N.Y.C. Panel Eyes Ways to Ease Housing Crisis and Improve Voter Turnout

Prevent individual legislators from blocking new homes. Making it easier to eliminate houses from flooding areas. Opening the primary elections to all voters.

These are three ideas that voters in New York City could vote in November, through proposals developed by a special panel that seeks to address projects such as housing crisis, climate change and poor voter participation.

The panel, known as the Charter Review Commission, has been working for months to design proposals that would change the letter of the city, a document is that of the cradle as a version of the city of the Constitution of the United States. On Wednesday, the Commission will publish a preliminary report that describes how those changes could be.

The main approach of the commission was in the house. He described changes in the letter that could facilitate the construction of housing exempting affordable homes or narrower residential buildings of an expensive and complicated approval process. The report also analyzes how to let all voters participate in primary elections, regardless of party affiliation, could improve participation and representation. And in response to the climatic crisis, he says, changes in the letter could simplify that the city bought houses vulnerable to floods.

The 103 pages report is not final. The administrative staff of the Commission created the list of proposals for testimonies gathered in public hearings in the five counties, in addition to investigations and comments presented electronically.

Around the next months, the members of the commission of 13 people will discuss the ideas, many of which are controversial and can even choose to put anything on the ballot. But the report shows that the commission is thinking of changes that could have a significant impact on the future of the city.

“It’s really about whether the city can sustain Itelf at all,” said Richard R. Buery Jr., a former deputy mayor who runs the commission. “We are at the point where people simply cannot live here.”

Mr. Buery, who is also the executive director of the Robin Hood Foundation, an Anti-Foude group, described the preliminary proposals as “ambitious.”

The commission was created in December by Mayor Eric Adams, who asked him to address the New York worsening housing crisis. Altísimo rentals continue to increase and the number of apartments available to rent is at the lowest level in 50 years, according to the city’s data.

But the legitimacy of the commission was immediately interrogated. A prior commission created by Mr. Adams, for example, was full of donors and allies and was largely seen as what the mayor’s offers did.

The last commission was also seen as a political trick to overcome the speaker of the City Council, Adrienne Adams, a Democratic companion who created her own commission to propose changes in the letter. Mrs. Adams, who is not related to Mr. Adams, announced her career for mayor last month.

The speaker’s commission produced his own report earlier this month. The electoral rules say that the proposals of the mayor’s commission are the only ones that will appear on the electoral ballot in November.

The mayor’s commission report describes in detail how the individual members of the City Council can effectively block a new housing development.

The statute, according to the report, could be modified to ensure that a single member of the Council does not have the last word in the destination of a development, possible creating a new Appeal Board or allowing the city planning commission to exceed the Super Council.

The letter could also be changed to ensure that the districts of the Council give way to enough homes establishing enforceable objectives, according to the report.

Separately, he describes the problem of “abimal” electoral participation in the general elections of mayor, and says that the commission received “more written testimony that requested an electoral reform than any other issue.” In 2021, only 23 percent of registered voters participated in the November general elections.

The report describes the benefits of a “open primary” system, where all registered voters can participate in primary elections, regardless of their affiliation with a political party. Last year, more than one million registered voters were not affiliated with a party, according to a report published by the New York City Finance Board on Tuesday. Non -affiliated voters are intelligible to vote in the consequent primary elections of the city.

The report also describes how the city’s rules slow down the climate resilience projects by triggering LEGHY reviews, a process that could be modified in the letter, and describes how to expand the availability of electric vehicle load stations.

It is likely that many of the suggestions will meet the opposition or criticism, possible only from the members of the commission. Some have indicated that they do not want to put any initiative to voters who have no chance of approving.

It is likely that the opponents of the mayor, who run for re -election, go back.

Many members of the City Council can see the idea of ​​losing any power over development in their districts. Then, the influential unions could often push developers to make sure that workers are paid well in construction projects.

“We cannot support, and we will oppose us aggressively, any effort to erode the power of elected officials to protect our members in projects in their districts,” Kevin Elkins, political director of the Carpers Union of New York City, “written in testimony in February.

Political parties, which control primary elections, can oppose the idea of ​​opening the vote to people who are not affiliated or members of other parties.

Even so, Buery said that most commissioners agreed to the broad boost of the report. Around the next months, the commission is expected to write and refine the proposals, and finally celebrate a vote on each one. Then, the approved ones will be presented to the city secretary in the summer.