You won’t find a more pro-housing politician in the city than Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. But you wouldn’t know it from his appointee on the City Planning Commission.
Juan Osorio has repeatedly voted against major housing initiatives.
Last year, Osorio opposed City of Yes for Economic Opportunity — the only one of the 13 commissioners to do so. But he was just getting warmed up.
Six months later, he voted against the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, which at the time was estimated to create 110,000 homes. The City Council later whittled it down to 82,000.
This year, Osorio has voted no on rezonings of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, Midtown South in Manhattan and downtown Jamaica in Queens, which together should spur 27,000 new homes. The three initiatives passed by a combined vote of 33-5. Only Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ appointee, self-described Marxist Leah Goodridge, voted with Osorio.
In a moment of weakness, Osorio did vote for the Bronx Metro-North Station Area rezoning, which is projected to add 7,000 units. But otherwise, Reynoso’s representative has been on a rejection rampage.
Osorio’s remarks at Planning Commission meetings indicate he’s on a quixotic quest for perfection. He wants every conceivable impact studied, not a single manufacturing job displaced and rents affordable to anyone with two nickels to rub together.
This kind of thinking is Why Nothing Works, as Marc Dunkelman’s new book by that title explains. The author is among many thought leaders urging fellow liberals to prioritize results over process and protectionism.
Osorio hasn’t gotten the message.
The problem with creating fantastically affordable apartments on paper is they don’t materialize in bricks and mortar. The problem with studying everything to death is nothing gets done. The problem with zoning to protect jobs is they inevitably vanish anyway and new ones can’t move in.
Take the Midtown South rezoning. Osorio cast the only “no” vote, saying that in a “worst-case scenario,” 5,300 jobs would be displaced from the Garment District.
An environmental impact statement had deemed that possible result insignificant. In a borough with 4 million daily workers, a rezoning that displaces 0.1 percent of them in 15 years is hardly a job-killer.
“But these are New Yorkers,” Osorio said of the 5,300 hypothetical displacements, “who rely on these jobs to be able to afford housing in the city.”
As a former senior planner at the Municipal Art Society, Osorio must know the Garment District’s manufacturing zoning was preserved for decades by well-meaning politicians, yet nearly all of its textile jobs relocated or disappeared anyway. Buildings aged and emptied out.
Had the city rezoned long ago, billions more dollars would have been invested in Midtown South real estate, replacing those lost jobs and then some.
Osorio made the same argument about manufacturing jobs when he voted against the Jamaica rezoning, which is expected to create 12,000 homes, including 4,000 affordable.
I get the need for some manufacturing in the city, which is why Mayor Mike Bloomberg carved out Industrial Business Zones. But, pre-Bloomberg, ample industrial zoning did not stop the number of manufacturing jobs from plunging from 1 million to 157,000 in half a century.
Today, just over 50,000 remain. Osorio’s insistence on saving every one makes no sense in a world where technology constantly improves, destroying some jobs and creating others.
The city must ensure zoning allows for this evolution. There will be losers, yes, but far more winners. Omelets can’t be made without breaking eggs.
Reynoso agrees with Osorio on industrial policy. The borough president believes the city could create enough housing in residential areas without touching manufacturing districts.
“Fifty percent of Brooklyn hasn’t built any housing since 1968,” he said in a phone interview, citing Sheepshead Bay, Bay Ridge and Canarsie as among the laggards.
But the politics of upzoning there are difficult. The city can’t rely on southern Brooklyn and eastern Queens to create the 500,000 homes it needs.
Reynoso does differ with his appointee, Osorio, on some things. The borough president endorsed City of Yes, urging its housing goals be expanded, not shrunk by rent caps.
“We need to be realistic about what City of Yes for Housing Opportunity is and what it is not,” he said last year. “It is not an affordability strategy.”
Two months later, his appointee voted against it, citing “the lack of affordability mandates.”
Later, Osorio said the low-rent units mandated by Mandatory Inclusionary Housing were not enough for the Atlantic Avenue and Jamaica rezonings.
When I asked Reynoso if Osorio had gone rogue, the borough president said his appointees are independent. “I don’t have any puppets,” he said. “The mayor’s appointees are all rubber stampers. What Osorio is doing is making the Department of City Planning work. He’s challenging them to do better.”
But Osorio is making the perfect the enemy of the good. If every planning commissioner were like him, the city would spend even more time studying impacts, protecting jobs and freezing rents — and getting even less housing built.
This is the recipe for failure that Dunkelman and other progressives are urging the left to abandon. Reynoso appears to be listening.
“The progressives are leading the pro-housing movement,” he said. “The progressives used to be the problem. They were scared of gentrification. But we got new data.”
Yet Reynoso’s appointee keeps asking for more. It’s classic paralysis by analysis — a demand for Utopia that will never achieve it.
We got new data. What they show is we don’t need more data. We need more housing.
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