Minority Leader Carr Q&A: Mangin on homeowner cartel term and housing demand projections

Earlier in your discussion with Councilmember Banks, there was this discussion of the use of the term cartel in relation to, I guess, some homeowners in your view.

Could you clarify again what homeowners in your view engage in cartel behavior or are cartels?

Thank you for the question.

Again, it's a term of art from the literature, the fair housing literature.

It generally refers to municipalities, typically smaller municipalities, where homeowners do have that entirely decisive voice on all matters of land use.

Again, the paper was not about New York City.

It was part of a national conversation, and so it borrowed that term to participate in that conversation.

But it's not a term that I would say.

Applies cleanly to anything in New York City.

But do you see how homeowners listening to this hearing or having read articles where this was referenced could hear that as that makes you an appointee who's simply looking to

discount their views when it comes to the public process, even when it doesn't conform with the drive for more housing, even though there may be plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons why a project as proposed isn't sufficient?

No, thank you, Leader.

Again, I'd point to the fact that I have worked to support homeownership opportunities throughout my career, whether in D.C.

With lower-income populations or as part of Chi-A.-Ossé to try to restart the HPD pipeline of homeownership affordable, or even through parts of Chi-A.-Ossé that were intended to support homeownership and homeowners, whether it's

missing middle three-, four-, five-story apartment buildings that can make good starter homes for families, or enabling homeowners to add ADUs, which can be crucial

to creating homeownership opportunities for populations that might not otherwise be able to afford a home or who have different sets of housing needs.

So I am a big supporter of homeownership opportunities, and I certainly didn't mean to cast aspersions on any homeowners by borrowing that term.

In your view, how much housing would we need to build in the next 10 years to meet demand for New York City?

So the administration recently

released a draft report that found in order to accommodate present need to get to a healthier vacancy rate where tenants and others actually have housing options, in order to accommodate projected household growth,

and then in order to enable people who want to stay in the city to stay in the city,

that it would be about 700,000 units over 10 years.

And if that was built, we'd meet demand.

We wouldn't need to build anymore.

I mean, that's the projection.

Obviously, any time you're talking about the future, there are tons of uncertainties.

We don't have control over the macroeconomic condition.

We don't have control over immigration policy, you know, things like that.

But my understanding is that that's the administration's best attempt to use information that we have to project 10 years out.

Yes.

I think the difficulty with trusting those sorts of projections, and you mentioned some of it, the X factors, right, but also the notion that New York City has for its entire history almost been a sought-after place for people to come to,

whether it's from other parts of the United States or other parts of the world.

And so there's this sense almost that demand can never be met.

And there's a lot of discussion in communities now about requiring more and more set-asides of new development to be for people who already call New York home.

We have very modest set-asides for community district and borough and NYC residents.

I've been to places around the world where they do subsidies.

substantially more than us.

What's your view on mandating more set-asides for folks who have lived here, perhaps even generationally?

Thanks for the question, Leader.

I'm sorry, I haven't considered that particular question, and I would want to give it more thought.

Okay, thank you.

That's all I have for now.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.