Pratt Center
November 3, 2015
Building A More Equitable City: Quality Education, Affordable Housing and Good Jobs
Today, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a ten-point plan to strengthen the City’s industrial sector. This announcement expands the Mayor’s pursuit of a more equitable city beyond education and housing to include economic development by helping companies to invest in new technologies, train their workers and put down deep roots in their communities. The Pratt Center for Community Development takes pride in the fact that so many of these proposals have roots in our research and policy work.
The great challenge for successive administrations has been the issue of how to preserve the stable, affordable space that would allow manufacturers the confidence to reinvest in equipment and to train their workforce, to grow their businesses and create jobs. For more than a decade beginning with The Little Manufacturer That Could (1999) released by the New York Industrial Retention Network (NYIRN), which merged with Pratt Center in 2010, we have always urged recognition of the central role stable land use policies play in supporting job creation.
To achieve the land use stability necessary to support reinvestment and job creation, Pratt has proposed the creation of new zoning, financing, and ownership tools, many of which are embodied in today’s announcement. For example, the Mayor’s announcement reaffirmed the commitment to oppose residential development in the Industrial Business Zones and added new requirements for special permits for hotels and mini-storage to help dampen real estate speculation. (See Making Room For Housing And Jobs (2015); Hotel Development: Room For Improvement (2014); A 50,000 Job Challenge (Co-authored with ANHD, 2014); Building A Vibrant Manufacturing Sector (2013); and Protecting New York’s Threatened Manufacturing Space (2008)).
The Mayor also laid the foundation for an important new strategy modeled on the success of community-based non-profits in building affordable housing. Today’s announcement included commitments to create an industrial development fund to help nonprofits acquire and preserve industrial space and fund local business organizations which can act as developers. These groups have unique knowledge of what both the companies and the surrounding communities need and consequently can spot opportunities, build relationships, recruit and place local residents in work, thereby strengthening entire communities. (See Nonprofit Real Estate Development Toolkit (2013); and The Brooklyn Navy Yard: Economic Impact and Lessons Learned (2013).
Fostering fairness and equity are core values of the de Blasio administration and are most clearly manifested in efforts to create universal pre-Kindergarten and develop affordable housing. With today’s announcement, the Mayor adds to that portfolio a platform for equitable economic growth.
Much more remains to be done in the coming months: Crafting and implementing the new zoning for special permits, ensuring that the industrial development fund is properly structured to support non-profit users, coordinating the roll-out of the industrial policy with the affordable housing plan to minimize job losses, tailoring the new tools to the needs of each community, and strengthening the training and employment services that can build trust and community among the businesses and local residents.
The Pratt Center looks forward to working with the de Blasio Administration in the months ahead to realize this progressive vision.