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the community to build as-ofright
in the commercial district,
which does not require
affordable housing.
Groups such as the Ridgewood
Tenants Union (RTU) are
hell bent on stopping this form
of large-scale development because
they see them as driving
up rents around the neighborhood,
pricing out long-time
residents. But they don’t just
believe that about market rate
developments.The group is also
opposed to Mayor de Blasio’s
mixed-income development programs,
which use city subsidies
and tax incentives to encourage
affordable development.
“We also believe that development
needs to be guided
by community needs and not
by how much profi t greedy
developers want to make off
our working class community,”
lead organizer Raquel
Namuche told QNS.
Other notable stakeholders
Ted Renz and CB5 District
Manager Gary Giordano were
both present at the public forum.
Renz, the Myrtle Avenue
Business Improvement District
(BID) Executive Director
said that it was too early in the
process to comment on whether
he supported the process,
but in the past both the BID
and the Community Board
have taken stances against
developments that disrupt the
fabric of the neighborhood.
Last summer when a threestory,
six-unit building at 1664
Woodbine St. received a permit
in May to add a fourth story
and a penthouse to its existing
structure, Renz and Ridgewood
Property Owners and Civic Association
President Paul Kerzner
sprung into action.
The community members
sent a letter to the Department
of City Planning (DCP)
requesting a moratorium be
placed on the property and
any others where Department
of Buildings (DOB) approval
is required or there is intent
to add height and additional
apartments to existing buildings
until talks about zoning
changes have fi nished.
“What people don't realize
is that when you increase
the density of a neighborhood,
what you're doing is increasing
the value of the property, which
means that if you're increasing
value, you make it more expensive,”
Kerzner told QNS about
why he is against to upzoning.
“So if you take a look at every
single neighborhood that the
mayor has touched with rezoning
or attempted to rezone,
in all of them, the prices have
gone up. They've skyrocketed.”
While Community Board
5 went on to pass a resolution
supporting the moratorium as
well, its chair, Arcuri, is much
less ideological about the process
of rezoning.
“I see it as you have to live
with the best of both worlds,”
Arcuri said. “We have to advocate
for affordable housing as
much as we can. And we try,
when the developers come in,
if they need variants or they
need a waiver or something,
we try and ask them to put into
affordable housing.”
The Department of City
Planning never took any action
as a result of Kerzner and
Renz’s upzoning moratorium
request. Though Kerzner argued
that the aim of their requested
cap on housing height
was to protect residents in
danger of displacement, historically
zoning caps of this
sort have also been dubbed
exclusionary zoning, a form of
zoning that has the effect of excluding
low-income residents.
Exclusionary zonings has
been described in court rulings
like the Mount Laurel
Doctrine as a force that preserves
“enclaves of affl uence
and social homogeneity.”
As new residents continue
to pour into the neighborhood–
now without the threat of an
L train shutdown–the question
of whether high-density
mixed-use development will
ease or compound Ridgewood’s
shortage of affordable housing
is not going away.
Supply-side economics
would dictate that rents are going
to continue to rise without
new rent-stabilized housing
stock. Meanwhile, community
groups remain stalwart that
the emergence of large swathes
of market rate housing is going
to drive up rents faster than
the affordable units would relieve
it.
2019 QUEENS TOMORROW 11
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