Dear Editor:

Will it be a win for the community if Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project moves ahead? (See “The Battle in Brooklyn,” Shelterforce #144.) It’s true that activists have won an impressive promise of affordable housing. But the process has not been a pretty one.

First, the project has been exempted from the normal land use process that would give the City Council the final say. Instead, a board appointed by Governor Pataki will make the call. The Empire State Development Corporation’s work has been neither accountable nor transparent. It will do nothing to build a consensus in the Brooklyn neighborhoods that will be greatly affected by the project.

Second, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority – which owns the site – ignored another higher cash bidder to strike a deal with Ratner.

The result: The MTA will get far less than the $214 million at which its own appraiser had valued the property. The losers: City subway and bus riders, who will be shortchanged on money desperately needed to repair the system.

There are transit arguments on both sides. The proposed site is well served by nine subway lines and the Long Island Rail Road. On the other hand, street and pedestrian traffic is already a misery in the area. That’s why we have not taken a position on the overall merits of the Ratner proposal.

But whatever the merits, it doesn’t help when state agencies end run or bamboozle the public badly, as they have here.

– Gene Russianoff
Senior Attorney
NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign

Dear Editor:

The community benefits agreement (CBA) negotiated by ACORN represents an historic moment in New York City development politics. (See “The Battle in Brooklyn,” Shelterforce #144.) When big capital comes calling with big plans for a neighborhood, the harsh reality faced by community groups is the giant power imbalance in redevelopment efforts. As small community organizations scramble to protect their interests, the big developer marches through the process, relatively unencumbered even by New York City’s Uniform Land Use Review Process. When community groups score a rare victory, it comes from a massive outpouring of the skills of middle-class professionals willing (and able) to fight long hours to preserve their own sense of the neighborhood.

The ACORN agreement reveals the sharp divides roiling under the surface of those most contested of categories: “the community” and “the community’s interest.” In fact, no inherent unity of interest amongst residents of any given neighborhood exists; property owners vie with renters over distinct visions of the neighborhood’s future. Rising property values are good for property owners, while for renters they often mean imminent displacement. Rents increase rapidly in buildings without rent stabilization, vacancy decontrol looms in stabilized units, and conversions of rental property to co-ops or condominiums remove rental units from the local market altogether. For public housing residents, the non-rent cost of living jumps as local stores go high-end.

The ACORN negotiators seem to have had the renting classes in mind when they negotiated the CBA. By tracking the complex ins and outs of the development process over time, ACORN consistently represented the interests of downtown Brooklyn’s renters at the bargaining table, and effectively beat local property owners to the punch in claiming to represent “the community’s interest.” The end result has been several groundbreaking achievements for lower-income renters in the areas of housing and jobs.

As represented by ACORN, lower-income residents seem to have embraced the notion that the perfect is the enemy of the good. While few of these residents will welcome the increased traffic, noise and pollution that will surely accompany Ratner’s project, the growth-oriented vision for downtown Brooklyn also brings two resources they desperately need: affordable housing and jobs. The quality of Ratner’s new jobs may well be less than ideal: part-time hours, low wages and other tell-tale markings of what social scientists call “bad” jobs. But it makes a big difference if the only other option is no job. On housing, compare ACORN’s affordable housing guarantee with what happened last year in the Williamsburg-Greenpoint section of the borough. There, a community coalition fighting the rezoning of the north Brooklyn waterfront ultimately fractured along property ownership lines, with the city’s small concessions going to more middle-class interests in Greenpoint and the Northside; the working-class and poor Latinos of the Southside failed to win their number one priority – mandated affordable housing in new residential developments.

It remains to be seen how the downtown Brooklyn CBA plays out, but two things seem clear. First, the tensions between property owners and renters in “the community” are out in the open, a key development in the midst of widespread gentrification occurring in lower-income, African-American and Latino neighborhoods throughout the city. Second, the CBA strategy marks a milestone in the ability of community groups to strike better bargains with the big developers and government decision-makers who have always wielded far greater power in the redevelopment arena.

– Nicole Marwell
New York University