Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2023.Housing insecurity threatens many New Yorkers. At the same time, a lack of access to green spaces, nature, and fresh fruits and vegetables can adversely affect a community's quality of life.
Vicki Been was New York City's commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development under Mayor de Blasio, and is now a professor with NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Magali Regis is a New York City Community Garden Coalition board member. The city is juggling a housing crisis among senior citizens, migrants and their families, and single adults, just to name a few. Vicki, where is housing needed in the city, and how much of it?Housing is needed in every neighborhood across the city. Look, the problem with trying to set a number is that the number of houses that are needed, the number of apartments that are needed, will vary with market conditions with what's going on in terms of things like the migrant crisis.
The best example of this tension between housing needs and green space accessibility is the current plan to replace the Elizabeth Street Garden in Little Italy, with mostly affordable housing for seniors. Despite a decades-old fight by garden advocates against this, the city is moving ahead with it. Vicki, do you have a sense of why the city approved this spot to bring more housing into the area considering the level of resistance?Yes.