Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pick to run a key land use board addressed lawmakers’ considerations head-on at his affirmation listening to on Tuesday.
John Mangin, who presently serves as director of the Division of Metropolis Planning’s housing division, used the looks to make up floor with the Metropolis Council after several members publicly pushed back on his nomination to guide the Board of Requirements and Appeals. Lawmakers have been vocal about taking difficulty together with his background, together with a 2014 paper he wrote within the Stanford College Legislation and Coverage Assessment that included a line blaming “rich home-owner cartels” for blocking denser housing.
Including to the scrutiny is the expanded energy of the BSA, which gained extra sway over sure land use choices below City Charter revisions put forward by a panel led by Mangin.
Many Council members opposed the adjustments for diminishing their voice in land use decision-making.
“I simply needed to get clarification as to the time period you had used referred to as ‘home-owner cartels,’” Deputy Chief Chris Banks advised Mangin. “Regular of us would take that offensively, particularly after they advocate for his or her group.”
Mangin mentioned in his testimony that it was a standard time period from truthful housing literature and never one he coined within the paper.
Deputy Speaker Nantasha Williams requested Mangin the way to sq. his testimony on the significance of the Council’s say on land use processes together with his function shaping the poll measures, which she described as “hostile” to lawmakers.
She additionally pressed him to defend his paper on exclusionary zoning within the context of a metropolis, pointing to her personal district in Southeast Queens, which incorporates many Black middle- and working-class householders.
“Everyone understands exclusionary housing by means of a suburban lens,” he mentioned, noting that the article wasn’t written about New York Metropolis. “I used to be attempting to take a factor that everybody understood and apply it in a novel context to make a degree that we needs to be constructing sufficient housing to make sure we’re offering for the wants of the total vary of residents of varied city areas across the nation.”
Mangin characterised his 2014 article as arguing that “along with all the opposite instruments in our group growth toolkit, we must also change into forceful advocates for extra housing of all kinds.”
“On the time, this felt like a considerably novel argument. Right this moment, it hardly must be mentioned,” Mangin mentioned. “Particularly after I take a look at Council’s report on housing over the past decade, it looks as if that argument has change into a actuality.”
Mangin touted his practically two-decade monitor report in housing and land use, telling lawmakers he goals to make the land use regulation system “fairer, extra responsive and extra clear” to help reasonably priced housing. He additionally struck a conciliatory tone to convey he gained’t carry ideological bias to the adjudicative function, noting the restrictions of the BSA’s function and praising lawmakers’ accomplishments in advancing pro-housing initiatives he helps.
Mangin pointed to his work with nonprofit teams and group boards starting from pro-housing and anti-development positions, in addition to his 12 years on the Division of Metropolis Planning engaged on neighborhood rezonings and citywide initiatives like Obligatory Inclusionary Housing and Metropolis of Sure, which he referred to as “the perfect, most inclusive dialog about housing this metropolis has ever had.”
“When its prospects appeared particularly grim, the Metropolis Council picked it up and carried it throughout the end line,” he advised the Council. “The town is in your debt.”
Mangin additionally mentioned in his testimony that he’s desirous to work with the Metropolis’s Division of Housing Preservation and Growth to face up the BSA Quick Monitor for Reasonably priced Housing, which he mentioned has the potential to “carry reasonably priced housing to each a part of the town.”
Annemarie Grey, govt director of pro-housing group Open New York, testified in support of Mangin’s nomination on the listening to, saying that his management would assist the Metropolis Council fast-track publicly-funded one hundred pc reasonably priced housing tasks that lawmakers have touted as prime priorities.
“The truth that John has lengthy acknowledged the fundamental actuality that for many years New York Metropolis’s method to housing and land use has led to exclusionary outcomes needs to be a prerequisite for the job, not a disqualification,” Grey mentioned.
A number of Council members acknowledged on the listening to that they’d met privately with Mangin to debate his positions beforehand, and thanked him for his willingness to subject their considerations. (Among the many pre-hearing appointments was a strolling tour of Deputy Chief Chris Banks’ district in Brooklyn on Monday, which he cited for its examples of the kinds of growth he hopes to see extra of throughout the town.)
The committee additionally heard testimony on the nomination of Lisa Garcia, commissioner of the Division of Environmental Safety, for one in every of seven seats on the board of the town’s forthcoming land financial institution.
Mangin was positive to underline a key level from his previous writings and his written testimony, that each one kinds of tasks needs to be within the combine when a group is in search of to construct its manner out of a housing scarcity.
“Households in New York Metropolis have an especially various vary of wants and needs. Ideally, we are able to create a housing coverage that accommodates all of them,” Mangin mentioned.
The Council has not but set a date for a closing vote on Mangin’s nomination, however will maintain its subsequent said assembly on Sept. 10, the place lawmakers sometimes vote on payments and confirmations.
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