I have heard that the key to a successful marriage is never to say the first or second thing that pops into your head.
That’s also a good way to keep your name out of this column.
One person who has failed to heed that advice is Deborah Glick, who chairs the state Assembly’s Environmental Conservation Committee.
Earlier this year, the Manhattan legislator explained why she is reluctant to change the environmental review process for affordable housing projects.
“The development community is very excited about eliminating reviews for what they say is affordable housing, which of course they could have been building all along,” she said at a hearing.
I’m not married to Glick, so I will say the first thing that popped into my head: Of course developers have been building affordable housing all along!
It just takes them years longer and costs about twice as much as it should.
The whole point of reforming SEQRA, the State Environmental Quality Review Act, is to enable developers to build more housing by making the process faster and less expensive.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal would exempt housing projects in the city from environmental review if they have 500 or fewer units in a medium- or high-density area, or 250 or fewer in a low-density area.
At the hearing about the plan, Glick said something else that popped into her head: She blamed the state’s housing crisis on “years of real estate speculation.”
Whatever she means by real estate speculation, it is not limited to New York City and California — yet they have by far the most expensive housing and the worst homelessness.
Somehow it hasn’t occurred to Glick that this has something to do with zoning, rent control, unnecessary reviews and other regulations imposed by legislators like her.
At one time, it was common in journalism to include both sides of a debate and let the reader decide which is correct. But we live in an age where public officials, influencers and activists make stuff up. That makes it incumbent upon journalists to either point out untrue statements or simply exclude them from articles.
Maybe this has been true all along; remember the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s quip that you’re entitled to your opinion, but not to your own facts?
Still, lying seems more prevalent today. Consider this quote in a City Limits article about a NYCHA program to privatize renovations and property management: “The PACT program has done nothing but displace tenants,” said Cynthia Tibbs, president of the WSUR Brownstones development on the Upper West Side.
That is patently untrue. The rules governing who is allowed to live in public housing have not changed at all, and PACT has renovated tens of thousands of NYCHA apartments that otherwise would still be deteriorating.
Unfortunately, City Limits left Tibbs’ quote unchallenged.
My approach is generally to include false claims if it’s important for the public to know they are being made, and to ensure readers know what the facts are.
When it comes to spouses, though, it’s okay to make exceptions.
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