement pressures that the neighborhoods that I mentioned experience.