Public Advocate Jumaane Williams wants to add a race-based analysis of all rezoning plans to the city’s cumbersome land-use review process.
“Rezonings are one of the primary drivers of gentrification, which leads to displacement, which leads to racial segregation,” Williams said at a Manhattan press conference Wednesday.
“We’re losing housing for black and Latino, in particular, families at an alarming rate,” he said.
Williams and City Councilman Rafael Salamanca (D-Bronx), who chairs the Land Use Committee, introduced a bill Wednesday outlining their proposal. It would require a look at how new developments would affect area demographics alongside the current environmental analysis that’s part of the roughly eight-month uniform land-use review process, or ULURP.
“I don’t know if it would lengthen [the ULURP process] but I’d rather get it right than get it short,” Williams said.
He criticized Mayor de Blasio’s past rezoning plans to build affordable housing that instead caused “rampant speculation” in “targeted low-income areas of color.”
But Councilman Joe Borelli, (R-SI), who is planning to run against Williams for public advocate, called the legislation a political stunt.
“This isn’t to alleviate racial tensions in the city. It’s to stoke them,” Borelli said.