Tacos in Brooklyn

There's a place on the corner of 23rd and Fifth Avenue that I have been going to for a few years. At first it was a Mexican grocery store which opened up a small taco grill. A few months ago they added changed the place around. The grocery store section became a lot smaller and the taco section expanded.

These are not your California burritos but the traditional: 2 corn tortillas wrapping a grilled meat, salsa, guacamole and jalepenos. Excellent and mouth watering. I love the carnitas.

Funny thing on the day I ask the owner if he minds if I tell the gringo world about his place I get mediocre carnitas. Now it could be a bad day, the regular cook wasn't there but it is a bad omen.

Insider's Note: This area of Fifth Avenue has had a large Mexican population (and restaurants and grocery stores) for quite a while -- 10, 15 years or more.

Across the street, on the corner of 22nd Street there is another Mexican taco place. They originally had a small taco stand in the middle of the block. They were excellent. I haven't been to the new fancier sit-down restaurant.

BID Madness

Why is this catching on now? Not because NYC is falling apart. The garbage is being collected, the streets are safe, graffitti is not out of control so why are BID coming to Brooklyn? They will probably succeed in creating one on Fifth Ave in Park Slope and are trying to create a BID on Court Street (Cobble Hill and Carrol Gardens).

So what's going on here? I don't know. My guess is power, personal power. Several people want something done in the neighborhood; they want to do it; and they want to get paid for it.

How do you get new streetlights put in -- streetlights with a retro 19th C feel? Start a BID. How do you put the neighborhood stores on the map? Start a BID. How do you get a start in community politics? Oh that's easy be president of the local BID. And guess what? You can get paid doing what you love by taxing all the neighborhood businesses and building owners.

I would not be so adamant against BIDs if they weren't created in such a dishonest fashion; if the BID was a voluntary organization; and if people could disolve their membership in the BID if they no longer wanted to be part of it. But that's not the case. A BID is not voluntary, at least not once its started. You cannot opt out of it if you are within the BID's jurisdiction.

Worst of all is the means by which a BID is started. Did you know that when the vote takes place that if you do not vote NO, if you abstain, or did not know of the pending vote, that your vote counts as a YES vote? That's right the voting is not limited to the people who actually vote. If 51% of the voters either vote YES or do not vote at all then the BID goes through.

This is disgusting and any and all supporters of a BID who employ such dishonest methods ought to be considered as thieves and shake-down artists.

Been very busy but will be back soon

Another Example of Anti-Development Foolishness

We have another example of anti-development foolishness. This time across the river in the Lower East Side. A homeowner is building a six-story condo which people decry as being “out of character” with the neighborhood. I’m sorry but I have NO sympathy with this CRAP. If a six story building is too high for you move back to Nebraska. This is NYC we’re talking about. Streets filled with six story buildings (55-60 feet) are not oppressive. Some of the most beautiful spaces in NYC, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, the West Village are replete with six story buildings.

Douglas Brenner has lived on the block for 25 years; he is a physicist, not a developer and he is getting grief for doing what this city desperately needs. He is building housing. We should be applauding his actions, not putting impediments in his path. Douglas, other people and organizations may revile your actions but More Housing Now applauds you and urges you on.

The story, as it is being presented by the New York Post has Mr. Brenner combining his existing home with the new building – it was a vacant lot next door – and creating one six-unit condo. What possible rational could there be against this project?

An immediate neighbor may loose sunlight for his plants. This is a real issue and, we the residents of this wonderful city, should arrive at a standard compensation for the loss. This should not, for any reason, be cause to stop construction but some form of compensation should be arrived at. See Open Posts: Loss of Sunlight at the right for discussions on this issue.

Construction brings noise and inconvenience to neighbors. Lots of things are annoying when living next to people: music, arguments, honking … and if you’ve every lived on a busy avenue you know that there can be an infinite amount of annoyances. But this is one of the prices we pay to live in the big city. Move to suburbia or the country and you won’t have these annoyances but you’ll have plenty of others. We have dealt with construction by limiting work hours, the rest you have to deal with. If it comforts you at all you can remind yourself that these are homes that are being built. Families are going to live here and that is good for NYC, good for the country and good for the planet.

You don’t like change. I sympathize but chances are you, or your parents, were part of an earlier change; and the people that were there before were not happy about you and yours changing the feel of their neighborhood. I’m not belittling your experience but this is the New York experience.

You don’t like middle and upper-middle class people. You think these yuppie scum should live in their own repulsive neighborhoods and not come to your neighborhood. Well, if there was enough housing for them elsewhere they WOULDN’T be coming to your neighborhood. If people like you didn’t stop the development elsewhere chances are you wouldn’t be seeing your own neighborhood being developed. If you had any brains you would have been promoting development in other neighborhoods. Now yuppie scum are coming to your neighborhood. Reap what you sowed.

So Who's a shill?

So what motivates the anti-development forces? Many seem to think that people who promote new development are “shills” for big developers. In that vein are anti-development folks shills for large Manhattan landlords? Are they just fronts for rental apartment owners who don’t like the fact that Brooklyn is siphoning off people who otherwise would have been competing to live in NYC apartments? Are they shills intent upon helping Manhattan landlords drive apartment prices up and vacancies down? Yeah, that’s the ticket, anti-development folks don’t believe a word they say; they’re just shills for Manhattan landlords.

Encourage Building Owners to Build the Maximum Available

Instead of down zoning whole areas of NYC we ought to be doing everything we can to encourage owners of buildings to build to the maximum available to them. Take a look at this photo. It’s more than a photo of a bar and two restaurants, it epitomizes the waste and opportunity cost that is holding New York and Brooklyn back. Here are three – among many – one story buildings on Fifth Ave. There could be, and should be, another 3 or 4 floors of apartments and commercial space. We ought to be doing everything we can via the tax and zoning code to persuade the owners of these and other buildings to build up. We need more housing. We want more people to move to NYC and Brooklyn; for them to pay taxes here; for them to buy goods and services here. Our city needs to attract and keep people here. One of the best ways we can do that is to dramatically increase our housing stock.

NYC is famous for wasting opportunities such as the West Side railways, Governor’s Island and now, foolishness on top of foolishness, we are wasting a golden opportunity. Investments go in cycles, right now people are intent on investing in their homes (yes there are speculators but we’re not talking about them here). If they don’t buy here in NYC, they’ll buy elsewhere – and pay taxes elsewhere, and shop elsewhere.

Down Zoning Reduces the Value of People’s Homes and Inflates Prices

For those people who think nothing about the down zoning. Consider this – you are devaluating people’s property, you are reducing the amount of housing stock and you are inflating the cost of apartments, especially for lower-income people.

Yes property can be worth less and still have inflated housing prices. Doesn’t make sense to you? Let’s look at an example. If a property is restricted to having 2 apartments instead of 5, even if the price of each of those two properties doubles the property will be worth less than if there were 5 apartments at the original price.

Example: Because of zoning restrictions two apartments go up in price from $100,000 to $200,000. The property is now worth $400,000. However if there weren’t zoning restrictions the building could have had 5 apartments. Let’s say that as a result of the increase in housing stock the value of each apartment stayed at $100,000. The property with 5 apartments at $100,000 is worth $500,000, the property with 2 apartments is worth $400,000. We have here a simple example where down zoning devaluates a person’s property and still inflates the cost of housing for everyone else.

Those of you who are concerned about housing prices and making this city more affordable should keep this in mind: every time you restrict building you take away from the owner of the property, you take away from other property owners in the neighborhood and you increase the cost of housing for everyone.

Gowanus Against Development

Well, it looks as if another group of people have fallen prey to the anti-development nonsense.

Hello, if there’s any area in Brooklyn that badly needs development it’s the Gowanus. How can anybody be against turning the Gowanus into Brooklyn’s version of the San Antonio River Walk?

The Gowanus used to be a cesspool. You had to close your windows while driving over it the stench was so bad. And now, only a few years after the clean-up began, you can see the potential. Can you think of anything more beautiful than brownstone streets with restaurants and shops lining the Gowanus? How can anybody who loves NYC be against that?

Well some can. Once again the primary fear is that poor and working class families will be pushed out. Again, the solution is more housing not less; more upper-middle class housing not less.

"They call it gentrification, I call it genocide," she said. "They're killing neighborhoods."

This fear is not irrational, but blaming new construction is.

From Open Sewer to Gentrification [NY Times]

For some history on the gowanus check out gowanuscanal.org

Steel prices and the Bush Administration Tariffs

If you care about housing prices in NYC you would care about the price of building here. We have a lot of arcane rules that inflate the cost of building. Politics being what it is changing most of these rules would be close to impossible. However there are some things that can be done. The price of steel has gone up incredibly, mostly due to increased energy costs, but also due to tariffs put in by the Bush administration in an effort to win over union votes.

We in NYC are being hurt by these higher steel prices. Housing and office space becomes more expensive -- raising the cost of business and increasing prices for all of us. It makes it harder on the poor and is a disincentive for businesses and the middle class to stay in NYC. Our congresspeople and senators, along with congresspeople from other major cities ought to be doing what they can for their constituency and work to remove these tariffs.

I Stand in Opposition to the Down Zoning

I stand in opposition to the down zoning in the south slope in particular and in Brooklyn in general. We don’t need less building, we need more. Much more. The south-slope needs more 5 and 6 story buildings such as we have in center-slope. I have never heard anyone say that center slope is oppressive. The current zoning limit of 55’ is fine. Since people are so concerned about the scale of the new buildings enforce the building limit – don’t allow height variances for any reason.

However the down zoning restricts the FAR to a ridiculous amount. If people are concerned about the height of the buildings why limit the FAR? How do fewer and smaller apartments help the community? This is the key flaw in the down zoning and the main reason I stand in opposition to the proposed plan.

Restricting housing means higher prices for everyone. We need more housing -- and for those of you concerned about affordable housing -- we also need more large apartments, more upper-middle class housing and we need it now. When middle class people can’t afford housing in middle-class neighborhoods they find it in poor and working-class neighborhoods. And since they have more money they out-bid their working class neighbors for the apartments. As the neighborhood changes – gentrifies -- housing prices rise and poor and working-class people are unable to stay. If you’re concerned about working class people make certain that middle and upper-middle class people have housing. If they don’t have housing the poor will suffer.

Restricting housing supplies means more than higher prices. It means that the middle and upper-middle class will look elsewhere for housing. Jersey City, for example, is booming and will continue to grab an every higher percentage of upper middle class and wealthy families who could have been living here, shopping here – which means more jobs – and paying taxes here.

As conscientious Americans we want more people living in cities. City-dwellers consume less energy and produce less pollution than do our suburban-sprawl counterparts. We should be promoting life here in NYC and for that to happen we need more apartments, more large apartments, more buildings not less.

The above is a transcript of what I had intended to say at the City Council Meeting. I was angry beyond belief at the "I've got mine, f**k everyone else mentality" that I ad-libbed a little too much.