Community Board 8 didn’t give City of Yes a fair hearing

To the editor:

Some public hearings have pre-determined outcomes.

I sat through two hearings on housing with Community Board 8’s Special Committee on the City of Yes. In both hearings, the chair set the tone against, adding to the second hearing with the committee a self-acknowledged bombastic critic from Queens who spoke for nearly 90 minutes without a break.

Disparaging ad hominem remarks against the City of Yes presenter and the mayor do not add value to an engaged community discussion. Faith communities also have been calling for a citywide plan where we all shouldered responsibility for reducing carbon, adding economic activity and building more housing.

Given the housing crisis, given a human-caused climate crisis added to by carbon emissions from vehicles, given the high number of persons of color in our district not at the hearing, given the number of low wage workers employed among us needing more multifamily apartment buildings, I could not help but see who and what was absent in these hearings. I wondered what 20th-century era speakers wanted to perpetuate.

The federal government set the area medium income, and the city and its developers can work to accept and create more rental units with ranges of 20 to 80 percent of the AMI if it has the will. The state government can provide more funding for public, or social, housing and supportive housing if it has the will. And CB 8, instead of being another NIMBY district in its vote, could have made constructive remarks to participate supportively in a citywide plan for housing, economic development and carbon reduction instead of rejecting it, maintaining the status quo of our present crisis.

We do need to become more of a City of Yes.

Rev. Dr. Robert Foltz-Morrison