Appointment of John Mangin to Chair the Board of Standards and Appeals

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Good morning and welcome to today's New York City Council hearing on the Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections, Standards and Ethics. At this time, no one should approach the dais, please. Silence all electronic devices.

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Good morning and welcome to this meeting of the Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections, Standards and Ethics. I am CM Sandra Ung, chair of this committee. Before we begin, I would like to recognize other members of the committee who are present: CM Elsie Encarnación and Minority Leader David M. Carr and Majority Leader Shaun Abreu. I would also like to acknowledge the acting counsel to the committee and committee staff that worked on today's hearing, the director and deputy director of the Council's Public Integrity Unit, the associate general counsel, as well as other attorneys and compliance professionals here.

Today, the committee will consider the Mayor's nomination of Lisa Garcia to be a member of the New York City Land Bank Board of Directors, Dr. Dave A. Chokshi to be a member of the Board of Health and John Mangin to be both a member and the chair of the New York City Board of Standards and Appeals. We will begin with the nomination of Commissioner Garcia, then we will hear from Dr. Chokshi and then conclude with Mr. Mangin.

By letter dated August 7, 2026 and pursuant to Local Law 56 of 2026, Mayor Mamdani requested the Council's advice and consent regarding his nomination of Commissioner Lisa Garcia to be a member of the New York City Land Bank Board of Directors. Local Law 56 of 2026 provides that upon the approval of the New York City Urban Development Corporation, the City of New York shall establish a Land Bank. There will be seven members of the Board of Directors of the Land Bank. Pursuant to its bylaws, a member of the Board of Directors must have appropriate experience in real estate and be a resident of New York City throughout their service on the board. The Land Bank will seek to preserve the ownership and equity interests of homeowners, prevent the displacement of residents from their dwellings and promote productive use of tax-foreclosed, vacant and abandoned properties to meet the needs of the surrounding communities and the City, in conjunction with enforceable tax liens.

Individuals initially appointed to the board shall serve as a working group to prepare the necessary application for New York State Urban Development Corporation's approval of the establishment of a Land Bank. Members of the Board of Directors of the Land Bank shall serve four-year terms without pay.

Joining us today is Lisa Garcia, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Commissioner Garcia was appointed to lead the agency in February 2026. In this position, she helps protect the City's infrastructure and environment, ensures the delivery of high quality services such as drinking water and sewer, and makes sure that the City is a global leader in the fight against the climate crisis. Prior to this, Commissioner Garcia served at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, advancing the Biden administration's environmental agenda in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and eight Indian nations. She then went to a climate solutions lab, where she worked to elevate climate justice leaders, and has served as Vice President for Litigation at Earthjustice as well as in other roles. Commissioner Garcia holds a Juris Doctorate degree from Brooklyn Law School. I now...

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Commissioner Garcia, I recognize you now to make an opening statement. Thank you.

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Good morning, Chair Ung and members of the Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections, Standards and Ethics. I am Lisa Garcia, Commissioner for the Department of Environmental Protection. I am here today because I have the honor of being considered for appointment to the New York City Land Bank Board of Directors.

Before coming to this role, I served as Regional Administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 2, covering New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and eight Indian nations, mainly upstate New York. I have also worked in environmental journalism, environmental law and advocacy. Throughout my career, my focus has been on environmental justice, climate protection and community outreach. I have experience bringing stakeholders together in many different forms and venues to gather input and feedback on a variety of challenging issues, all with the goal of trying to collectively find solutions.

Should I be appointed to the Land Bank Board of Directors, I would draw from my experience in government, academia and nonprofit organizations representing community groups. My robust background in environmental justice and community engagement would especially inform my work on the Land Bank. I wanted to highlight my experience in community engagement because community and stakeholder engagement will be paramount for the Land Bank's success.

Should I be part of the Land Bank Board of Directors, I would prioritize making sure that there was a robust process for engagement so that all parties and interests could be heard. I propose meeting with the Council members and committee members, reaching out directly to some of the most vocal and interested stakeholders and hosting forums with different partners to get a well-rounded set of recommendations. The stakeholders must include representatives from different areas of expertise and represent different constituencies. While housing is one area of input that the board should seek, for example, there are many other stakeholders that need to be involved. I expect that the Land Bank Board of Directors would work closely as a group and with the Council to identify a variety of stakeholders who would bring an array of interests and backgrounds.

The legislation that created the Land Bank requires the City to transition away from the trust-based lien sale to this Land Bank model by 2029. The Land Bank's primary mission is to provide a process that is equitable, accountable and transparent in collecting outstanding property taxes and water and sewer bills. I understand that the vision for the Land Bank is to collect old revenue and debt and also to transfer delinquent properties into uses that better serve the public interest, such as affordable housing. I look forward to helping set up this new entity as soon as possible if confirmed.

Currently, the Department of Environmental Protection uses the lien sale as a tool to collect unpaid water and sewer bills on certain properties and bring customers into good standing. Bringing customers into good standing has always been our priority. The goal is to balance customer needs and fairness while collecting unpaid debt, which is in line with the goals of the Land Bank. This work is a natural extension of my role as Commissioner. I am excited by the prospect of working with the Council, Land Bank board members and members of the public to ensure that the Land Bank is efficient and effective while reflecting the sensitivities around being part of this important endeavor. I thank this committee for considering my nomination and I am happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you very much.

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Thank you for your testimony. We are also joined by CM Chris Banks and CM Shekar Krishnan. I am going to ask a few questions and then I want to pass it off to my other colleagues.

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So first, what is your understanding of the purpose and vision for the New York City Land Bank?

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My understanding is, one, to transition away from the current trust-based lien sale to this Land Bank model, really with an eye towards being more equitable, accountable and transparent in collecting outstanding property taxes and outstanding water and sewer...

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...bills, again with this eye towards collection but also making sure that the transfer of delinquent properties could go into better uses to serve the public. So there is a lot more flexibility and opportunities with the Land Bank.

New York State confers a number of powers upon the Land Banks. What is your understanding of what the powers of a Land Bank generally are and can you describe how you think they will be used to further the policy goals of the Land Bank?

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My understanding is that once you get the approval from the state, there is a lot more flexibility with the Land Banks, a lot more options, and the options for this process to be designed again with holding properties in the bank but also with a plan to continue to possibly reuse properties in different ways and taking into account community concerns. Thank you.

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And how do you think the Land Bank can improve upon the City's past and current use of available tools to collect revenues while also preserving existing housing and creating new housing?

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Yeah, so I think that one thing, as I mentioned, the Land Bank does have those opportunities and flexibility. I would not want to prejudge what the final outcome would be, but again, if you think of the remit from this legislation to the Land Bank directors, it would really be to think of what are the concerns of the community, how do we respond to the concerns with the past processes and create new processes that meet the moment of again equity, accountability and transparency. So in designing it, community outreach and engagement will be paramount to get us to that place.

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And what do you think would be the greatest challenge that the New York City Land Bank will face after it is established?

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I think one of the biggest challenges with any new process put in place is making sure that it is effective, and that is one thing, and I do not think it is solely about this Land Bank. It is just about putting in new procedures and processes. I think the other thing, having studied and talked to other cities that have used community land banks, is that this is really different because there is a collections aspect — making sure that the City collects its unpaid debt — but also looking towards how do you return the land or think of properties in the lens of the community. So New York City is really tasked with creating something a little bit different than what other land banks have been used for in the country that I have observed.

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New York City Local Law 56 of 2026 requires that members of the Board of Directors of the New York City Land Bank have appropriate experience in real estate, finance, property management, community planning and development or other relevant fields. Can you share information about your past experience that you believe is pertinent to serving on the Board of Directors of the New York City Land Bank?

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Yeah, so in my current role I think there is a natural extension because the Department of Environmental Protection has always worked with the Department of Finance on lien sales. As I mentioned, it collects unpaid water and sewer charges that result in being transferred to the Land Bank or to the lien sale. Also, my past experience having hosted public information meetings, running community engagement, running forums where we are gathering information to be able to create a new policy or a new law — I think that my past experience in that kind of legal field and policy field and implementing governmental change is a real asset as a board member. Thank you.

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And pursuant to Local Law 56 of 2026, individuals initially appointed to serve on the Board of Directors of the Land Bank shall serve as a working group to prepare the necessary application for approval from the state in relation to the establishment of the Land Bank. The task of preparing that application could place significant demands on your time and attention and must be completed within a specific timeframe while serving as Commissioner. Do you believe you will be able to commit to the appropriate time and attention necessary to fulfill the duties of the working group?

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Yes, I do think that I will be able to fulfill the mission. Working with the other members of the board, I think that we all — as you know, there are other commissioners appointed — I think that this is a really important task that we will dedicate time to and make sure we come up with the correct design and make the recommendations. On the other hand, I have to say I have a great team over at the Department of Environmental Protection, almost 6,000 people, so it is a really good balance of being able to depend on those experts and professionals when I am in a meeting or like here at a hearing. So thank you.

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Pursuant to Local Law 56 of 2026, members of the working group might seek input from relevant stakeholders, including not-for-profit corporations that operate in the City of New York to foster stabilization and the protection, preservation and development of properties that contain affordable housing, commercial uses and community uses. Can you identify the stakeholders from which you believe the working group should solicit input?

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Yes, obviously I think this is a really important piece of it, that we create the new process with the sensitivities of understanding homeownership and how communities do not want to be displaced, certainly homeowners. So with that in mind, working with the Council that created the law, we were talking about the purpose of the local law, and also working with affordable housing advocates, community and economic development, economic revitalization and nonprofit groups. Those are the ones that I am thinking we would start with.

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And can you speak a bit about your personal experience engaging with the kinds of stakeholders from whom you think the working group should solicit input?

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Yeah, I have a lot of experience, as I mentioned, in environmental justice. If you have not been to a hearing on siting a power plant in a community of color, you must know that some of those get extremely contentious. But the goal is to remain present and to listen to community members, and so that is a real priority of mine — to make sure that we are listening to all the affected stakeholders and we bring that feedback back to the board, back to the Land Bank board, so that we really take into account some of the challenges that have happened in the past and also, of course, the best practices and lessons learned.

C. Riley and Nantasha M. Williams

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Thank you. We also have Deputy Speaker Nantasha Williams joining remotely right now. I am going to pass the questions over to CM Krishnan. Thank you so much, Chair.

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Good morning. Good morning, Commissioner. I know you are here in a different capacity, but it is good to see you again and I appreciate all your work and your leadership. I know we have partnered on many things in my community where flooding from Queens Boulevard to 25th Avenue has been a big issue in our community and I appreciate your partnership in trying to find sustainable, long-term ways to address it. Thank you. I just had a question for you. You know, with the Land Bank in particular, I also think there are opportunities generally to think creatively about how we preserve affordable housing in our City. Community land trusts provide one example. HDFCs, which have fallen by the wayside, provide another...

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...example. I have represented them and I know how critical they are. These are all good tools to preserve affordable housing, and I am just wondering how you think about that. What is the role of the Land Bank in coming up with some creative solutions to preserve affordable housing, some of which, frankly, have existed before but our City has moved away from them over the years? It would be good to rethink how we can bring them back, or new ones like community land trusts, which I think are really important tools as well. How does a Land Bank oversee those issues or think about those issues and how would you, in this position, think about them?

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Yeah, thank you so much for the question, Council Member, and yes, thank you for the partnership. I appreciate it. That is a really important question, and I think this aspect of the Land Bank, having studied some other community land banks and land banks across the country, really does set the stage for New York City to think about how we look at abandoned properties, what the reuse of the property is, with an eye towards maybe improving or meeting or matching what the community's desires are.

So I think right now, as I understand the process of the lien sale, it is very much about the sale and then the private trust takes it over and usually just sells it. But here there is an opportunity to say yes, we need to focus on the enforcement and collections — that is one goal — but the other is, then what can we do to reuse that property? I look forward to working with the board members to really think of those options and that flexibility, and also, like I said before, some of the best practices from places like Baton Rouge, which is thinking of a main street and bringing back open space to a community, or in the Palisades fire, thinking about what we would do with a property into the future.

So I think you hit the mark that there are those opportunities and I look forward to working with the Council and all of you and everyone else on what those opportunities could be. Thank you very much.

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I now would like to pass it to the Majority Leader.

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Thank you, Commissioner, for coming to testify and answering counsel's questions. Properties in the lien sale process in New York City are disproportionately located in a handful of neighborhoods, those that are generally occupied by Black and Brown homeowners, many of whom are facing gentrification pressures and predatory actors. The current lien sale process requires a publication of all properties potentially eligible to be sold in the lien sale process. This includes the only publicly accessible list that identifies properties with past due water bills, thereby making these properties an easy target for predatory actors. Considering the immense concerns raised around publishing these kinds of lists when the City published the pied-à-terre list this year, do you think publishing the lien sale list is appropriate?

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Especially considering that the lien sale list goes further than the pied-à-terre list in publicizing previously non-public information.

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Thank you, Councilmember, for the question. I have heard the concerns about that and that is certainly one thing that I look forward to talking to the other Land Bank members about again. How do we improve this process, and maybe that could be one of the questions that we consider. At what point do you think it is appropriate for the City, via the Land Bank or directly, to foreclose on a homeowner for non-payment of taxes or water bills? Again, I think we will be working together to figure out what the procedures are and what the protocol would be into the future, and so it is difficult to kind of prejudge what that outcome would be. One of the concerns relating to the lien sale enforcement process in New York City and the associated disproportionate community impact is that it strips assets and wealth from communities which then see no tangible improvements in return. What can be done to ensure that the funds generated from this enforcement process actually flow into the communities negatively impacted by enforcement?

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Yeah, thank you. So again, my experience is in working on equity, racial equity and environmental justice, and so I just lead with those kinds of questions as a core value. How do we ensure that there are not unintended consequences with any new processes, policy or legal action that we take? Because usually, unfortunately, the history in the United States shows that it does disproportionately impact communities of color and many times low income communities. That will definitely be front and center of how I show up, how I participate and make sure that, as I said before, this seems like a great opportunity to think of this process as being more equitable, accountable and transparent. I appreciate the question and that effort. Thank you so much.

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I also note that CM Abreu has joined us today. Seeing no other members with questions, apologies, Counselor, do you have a question?

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Thank you very much. I have been listening on my cell phone. Congratulations. It is my Bill, so I have a lot of positive feelings about it. My question would be, within the lean possibilities of human past or maybe even what you might think is happening in the future, what kinds of projects do you think might fall under Land Bank aegis? And what do you think perhaps could happen? Is it a building, is it an institution? Do you have any sense of where those lien sales, which could have been lien sales, hopefully will be Land Bank and nonprofit? Could you speak to where those might be taking place? In other words, within the portfolio, obviously you have lien sale possibilities in your portfolio, so I am just wondering what the world might look like.

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So I think that, as we have been talking about, there is this ability in creating the Land Bank to really think of where those flexibilities and where those opportunities lie. I think it is really incumbent on us as we are designing this, not only through community engagement and listening to what some of the stakeholders' concerns were and what the Council's purpose of the law was, but also figuring out how we improve the process. So if the improved process is that right now a lien sale is sold and then goes into a private trust, we really think of what are those other opportunities that we can take into account, like thinking of abandoned properties or uses for open space or affordable housing, of course, which is one that everyone has talked about. So that is, as I said before, the remit of really designing it with those questions in mind and those opportunities.

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How many properties do you have any sense might be in the next year or so, or is it hard to tell?

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Oh, it is really hard to tell since we have also put into place, thinking about homeowners and water and sewer bills that we need to collect on, really thinking about how to be more sensitive to the homeowner. So we have activated things like going out and doing more door knocking, speaking to the homeowner and trying to get them into our affordability programs. We have increased our affordability programs and expanded them this year, so we are on the one hand trying to make sure that maybe a homeowner never gets to that point, and so we cannot really predict which ones or how many would go into it.

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Thank you. And congratulations on your Daily News editorial today. Thank you. Thank you.

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Seeing no other members with questions, Commissioner Garcia, you are excused. We are also joined by CM Lee. Thank you.

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So much, Councilmember. We will now move on to the Mayor's nominee for the Board of Health. Pursuant to Section 31 of the New York City Charter and by the letter dated August 7, 2026, the Mayor requested the advice and consent of the Council regarding the appointment of Dr. Dave A. Chokshi to the New York City Board of Health. The appointment will expire on May 31, 2030. The primary function of the Board of Health is to lead and oversee New York City's Health Code, which encompasses the rules governing all matters and subjects within the jurisdiction of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The Department's jurisdiction is among the most extensive and varied of all of the City agencies, including such diverse disciplines as communicable diseases, environmental health services, neurological health, food safety, veterinary affairs, water quality, pest control, vital statistics and the Office of Chief Medical Examiner.

The Board of Health's 11 members serve six-year terms and cannot be dismissed without cause. We are joined today by Dr. Dave A. Chokshi. Dr. Chokshi is currently the Sternberg Family Professor and founding director of the Health and Opportunity Leadership Institute at the City College of New York. He is also the chair of the Common Health Coalition and the co-chair of the Health and Political Economy Project. From 2020 to 2022, he served as the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, leading the City's response to the COVID pandemic during his tenure. He also served as chair of the New York City Board of Health, where he promulgated a resolution recognizing racism as a public health crisis.

He also launched the nation's first publicly authorized overdose prevention centers. From 2014 to 2020, he held leadership roles at New York City Health and Hospitals, including serving as inaugural Chief Population Health Officer. From 2017 to 2020, Dr. Chokshi was also the chief officer of an accountable care organization, and in 2012 was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as a White House Fellow at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where he was a principal health adviser in the Office of the Secretary. He received his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. Please, Dr. Chokshi, come up to the table. I now recognize the Committee counsel to administer the affirmation.

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Good morning, Chair Ung and Council Members. It is an honor to be with you today. My name is Dave Chokshi and I am a primary care doctor with a public health heart. I have cared for patients at Bellevue Hospital since 2014, before, during and after my service as the 43rd Health Commissioner of New York City, which is how some of you know me. As Commissioner, I had the privilege of chairing the Board of Health, so I come to you with deep respect for the Board and direct knowledge of its vital work on behalf of New Yorkers.

Today, my clinical practice focuses on people experiencing homelessness. I am a professor at the City College of New York, where I founded the Health and Opportunity Leadership Institute and the largest multi-sector health coalition in the nation. Across all of it, my career has been dedicated to saving lives and preventing suffering. That is why I would be honored to serve again on the Board of Health. The Board is a historic institution safeguarding New Yorkers for over two centuries, from scourges like smallpox and cholera to present-day diseases like cancer and COVID-19. The Board has been at the forefront of public health. I think of its mission simply as adding healthy birthdays for all of us.

For my part, I came to medicine without early role models. I am the first doctor in my family, but like so many, I learned from direct experience how closely health is tied to opportunity, from being hospitalized with asthma as a child to watching my father live with diabetes for decades. Opportunity brought my father from Mumbai to Baton Rouge, where I was born and raised, and my wife's family to Queens, where we are raising our own daughters today. My patients remind me of those journeys. Each deserves excellent care and each would benefit even more if their illness could be prevented in the first place. That is the promise of public health.

Before I came to the Health Department, I served six years at New York City Health and Hospitals, including as its inaugural Chief Population Health Officer. As Health Commissioner during the COVID-19 pandemic, I led our City's historic campaign to vaccinate over 6 million New Yorkers in just over a year. During my tenure, the Department also launched signature initiatives on overdose prevention, community health workers and nurse visits for new moms and babies. As chair of the Board of Health, I promulgated a landmark resolution on racism as a public health crisis.

The greatest challenge currently facing the Board and the Department is modernizing our health system in the face of national headwinds for public health. Federal policy changes and funding cuts have weakened health infrastructure and caused coverage losses here as well as nationally. Contending with these headwinds will require creativity, innovation and attention to low income and marginalized New Yorkers. Above all, it will require listening with humility. Community engagement is a foremost duty in public health, and I strongly believe that it must be a bidirectional conduit. Health leaders must listen as much as we speak. If appointed, I intend to take that duty as seriously as I take listening to my own patients.

I welcome the chance to learn from this Council, which has a particularly important role in identifying areas for policy. I am grateful to Mayor Mamdani for this nomination and to Deputy Mayor Arteaga and Commissioner Martin for their confidence. It has been a privilege to serve our City in various roles over more than a decade now and I would look forward to the chance to do so again through the Board of Health. Thank you for your time, your consideration and your commitment to our beloved City.

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Thank you for your testimony. In October 2021, when you were City Health Commissioner, the Board of Health passed a resolution declaring that racism is a public health crisis. In what specific ways has the Board of Health and the Department of Health been effective in addressing this crisis since 2021, and what work do you think the Board of Health and the Department of Health still need to do to address racism as a public health crisis in 2026?

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Thank you for the thoughtful question, Chair. This is one of the things that I am proudest of from my tenure as Health Commissioner. We very deliberately called it a resolution on racism as a public health crisis because it requires resolve for us to be able to confront the many ways in which racism contributes to health inequities. During the time that we passed that resolution, we put in specific language to ensure that there would be annual reporting that the Department was required to make, for us to ensure that there were tangible actions being taken. This was particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, where we saw the ways in which the pernicious reach of racism affected the everyday lives of New Yorkers. Since then, the Department has continued its focus on equity. But of course, the work continues because in so many ways, low income Black and Brown New Yorkers and Native American New Yorkers continue to face the brunt of

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inequities and poor health outcomes. Thank you. You did mention the annual reporting. Could you elaborate on what else we can do?

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Certainly. I think that one of the things that is most important with respect to what has to be done going forward is for us to take the data that the Department is excellent at producing and move from data to action, for us to identify the most concrete ways, whether it is physical health or mental health or substance use, for us to take that data and translate it into interventions that can close those gaps. So, for example, I think we have to continue to look at ways in which cardiovascular disease, cancer, severe mental illness and infectious diseases like hepatitis C and...

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are borne particularly by racial minorities and other New Yorkers who are marginalized. There are specific interventions that we can continue to develop to be able to meet those challenges. Thank you. As a Board of Health member, to whom do you believe you are ultimately accountable: the Mayor, the Commissioner, or the public, and why?

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Certainly, the Board of Health is ultimately accountable to the public. I feel a great deal of humility with respect to the role of the Board of Health because it is such a historic institution. For almost 200 years it has served the public, and the Board, as I am sure you know, Chair, is specifically designed with its six-year terms to be somewhat insulated from the political currents of the day. Scientific merit is the key consideration by which its decisions are made.

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And what role do you think the Council should play in overseeing the Board of Health?

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I see the relationship between the Board of Health and the City Council as a particularly important one. The City Council, of course, represents the people of New York City as well, and so when it comes to policies that should be identified, there are avenues that the City Council, of course, has purview over itself. But there may be ways in which the Health Code ought to be amended to be responsive to public priorities, and so in those cases the City Council and the Board of Health should communicate and work together with respect to any changes to the Health Code.

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So we were just talking about data. How do we respond if the data suggests that a Board policy was not achieving its public health outcomes? Thank you.

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That is another thoughtful question. We always have to adjust when the data shows that we are not achieving our intended aims. This also requires humility alongside public accountability. But it is one of the things that I love the most about public health, because data is, you know, we believe that data is the lifeblood of what we do in public health, not just because it identifies priorities for action, but because within it is also accountability to make sure that we are actually serving the people that we intend to serve as well as possible.

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And how do you evaluate your own performance as a member of the Board?

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Well, I think again that is ultimately up to the public to evaluate. I can say some of the ways in which I will hold with great gravity my role on the Board of Health, and that is to ensure that the things that we are doing are responsive to public input and feedback. As you know, there are mechanisms to ensure public input to the Board of Health, whether through written comments before rulemaking or the ways in which meetings of the Board of Health are public and there are ways for oral testimony by members of the public to be given. I think those will be the most important mechanisms for us to understand whether the Board is truly responding to public health needs.

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And if the Board adopted a policy that produced unintended negative consequences, what is...

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the responsibility that the Board member should bear? The responsibility primarily is to adjust, to ensure that if things are not going as intended, the Board adjusts its approach.

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And if community stakeholders raised concerns about a Board action, how should the Board incorporate their feedback?

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Yes, thank you. This is another very important part of how the Board of Health remains publicly accountable. As I briefly alluded to earlier, there are existing mechanisms through written public comments as well as public testimony during Board of Health meetings. Those are the most important mechanisms to ensure public accountability. Thank you.

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I would like now to pass it off to CM Krishnan. Thank you, Chair.

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Good morning, Dr. Chokshi. Those commercials are ingrained in my head. I had to be on your account, but that is still a public health work. Look at that, so I still remember it. But it is good to see you, Doctor, and thank you for all your work during some of the most difficult parts of our City's recent history when it came to public health. I have seen all that you have done, Dr. Chokshi, and I also appreciate that you are representing my district proudly and all that you do across the City.

I just had a couple of quick questions. One is pretty specific and I wanted to get your thoughts on it. In a few weeks, my committee will be holding a hearing around an issue that is really of concern to me, which is around the heavy reliance of schools on screens for young children. As a father of young children myself, I see how much of an issue that is, and it kind of goes from there to social media and the harmful impacts of social media. We worked with the Youth Committee to hold a hearing on that earlier this year. And then, of course, there are other questions that come in with AI, and even unknowingly, children's exposure to AI through some of the programs that are used in schools.

So I bring all of that up to say I think that screens for this generation and for young children in particular is becoming a real concern from a policy standpoint across our society, frankly, and especially in our country. To me it raises the question of whether it has reached the point where it is a public health issue. It is a mental health concern, especially as kids get older, and more broadly speaking, it is a public health issue. So I just wonder how you think about that, and how you, in this position on the Board, would think about the issue of screens and the overuse of screens when it comes to children, especially young children.

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Thank you, Councilmember. This is a really thoughtful question and an area where there is active debate about what precisely needs to be done. I will offer some of my thoughts, but I first do want to ensure that I state that the Board of Health has limited purview over this issue, just by virtue of the fact that it does not require health code changes but requires other mechanisms by which either the Department of Health or other aspects of City government are responsible for it. So I do want to represent that aspect.

But I can share, speaking as a doctor but also as the father of two young girls, this is very concerning to me. There is growing evidence that there are harms related to mental health from exposure to devices, not just the screens component of it, but some of the other ways in which technology can affect mental health, both for very young children but also for teenagers and adolescents. The other aspect that I think is very concerning is beyond mental health, although that is the primary reason for concern. There is an opportunity cost with respect to what kids are doing when they are spending so much time on screens. What is it coming at the expense of for the health of developing brains and developing bodies?

So those are all things that I think we have to take very seriously and monitor the evidence as it emerges. I think we have enough evidence to act in some ways with respect to limiting screen time and the use of devices, and then I think we have to continue monitoring the evidence base to understand what additional steps need to be taken.

(00:43:48)

Thank you. And perhaps there are ways that, well, not all of it is in your jurisdiction, but there are ways that we could work together to think about larger awareness campaigns around it. My final question, just zooming out, apart from your nomination, more broadly, one of the things that troubles me a lot is that, aside from health care becoming more and more unaffordable, insurance premiums going up, services being cut to allow billion-dollar insurance companies to further profit, it is all stemming from a view that I am seeing in medicine more and more of reactive care. When someone gets sick or has a heart attack, there is a battery of tests, you are coded in a certain way, and insurance company rules apply. But before that, from a prevention standpoint, it is often very difficult to get the care that you need, and that care really starts, as you know, a lot earlier, years before a health incident can happen.

But we do not focus enough on prevention in medicine, and that is driven a lot by insurance companies and larger profit measures and things like that. I think the lack of focus on prevention really affects low-income communities of color especially, and I think you speak about it too when you talk about racism in the context of public health. These are all connected. And so when we do not reach out and really inform people of the importance of prevention and offer preventative services, the disparate harms of that are felt by low-income communities of color. So I just wonder, in your role on the Board of Health, as we think about community engagement and outreach, how can the Board work to help in its own way shift perspective from reactive medicine to preventive care?

(00:45:42)

That is really well said, Councilmember. Thank you for shining a light on that. I have dedicated my career to primary care and public health, which both have prevention at their heart. It troubles me also the degree to which the money does not follow that paradigm of investing in prevention. And so that is a posture, a viewpoint, that I will bring to deliberations on the Board of Health, to ensure that prevention remains at the center, that we, as we sometimes say in medicine, look upstream, not just to the reasons that someone comes with illness seeking care, but the deeper causes that underlie that illness in the first place. All of that, I believe, is the remit of public health. Thank you.

(00:46:35)

Thank you. And now I would like to pass it on to...

(00:46:36)

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Dr. Chokshi, for your previous service to our City and for your continued interest in public service to our City. I have questions on childhood poisoning and vaccinations. What is the Board of Health's role in eliminating childhood lead poisoning, and do you believe changes to the health code are needed to address this problem?

(00:47:03)

Thank you, Councilmember. This is another critically important issue. As you likely know, the Board of Health was the body that first called attention to and amended the health code to remove interior lead paint from New York City buildings, and particularly from our homes and schools. So I believe the Board certainly has an important role to play when it comes to ensuring that lead poisoning is something that no child in New York City should ever be exposed to. To your specific question, I am not aware of current changes to the health code that are needed to advance the work that has already happened, but I do know intimately that the agency takes this very seriously as a threat to childhood health.

As a Board of Health member, how would you address falling vaccination rates and combat vaccine misinformation? This is something that I am also very concerned about, so thank you for spotlighting it as well. We have work to do with respect to trust, with respect to contending with misinformation, and most importantly with ensuring that children are protected against what are completely preventable illnesses. Every single case of measles, of mumps, rubella, polio — these are preventable tragedies with vaccination.

So the things that we have to do: number one, we have to ensure that it is not just about the messages that we are delivering about vaccination but also the messengers. This is something that we took seriously during the pandemic, for the Health Department to know when it was time for government officials to take a step back and to empower others, whether it was community health workers or faith leaders, to engage in that type of conversation. The people who remain the most trusted by members of the public, by patients and parents, are people's own doctors, and so I think there is an important role to ensure engagement, particularly with pediatricians, to ensure that the best evidence-based information is transmitted to people.

(00:49:34)

Great. Now I have a set of questions on artificial intelligence. What are some specific ways you see the Board of Health and the Health Department potentially using AI to impact public health outcomes and public health education?

Thank you. This is something that I have been thinking about. Again, I will check the responsibilities of the Board of Health to say that I am not aware of any current ways in which that will intersect with the Board of Health's jurisdiction or with amendments to the health code. With that said, speaking as a doctor and public health professional myself, I think we have to hold in our hands both the idea that AI and technology, as in the prior question, could have some harms, but also that there may be some ways in which using artificial intelligence could improve access to care or help us ensure delivery of care to people who most need it. So I think we have to have a level-headed appreciation of both the harms and the potential benefits.

You answered my question on harms, so that eliminates that second question. My final question: in your pre-hearing questions you were asked about what you envisioned to be the greatest challenge facing the Board of Health and Department of Health in the next five years. You stated that the greatest such challenge is, quote, modernizing our health system in the face of headwinds for public health at the national level, unquote. You further stated, quote, federal policy changes and funding cuts have resulted in a weakened public health infrastructure and health coverage losses nationally as well as in New York City, unquote. How do you envision the Board of Health and Department of Health being able to address these particular challenges that you have identified?

(00:51:29)

Thank you. This is something that I am very concerned about, and I know members of the Council are as well. I also would commend the Department, including the current leadership, for paying deep attention to these issues. I think what has to be done first and foremost is what we talk about in medicine: to first do no harm. To ensure that the changes as they come down are mitigated to the degree possible through City actions and potentially partnership with the State as well, when it comes to people who may be losing their health coverage, whether it is Medicaid or an Affordable...

(00:52:06)

Care Act plan. Beyond that, I think that the ways in which funding cuts are being borne means that we have to get more creative with respect to our public health infrastructure. Something that I feel very passionately about is the ways in which public health and health care ought to partner better together. This is why I helped to found the Common Health Coalition, to make it so that all sectors of health — hospitals, health plans, health departments — are pushing in the same direction for the most urgent health priorities, and frankly so that patients should not have to think that much about what branch of the health system they are interacting with, and that that is a responsibility that is borne by us as health professionals on the back end.

(00:52:56)

Thank you so much, Doctor. We missed you on the commercials. I am done with my questions. Thank you. I would like now to pass it on to CM Lee.

(00:53:10)

My questions spilled my coffee. Sorry. Hi, Dr. Chokshi, how are you? I just want to start off by saying it is more comments than questions, but I just wanted to say I have a huge amount of respect, and I just wanted to thank you so much because during COVID and even before that I was the Executive Director at Korean Community Services. I remember, yes, and I just love your all-community approach to health because that is what it takes, right? And even when we were at KCS, I remember being outside on the steps of City Hall saying no, hepatitis B and C and diabetes are huge issues in our community, but there was no data at the time, or not enough data on our communities. And so that is why we partnered a lot and did the community-based participatory research and worked with H Mart grocery store to get the healthy food items at eye level, right, and the restaurants to do low-sodium options and the faith-based leaders to really do the screenings at the churches. It takes a village, right?

And so I just want to say I really, really appreciate your approach to health because it is public health. It is an all-inclusive sort of effort, and I just wanted to say thank you, in all of your many roles and hats that you have worn, because I did have previous health commissioners who sort of did not understand or appreciate the diverse health needs of our City, and I think you brought that to the table. I just wanted to say thank you for that.

And I guess, putting on my former role and hat a little bit, given your previous background and what is happening and coming down the pipeline, because as you just mentioned, a lot of times it is not your health issues necessarily that dictate what kind of services you have. It is the health insurance and what type of coverage you have that dictates what kind of services we are able to receive, which is kind of backwards, right? And it is not enough on prevention. We all know that preventive care saves the City and State dollars and also keeps us healthier. But given everything that is changing in the political landscape, how do you think, given public charge, what we saw last time, and HR 1 and everything, how will your role on the Board sort of partner with other City agencies to help make sure that we are doing the outreach in multiple languages and into the community so that everyone knows their rights and we keep people healthy?

(00:55:35)

Well, first of all, thank you so much for those kind words, Councilmember. It means a lot to me coming from you. I do have to mention I am very proud of being the first health commissioner of Asian descent in New York City, and as part of that, even as busy as it was during the pandemic, one of my proudest achievements was releasing the first ever report on the health of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in New York City. And I think that gets to your question as well, because it starts with our ability to disaggregate data so that we can actually see what is happening in this beautiful mosaic, as it is called here in New York City, and understand what the health problems are that are being confronted within different communities so that we can be responsive to them.

I am also worried about some of the political headwinds that you have described and the way that they will affect the health of particularly low-income and marginalized New Yorkers. The one thing that I will just say briefly on that is that I am proud to have been a part of New York City Health and Hospitals as well, and I think that NYCH+H has done terrific work when it comes to care. I know it is very much on their radar screen to think about how they can rise to the challenge of what we are confronting and will continue to over the coming months when it comes to those coverage losses.

(00:57:06)

And the partners on the ground, especially those that do public health or mental health related work in the community, are ready to go. So I would say definitely let us partner with them.

(00:57:16)

Thank you so much. And I would like to now pass...

(00:57:20)

Thank you very much. Dr. Chokshi, I remember the ads, so you are famous for the taxi, radio, television thing, whatever it was. I have a few questions. First, just to get clarity, I think there are obviously other doctors from Health and NYCH+H on the Board, but I believe you would be filling the doctor-appointed position, that would be one of your roles. So my question would be, what would be some of your focus points that you would like to achieve?

Number two, unfortunately, animals are often under your purview at the Board of Health. I have been to the Board of Health so many times on animal issues. The 929 even in the parks comes under the Board of Health, so I just wanted to get your comments on that, because unfortunately there are so many challenges in terms of the animal world that we are dealing with.

So I want to know your comments on that, and also drug challenges. We have too many people dying of drugs, different types, coming somewhat under the Board, maybe in terms of policies that could be changed. And then, just as CM Lee also focused on, the mental health. I have to say I have called 988 a couple of times recently and it has been not helpful at all. And so mental health is just not working. So those would be my key questions.

(00:58:52)

Thank you, CM Brewer, and thank you for all the ways that you have supported and uplifted the health of New Yorkers over the years too. You covered a lot of ground there. Let me try to get briefly to each of them.

With respect to physicians on the Board of Health, as you likely know, statutorily there are specific slots for physicians. The chair, of course, is the current Commissioner, Commissioner Martin, who is a doctor. Dr. Katz is also a member of the Board of Health as the current head of Health and Hospitals, and I would be another one of the physician members. I think it is important to have physicians, particularly practicing physicians, represented on the Board.

With respect to animals, drugs and mental health, you are absolutely right that animals, the way in which veterinary medicine interacts with human health, but also some of the specific policy issues related to animals in New York City, comes under the Board's purview. That is absolutely correct. There are not any specific issues that I am aware will be brought before the Board in the near term. What I can say is that that is an area that, as health commissioner, I also had purview over, and so I have expertise in it, and I also know where in the literature to look for the latest scientific evidence to help evaluate those questions.

For substance use, this is again an area where I am very concerned. As you said, we lose too many of our fellow New Yorkers to overdose. There are

(01:00:32)

some things that have been done, particularly over the last several years, to try to change that. I think the pillars of the approach are: number one, ensure that we do everything that we can to keep our fellow New Yorkers alive so that they can seek treatment and rehabilitation — for example, making naloxone more accessible. Second, we have to expand our efforts around medication-assisted treatment to ensure that people actually get treated and can enter into rehabilitation. Number three — and I should say not all of these will intersect with the Board of Health — number three is being very vigilant with respect to how the drug supply is changing. This is something that nationally is causing huge concern because synthetic versions of various drugs are extremely dangerous for people and patients. So that is another aspect of the approach.

Then finally, with respect to mental health, I think there are two things that I have to say about that. One is to return to the prior part of the conversation, focusing on young people in particular. This is where so much of the groundwork is laid for our health in adulthood, and the more that we can do to address the mental health of young people, the more dividends it will pay over time. Second is to ensure greater access. We have the 988 line, but I take your point that there are ways that we can continue to lower barriers to accessing mental health services.

(01:02:17)

Not to push it, but 988 did not help the individuals that I am trying to help right now — not at all, did not refer, did not do anything. Also, just back to the animals for a second. Overcrowding is a huge issue. We could go on and on. I just think it pops up in the press even more than some of the other issues that might be more important, but I think that more attention is paid to that. Then just in terms of the coordination — which is good, because I think the Board of Health is one of the few places where Health and Hospitals and the Health Department can work together on some of their policies — is that something that you think could be extended or could be dealt with better?

(01:03:01)

The short answer is yes, although I answer with humility. The current leaders of those agencies are terrific. I am a big Dr. Katz fan, as am I. Thank you.

(01:03:15)

Thank you. I would like to pass it off to Minority Leader Carr.

(01:03:19)

Thank you, Karen. Doctor, good to see you. Thank you for being here today. I want to talk to you a little bit about the response to the COVID pandemic, during which you were a major policymaker, adviser and leader for the City of New York. Looking back on that time now with the benefit of hindsight, is there anything that you would do differently, or anything specifically that you regret in terms of decisions or recommendations made at that time?

(01:03:43)

Thank you, Leader Carr, for the question. I have to start by saying when I look back on that time, there is a lot of pain and tragedy and suffering that we have to acknowledge. We lost almost 50,000 of our fellow New Yorkers — of course not numbers, they were our neighbors, our family members, our friends. That is something that I think we have to acknowledge with gravity.

There are so many ways in which I believe that the City and everyday people rose to the occasion with respect to saving lives and preventing suffering — whether ensuring that older adults had what they needed in those early weeks of the pandemic, bringing them food and groceries, to the way that the vaccination campaign ultimately saved tens of thousands of lives.

But you asked if there was anything that might be done differently in retrospect. I think one thing that comes to mind for me is the way in which the virus changed so quickly. We encountered different variants of the virus that causes COVID-19, and that shifted the way that we had to respond to it. Looking back, I think I would have paid even more attention to the ways in which variants can arise, communicated that to the public and made sure that we were as nimble as possible, because from Alpha to Delta to Omicron, it required slightly different responses from our City. Thank you for that

(01:05:29)

answer. I join you in remembering the weight of the loss of those tens of thousands of New Yorkers. I think what I hear mostly from folks looking back now is also the financial pain that that period brought — the lockdowns as well as the mandates, and in particular folks who worked in service to the City who no longer do so because of a vaccine mandate. A vaccine mandate that, after your tenure as Commissioner, published reports said did not actually do anything to stop the spread. It certainly contains symptoms. I got vaccinated myself. I was happy to make that choice, but that choice was stripped away from many, many, many City workers who still are fighting to get their jobs back. So in light of what was said after your tenure as Commissioner, is that mandate decision one that you regret being supportive of?

(01:06:22)

What I can tell you is that the vaccination campaign unequivocally saved lives and prevented suffering. I am proud of the fact that we were able to vaccinate over 6 million New Yorkers in a little bit over a year, and I would say that that required an all-hands-on-deck approach. I am proud that New York City was the first major municipality to lower barriers to accessing the vaccine as far as possible. We were the first place that brought vaccines into people's homes to ensure that everyone who wanted a vaccine could get one. We invested tens of millions of dollars in community health workers. It was the largest city community health worker program, to ensure that people could get their questions answered about the COVID-19 vaccine, which all of the science indicates was safe and effective.

I do believe that the judicious use of vaccine requirements is something that has to stay in the remit of public health, whether it is vaccine requirements that help our children stay safe in schools or the vaccine requirements that were associated with a once-in-a-generation pandemic. I think that the issue is not

(01:07:46)

whether the government should have this power. The question is whether or not it was used judiciously and correctly in the moment that you are talking about right now. I think reducing barriers to the vaccine, promoting accessibility, promoting education and information — those are all great things. I think for the most part, most people should have taken the vaccine. But ultimately, given what we know about what was said at the time — which is that this is going to stop the spread, which turned out not to be true — it was clearly just a question of a person's individual health. There was no reason for there to have been a mandate.

Many of those people who chose to be severed from City service and were wrongfully terminated, in my view, are still with us. They did not succumb to future variants of the illness, so they made the correct health bet, but it has cost them in terms of their career and their livelihood. So I am asking you: do you really feel like that was worth it? Do you feel like that was the correct decision, in spite of the fact that the City did not have to surrender its policymaking ability to impose such a mandate in the future?

(01:08:55)

Yes, and I do understand your perspective. I will clarify that the best scientific evidence indicates that although the vaccine did not completely stop the spread of the virus, it does reduce the risk of transmission, and that was true even for subsequent variants

(01:09:14)

of the virus, and perhaps even more importantly, with respect to being able to prevent hospitalizations and deaths, that is absolutely well-founded and supported by evidence as well. Do you believe that the folks who are looking to return to their jobs at their previous pay and seniority should be allowed to do so at this point? I believe that that is a matter for the current administration and for the current decision makers.

(01:09:47)

All I can say is that for the decisions that were made during that extraordinarily difficult time, I do stand by them. I think unfortunately, in retrospect, that turned out to not be the right call, and I think a lot of these folks deserve to be able to return to their jobs. They were great City workers before and we need good City workers on the City payroll in the

(01:10:06)

workforce. So we just disagree on this one, but thank you for your candor. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. You are also joined by CM Encarnación, who also has a few questions.

(01:10:20)

Yes. Thank you for your time. I want to just turn your attention to the homeless crisis that we experience in New York City and the role that the hospital system plays in helping people move into housing and supportive housing. Do you see the hospital system as a key infrastructure for people with mental health issues? Bridge to Home, which is at Bellevue — what do you think your role is to ensure we get people from the streets into supportive housing and more organized settings?

(01:10:48)

Thank you for the thoughtful question. I will again start by just checking my own responsibility as a potential Board of Health member. It is limited with respect to the role of the hospital system, particularly Health and Hospitals. With that said, Council Member, this is something that I am personally very passionate about. As you have heard, I practice at Bellevue and my practice focuses on people experiencing homelessness. I have taken care of several patients who have benefited from Bridge to Home. I think it is an excellent model and I believe that what Health and Hospitals has done, particularly in serving people experiencing homelessness and then connecting people to housing, is unequivocally something that benefits their health. I am supportive of that, and I think that as we continue to elaborate interventions of that type and category, it will benefit New Yorkers.

(01:11:48)

The second question, just around — I understand you practiced at Bellevue. There is a large conversation about whether someone should be involuntarily committed or not, and the changes in the state law from two years ago. Do you think — in your role — are we doing a good enough job identifying people with serious mental health issues using the changes in the law that talk about people being able to take care of their basic needs, and ensuring that those people are getting the support they need? Because we have seen this cycle of people going in and out of specifically Bellevue and other Health and Hospitals facilities and then unfortunately doing harm to themselves or to others, even though they were well known to the 988 system.

(01:12:33)

Thank you for the question. This is a challenging issue, and I can say clinically it is something that you have to use very judiciously to ensure that people's rights are protected even as you are trying to protect their health at the same time. My perspective is that the major intervention, the solution, is actually on the other end of what we were talking about earlier — ensuring that there are pathways for transitional housing and that barriers to supportive housing and the supply of supportive housing are sufficient, making sure that people with serious mental illness have access to ACT and other intensive mobile treatment teams in the community. I think those are where the greatest focus should be.

(01:13:28)

I said I did not have one more question but I do have one more. So you would expand programs like SCOUT or other mobile-based programs to get people access to services?

(01:13:40)

The short answer is yes, but I have to acknowledge my conflict of interest. I practice on the SCOUT vans myself, and so it would be difficult for me to say anything other than

(01:13:49)

that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

(01:13:53)

Thank you, and seeing no other members who have questions, Dr. Chokshi, you are excused. Thank you. I am going to take a five-minute break.

(01:14:10)

Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

(01:17:20)

Take their seats. We will be back momentarily. Sandra...

(01:22:23)

Sorry, I did that a little too quickly. John Mangin serves as Director of the Housing Division at the Department of City Planning, where he has worked since 2014. In that role, Mangin led the development of City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, a City initiative passed in late 2024. He also helped lead Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and neighborhood plans across the five boroughs, and he has had a leadership role in many other City housing and land use initiatives over the past decade.

Mangin also served as Director of Policy and Research for the 2025 Charter Revision Commission, which proposed the most significant changes to the City land use review process since 1989. The resulting Charter changes stripped away some of the Council's land use powers. The Charter changes also enlarged powers to green-light housing projects that do not comply with its only restrictions. Before joining City government, Mangin worked on fair housing policy and led work at Fair Share Housing in New Jersey. He is also an adjunct associate professor at the Urban Planning program at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and a graduate of Yale Law School. Since we already did the affirmation, I am going to ask the candidate for your opening

(01:23:40)

statement. Thank you, Chair, and good morning to you and the members of the Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections, Standards and Ethics. I am honored to be nominated to be Chair of the New York City Board of Standards and Appeals, which plays a limited but crucial role in the City's system of land use regulation. If I am confirmed, I believe I can make that system fairer, more responsive and more transparent, while supporting affordable housing across the City.

I would bring nearly two decades of experience in housing and land use to this role, including creating and preserving affordable housing, handling some of the City's most complex zoning and land use issues, and fostering community participation in land use through direct work with neighborhood groups throughout the City. I believe this experience qualifies me for Chair, and I hope to earn your support.

Throughout my career, I have worked to support fairer outcomes by ensuring that all people have a voice in the land use decisions that affect them. My first job after law school was working with community groups across the City — Casa, Fifth Avenue Committee, Community Voices Heard, Good Old Lower East Side, University Heights Tenants and Neighbors and many, many others — to help their communities participate more effectively in land use debates. Some of those groups were pro-housing. Others were anti-development. That was not the point. The point was improving access and participation.

This carried over to my work with the landmark Mount Laurel fair housing rulings in the 1970s and 1980s. The Mount Laurel doctrine recognizes that decisions made by suburbs have consequences for a far broader circle of New Jersey residents whose voices and interests should not be excluded from those decisions. There, I worked to develop affordable rental and homeownership projects in areas of the state with great schools, access to open space and other amenities that we all deserve.

I have also carried the spirit of this work through my 12 years at the Department of City Planning. That has included neighborhood rezonings — SoHo, NoHo, Jamaica, Gowanus, Midtown South and many others — where City Planning went site by site with stakeholders to map out a new future for a neighborhood, and partnered with individual Council members and local communities on historic packages of capital improvements and other community benefits to support that new housing.

In this work, I have had the pleasure of working with faith-based organizations across the City, local civic groups, community boards and many more groups to identify those local needs and opportunities. That work at City Planning also includes citywide actions, including Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, zoning for quality and affordability, and leading City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. I believe that, among other things, City of Yes was the best, most inclusive conversation about housing that this City has ever had. It was a conversation about neighborhoods, but in the context of the broader City. That conversation laid the groundwork for the biggest move on housing in City history and the biggest ever capital investment package to support it.

When its prospects looked especially grim, the City Council picked it up and carried it across the finish line, even though we all realize that politics offered a far easier off-ramp. I am eternally grateful for that, and the City is very much in your debt. That is just one example of the Council's pro-housing work that I have seen firsthand. I have seen many of you navigate the complex dynamics and needs of your neighborhoods to make new housing that works for everyone, and I have been proud to partner with you on that work over the last decade. We all know we have a long way to go to meet the housing needs of our fellow residents, but the significant progress we have made to this point would not be possible without you.

The Council, of course, does not conduct massive citywide planning efforts like these. It addresses individual sites such as schools, houses of worship and health care facilities to make projects work to the benefit of their neighborhoods and the City at large. I want to briefly touch on an article I wrote in 2014 that I know some members of the Council have asked about. At the time I wrote it, I was working in Washington, D.C. It was the last job I had before I came to New York to work at City Planning. I was working there with Black and Latino tenants and a range of housing advocates to create homeownership and cooperative housing under the District Opportunity to Purchase Act — TOPA. While there, I wrote that article arguing that, in addition to all the work that the housing advocates and I were doing, and in addition to all those other tools in the community development toolkit, I felt we should also become forceful advocates for more housing of all types. Otherwise, it just seemed like we were fighting against the tide.

At the time, this seemed like a somewhat novel argument — that we should be in favor of more housing of all types. Today I feel like it hardly needs to be said, especially when I look at the Council's record on housing over the last decade. It seems to me like this argument has become a reality.

I will maintain my career-long commitment to openness, transparency and community voice. I fully believe that an informed and inclusive process leads to fairer outcomes. I strongly believe that a fair and open process also demands by-the-book compliance with the laws that guide decisions. This includes meeting every finding for an approval and recognizing that actions that could affect neighborhood character must go to the City Planning Commission and the City Council. I would be excited to work with applicants and neighborhood stakeholders to stand up the fast track for

(01:30:42)

affordable housing. This is an action with the potential to bring affordable housing to every part of the City. This action can play a bigger role in our collective ongoing efforts to build a fairer, more inclusive City. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I am happy to answer any questions that you might have.

(01:31:04)

Thank you for your testimony. We are just going to start with my questions, then the committee members' questions, and then we will go to other members. So first, members of the Council can weigh in on proceedings, so it is like any other person can...

(01:31:21)

But we also know that the Council would not have any decision-making powers over the matters that go before it. Correct?

(01:31:29)

No direct decision-making powers. That is correct.

(01:31:33)

So what is your view of the weight that should be given to any input from a local Council member about a project that is in their local community, in relation to whether the board should approve a

(01:31:44)

project? Thank you for that question. I would have a completely open-door policy with respect to any input from Council members on projects that affect their district. Community board review is built in to virtually every action as well. As we discussed, actions are typically very legally constrained. If you meet the findings, it gets approved. If you do not meet the findings, it does not get approved. Within that tightly cabined discretion, I would commit to...

(01:32:21)

taking into careful consideration the input of any Council members on those actions. Thank you. And what role do you believe the Council member should play in shaping land use outcomes, and where should the balance lie between the community and expert agencies? Thank you for that

(01:32:41)

question. I firmly believe that the City Council should play a central role in planning and land use decisions in New York City. That is where they were placed by the 1989 Charter, which guides decision-making to this day. I believe that local voices are paramount when it comes to projects. But also, a big theme of my career is that local voices are not the only voices that matter for land use decisions that have an effect on the broader community or even citywide. So...

(01:33:22)

What commitment can you make to this body that will assure us that you will, in fact, take the views and concerns about any given project before the board seriously, and not simply dismiss them because the Council has no formal role in the process?

(01:33:37)

Thank you for that question. You have my commitment that I would take those views into consideration, again within the legal strictures that govern actions. I would also point to my record. I think that probably the biggest theme of my career, as I mentioned in my opening statement, has been to support fair outcomes by ensuring that all people have a voice in the land use decisions that affect them, and that very much includes the paramount local voices.

(01:34:10)

So thank you for making that commitment today. Can you give us a little bit more about what that commitment entails?

(01:34:20)

Well, I would certainly commit again to having an open-door policy with any comments that local Council members had on individual applications. Beyond that, I commit to addressing that input in any decision record of the body, noting in a straightforward way the input provided by a Council member and also the board's response to that input — whether it was to take it and in some way modify the approval in response to it, or whether it was to acknowledge it and not act on it, and so

(01:34:59)

forth — but to include it in the decision record. So thank you. So you are saying the Council member's concerns will be addressed, and that it will be in the final decision. Yes, absolutely.

(01:35:15)

Okay, thank you. You have

(01:35:16)

said that community benefits agreements involve tradeoffs. Can you please expand on those tradeoffs, and in your view, when are those tradeoffs justified and when are they not? Thank you for the question.

(01:35:30)

Yes, community benefits agreements — I firmly believe that they are a very useful tool to get projects to...

(01:35:37)

Yes, I want to get that out in the open. The tradeoffs that I have referred to in the past are at times...

(01:35:48)

Well, when crafting community benefits agreements, we all have to be careful that we are enabling feasibility for that project and that the community benefits agreements are not, for instance, so costly that they prevent projects from happening. I think that we have all seen instances of this in New York City. Happily, we have also seen instances — large and small approvals — like City of Yes for Housing Opportunity at the biggest end, with $5 billion of community benefits in order to support that new housing, or $413 million in improvements to, for instance, the sewer systems in Jamaica in order to make those work. And then, through environmental review, identifying when projects have impacts — for instance, on school seats, publicly accessible open space or transportation — and then ensuring that those projects come along with the new entrance to the subway necessary for that project to make planning sense, or the additional publicly accessible open space necessary in order for that project to have a land use rationale, or the millions of dollars in payments to create new schools to support the children that will be brought to the neighborhood for those

(01:37:03)

projects. So when are they not justified? It is not a

(01:37:10)

matter... Thank you for the question. It is not a matter of justified or not justified. It is just maintaining consciousness of making sure that projects remain feasible and that the community benefits are not so costly that they prevent the project itself and those community benefits from coming to fruition. That is what I was

(01:37:29)

referring to. Can you give us an example of that, just in the

(01:37:37)

past? Thank you for the question. I think I would want to get back to you

(01:37:39)

on that. Okay, to do a little more research on that. Thank you. Sure. Community benefits agreements are also often negotiated to address local concerns about development.

(01:37:49)

What role do you believe the agreements should play in ensuring that communities share in the benefits of new development? Thank you for the question.

(01:37:59)

I think that they can play

(01:38:01)

an incredibly important role in a range of applications. We mentioned at the highest end the $5 billion to support the additional 80,000 units created and enabled by City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, the $400 million of improvements to, for instance, the sewer systems in Jamaica in order to make those work. And then, through environmental review, identifying when projects have impacts — for instance, on school seats, publicly accessible open space or transportation — and then ensuring that those projects come along with the new entrance to the subway necessary for that project to make planning sense, or the additional publicly accessible open space necessary in order for that project to have a land use rationale, or the millions of dollars in payments to create new schools to support the children that will be brought to the neighborhood for those

(01:39:05)

projects. Moving on to a separate topic — are you familiar with the public website known as the Zoning Application Portal?

(01:39:15)

It is ZAP. I am. Yes, thank you.

(01:39:16)

And we would agree that a website that is user-friendly and well-organized would make it easy to find information, including all the application materials. Yes?

(01:39:27)

Council Member, I would agree. As Chair, I would agree that it is much better than the public interface that existed before. So yes, I am familiar with the website.

(01:39:41)

So I think you know where I am going with this. We often hear from our constituents that the website lacks basic transparency and is very limited in the information it provides, which makes it difficult for the public and for us to know and understand what the board can determine when decisions are being made. Will you commit, if you become Chair, to improving the transparency and information that is available so the website functions more like the

(01:40:10)

portal? Thank you, Chair. You sort of scooped me here — I wanted the opportunity to announce that something like that is high up on the list of things that I would like to do if confirmed. I think that reaches back to some of my earliest work experience right after law school, where we were trying to create publicly accessible, legible, more accessible tools so that people could understand what is going on in order to participate if and when they wanted to — all the way up through my experience where I have observed and participated in these efforts that I think could be beneficial at the board as well.

(01:40:53)

Excellent. So would you then commit to posting all application materials, environmental review documents and public submissions online?

(01:41:02)

Yes, Chair, I would commit to that.

(01:41:05)

Thank you. And then, since you are committing to it, but if somehow it does not happen, do you believe the Council has legal

(01:41:15)

authority to require the board to do that? Thank you for the question. I am not totally sure — I do not want to be answering legal questions that implicate Charter issues on the fly. I commit to doing it, and I would have to get back to you on any of the legal

(01:41:31)

questions. Sure, let us hope we do not have to come down to that. But thank you for the commitment. With your understanding that you cannot please everyone, would you agree it is fair — and it is not fair to disregard the concerns of the affected communities as they perceive the impacts of new development coming into their neighborhood, particularly for variances, because that would mean that development would not be complying with the existing zoning rules?

(01:41:58)

Thank you, Chair. Yes, I believe local voices are paramount when it comes to land use decisions. That does not mean that they are always decisive, but I do hold them as paramount.

(01:42:11)

Can you describe your philosophy for giving meaningful consideration to local concerns while balancing the legal standards governing variances, special permits and appeals the board has the power to grant? Thank you.

(01:42:25)

Chair, throughout my career I have been happy to meet and discuss individual applications or broader policy issues with anybody who would like to meet and discuss those issues, and I would carry that through if I am confirmed. As we have discussed, actions are very legally constrained. Within that, though, I commit to acknowledging, describing and responding to any feedback that comes from a member of the public all the way up to members of the City Council.

(01:43:04)

And what metrics would you use to determine whether the board is successfully engaging with communities? Thank you for the

(01:43:13)

I am not sure what metrics would be appropriate. I do think that, as we discussed, we can make the public interface more accessible, more legible than it is today. We cannot force people to interact with it, but I believe first off that if people do want to interact with it as part of an individual application, that should be as easy as possible. As I was discussing with CM Epstein earlier as well, wanting to train community groups about what the process does, how it works and how to participate, so that before an individual application comes around that might be controversial or might get a lot of attention, that system is in place for those groups or those individuals to participate. Again, that goes back to some of my earliest experience in land use in New York City, and I think it carries through nicely to this role.

(01:44:16)

Will you support publishing annual reports showing how the community board recommendations compared to the final

(01:44:23)

decisions? Thank you for that question, Chair. I certainly can look into it. In the housing division at City Planning, my team does a fair amount of annual reporting requirements, and we do want to balance those types of reporting requirements with the pipeline of existing work. It sounds like something to explore, but I do not think I can commit to it at this time.

(01:44:54)

And how will you ensure that conditions imposed on variances and special permits are actually monitored and enforced after their

(01:45:02)

approval? Thank you, Chair. Those approvals, I believe, are recorded against the property so that they are available for all to understand and to be enforced going forward. As far as the existing system of enforcement, I have some learning to do on how that exactly works over time, but obviously enforcement is crucial to any kind of decision making process.

(01:45:30)

Thank you. Now I would like to pass it off to Deputy Speaker Williams. Hi, John. Thank you, Speaker. Thank you so much for all of your work on the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan. I really appreciate it. I worked really closely with the former chair because I do believe every district needs to play a role in producing housing. I just want to say that my concern is really not on the macro level of housing supply, but really how we understand neighborhood level issues, whether it be gentrification or displacement, particularly in historically Black homeowner communities like Southeast Queens.

A lot of my questions... I know when we met you kind of explained a lot of the other things in your writing, so most of our questions will actually focus on your written responses to the Council. The first thing I did want to say is that in terms of your former role as Director of Policy Research with the 2025 Charter Revision Commission, it is fair to say that you were at least involved in the concepts of the findings and requirements for the new fast track zoning, and I would say quite a few other things that I think us in the Council feel were a little hostile to us and how we see our powers. Is that

(01:46:59)

a correct statement, that you were a part of that? I just want to make sure we are on the same page. Yes, thank you for the question, Deputy Speaker. I was the Policy Director for the 2025 Charter Revision Commission. That largely involved trying to examine and shape the sort of fire hose of proposals that were coming from members of the public, from Charter Revision Commissioners and others.

(01:47:26)

Yes. Okay. In your opening statement, thank you, you did note that the Council was instrumental in helping to build housing. But for me, and I know quite a few of my other colleagues that were here last year during the Charter Review Commission felt like our commitment to building housing was not really appreciated or received, because many of the proposals that we had tried to get amended in the final questions were not actually taken up. So how do you sort of reconcile your opening statement that the Council is so instrumental and important in housing, but then also on the back end, sort of being a part of an effort to

(01:48:19)

strip away Council powers as it pertains to land use matters? Thank you for the question, Deputy Speaker. The Council has and should have a central role in land use decisions and in planning decisions in the City, and they of course still do. If I could provide some perspective on what the Charter Commissioners were trying to do, in my view, and what the voters approved: it was essentially to maintain the Council's role

(01:48:51)

as it has existed since 1989, with a few relatively minor adjustments to address types of applications or types of housing that the prior system was demonstrably bad at, given three or four decades of experience with it. That included relatively modest increases in zoning. One of the things that I did personally do on the Charter Revision Commission was look at the last 10 years of rezonings, and there were zero rezonings for 30% or less increase in housing.

As we all know, many communities get concerned when there are big changes to zoning, and these are types of changes that would not raise those same issues with communities while also enabling growth and change over time. So I think the Commissioners saw that as an issue: you cannot do small changes, you have to do big things that create anxieties. Parts of the City saw virtually zero affordable housing production over the last couple of decades, so the prior system was not working for that. So while maintaining the Council's role in the prior system as it has existed since 1989, making relatively minor adjustments to enable certain types of affordable housing or more modest actions that had not been possible since then. In my view, I believe that the Council absolutely retains its central role in housing and planning and land use in the City, with a couple of minor adjustments in order to make projects happen that could not happen under the previous

(01:50:39)

system. Thank you. I did appreciate some of your answers where you mentioned some of the proposals you had suggested to the Commission that were not actually achieved, to address some of the issues that you referenced, and also the historical context that you provided around term limits. It is true that we kind of come and go after eight years with term limits, so it is a different type of crop of members. I did appreciate your thoughtful answers there.

So the next questions are really about your responses. The City's own displacement methodology treats displacement as the interaction of vulnerability, housing conditions and market pressure. In your written responses, you say that gentrification and displacement in many lower income communities of color had been driven by land use decisions in wealthier neighborhoods, and you describe housing shortages in exclusionary areas as a root cause. Are you saying that restricted supply in affluent neighborhoods is the primary cause of gentrification in New York City, one significant cause among several, or simply one contributor to broader housing market pressures? Thank you

(01:51:55)

for the question, Deputy Speaker. I think that among members of the Council, among the administrations, among many of the groups that work on housing in New York City, there is just a greater understanding and acknowledgment that the housing shortage — this 1.4% vacancy rate that we are dealing with — is what drives, on a fundamental level, high housing costs, gentrification and displacement pressures, overcrowding, homelessness, segregation and everything else. If you look at individual parts of the City that are experiencing significant gentrification and displacement pressures, like parts of Central Brooklyn or East Brooklyn, or Northern Manhattan or the South Bronx, I do think those are problems that are created by decisions that were made elsewhere, by decisions not to build in parts of the City, contributing to that housing shortage, which thereby contributes to the gentrification and displacement pressures that the neighborhoods that I

(01:53:04)

mentioned experience. Do you have any empirical evidence of that? I know we had a very lengthy conversation, but when I hear words like "driven by" or "root cause," I think, well, what empirical evidence do we have that says it is only housing scarcity that is creating these issues? Do you have any empirical evidence or things that you can direct me to, to further understand that theory and the stance you have?

(01:53:30)

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. It is not the only cause, to be sure, but it is the fundamental root cause that we see. Of course we are also talking about lots of individual stories. The displacement risk index that you mentioned notes that the biggest factor in displacement, the biggest vulnerability factor, is a family who might be a paycheck or two away from not being able to pay the rent. When they experience a shock — maybe there is a layoff or a health event or something like that and the income drops — those are the families that then get hit the hardest by the housing shortage. So it is not the only cause. I would think of it as the root cause, and I would say that there is a growing body of research over the last 25 years or so that supports that. There is increasingly good research on a smaller scale level that makes that more real for folks who cannot quite see the macro

(01:54:43)

picture. I know a lot of the studies that I saw speak to that, but then there are a ton of other studies that have so many other causal claims for displacement and gentrification. I just want to know if you were pulling from specific studies. New York City specific research has found that upzoning activity was positively and significantly associated with the odds of a census tract becoming whiter, suggesting that neighborhood upzoning can accelerate gentrification pressure in the short term. Are you familiar with that

(01:55:17)

research? I am not. Thank you for the question. I am not sure which particular study you are referring to, but I am happy to look at it.

(01:55:25)

It is by Jenna Davis: "How Upzones Impact Neighborhood Demographic Change." It is in the Land Use Policy academic journal. So given the strength of your statements about the causes of gentrification, should not evidence pointing in the opposite, neighborhood level direction be a part of your analysis?

(01:55:48)

Absolutely. When you mentioned the author of that piece, I have seen that a couple of years back. It is a few years old. I would say this is one of the reasons why at City Planning we have always advocated for broad based approaches to addressing the housing shortage that drives gentrification, and neighborhood studies that pay attention to parts of the City that have not been pulling their fair share in terms of housing production — like the SoHo/NoHo neighborhood rezoning, for instance. If we are taking a broad based approach to creating housing and if we are paying special attention to some of the wealthier, whiter parts of the City that have not contributed to housing production, then we can address some of those issues that are raised by that study. I fully understand, sympathize and agree with communities — maybe lower income communities of color — who say, "Why us?" That is one of the big reasons why we focused on fair housing opportunity that asks

(01:57:03)

all neighborhoods to contribute. Okay, just a few more questions specifically around homeowners. In your responses, you repeatedly contrast lower income communities of color with wealthier neighborhoods that use political power to restrict housing. But that binary does not describe large parts of Southeast Queens, as you and I discussed: largely Black and Brown homeowners that are working and middle class. Would you characterize the Southeast Queens community as the kind of wealthy, exclusionary community your theory is directed at? No, I would not, Deputy Speaker, and

(01:57:50)

I am a huge supporter of homeownership in general. I recognize the opportunities that it creates for stability, for wealth creation across generations, and I am in no way opposed to homeownership.

(01:58:09)

My last job before I came to City Planning was to create limited equity co-ops in partnership with Black and Latino tenant associations so that they could access the benefits of homeownership. The fair housing opportunity work personally eliminated the obstacles in the zoning to affordable homeownership projects. It is just part of the broader sweep of the fair housing work that I have engaged in over the course of my career. Housing choice is not just about neighborhoods. It is also a choice about what type of housing you want to live in. For some families it is going to be an apartment in a central location. For others it is going to be a one or two family home farther out in the City. Our housing policies should support that full range of choices.

I appreciate that. All of that said, what framework do you think should apply when residents of historically Black working and middle class homeowner communities raise concerns about development? As you noted in your response and as you noted today, you were a part of the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan. We were not necessarily on the ground fielding the complaints, but it was very difficult. The community board — both community boards actually — voted it down, and I still worked with the previous administration to push that through despite a lot of local political challenges. I think for me I try to strike a balance in understanding what those concerns are. I just wanted to know your thoughts on what type of framework should be considered for these communities that, on the face of it, might feel like you are talking about them, but as you so eloquently stated, you are not. So what framework would you apply to those communities who do have some concerns about development in

(02:00:13)

their communities? Thank you for the question. I have been to Community Board 12 many times and I understand those concerns. They absolutely have to be considered, have to be listened to and have to be taken into account. I think that the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan struck that balance in an extremely effective way, including higher densities in parts of the neighborhood that can take some of the pressure off of some of the lower density parts of the neighborhood. I think that using the Jamaica Plan to leverage hundreds of millions of dollars for improvements to the stormwater and sewer infrastructure was a fantastic win as well. When considering that, the administration did not want to do it. I just want to add that they did not want to do it. It was a fight. It was a legendary, legendary fight.

Over the course of my time at City Planning, I have advocated for policies that do not put a target on those low density neighborhoods, but rather take a broader perspective, acknowledging that if we all contribute, we can address the housing shortage and the policy problems that emerge from the housing shortage without having significant impacts on sensitive areas and neighborhood character in sensitive areas like one and two family districts in Southeast

(02:01:43)

Queens. Okay, I will just ask a few more questions as all my colleagues have questions. So for generations, Black families were excluded from neighborhoods and conventional mortgage credit through redlining, steering, discriminatory lending and other barriers. Southeast Queens became one of the places where Black families built homeownership and intergenerational wealth despite those barriers. Do you recognize a meaningful distinction between affluent communities using zoning to keep people out and historically excluded Black homeowners using the democratic process to protect their ability to stay? Absolutely. I have taught land use law for maybe nine years now, and the second class every year we read Richard Rothstein's "The Color of Law," Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Case for Reparations" and the chapter of Kenneth Jackson's "Crabgrass Frontier" that addresses exactly those issues that you are discussing. It is something that I feel I understand, that I try to convey to others. It is always one of the most engaged classes that I have with my students, and so I absolutely understand that distinction. Thank you. I will

(02:03:04)

Just come back in the second round, then. I would like to pass it on to CM... Thank you, Chair, and good to see you again. Thank you for coming to my district yesterday and for having a meaningful, meaningful conversation. I am a straightforward person. I would like to begin with some of your past writings because I believe they provide important insight into your views on housing and land use matters, as the Council considers your nomination. I want to better understand who the real John Mangin is and what philosophy, perspective and judgment you would bring to the Board of Standards and Appeals, should you be confirmed. In 2014, a writing by you titled "The New Exclusionary Zoning" argued that the housing advocacy community should move away from what you described as quote reflexively anti-development sentiments and embrace increased housing development quote of all types. Do you still stand by that position today and, looking back, how has your thinking evolved regarding the relationship between new development, affordability and

(02:04:38)

displacement? Thank you for the question, Council Member. As I mentioned in my opening statement, first off I should say that absolutely we need to address the housing shortage. We need to build more housing of all types in order to address that range of policy problems that people in neighborhoods like yours experience, whether it is high housing costs, gentrification and displacement pressure, homelessness, overcrowding, segregation, a housing market where tenants have no power. All of those things emerged from the housing shortage. So I absolutely still believe that we need to build housing of all types in order to address that range of problems for real New Yorkers.

(02:05:21)

And what role do you believe local communities should have in shaping what gets built in their neighborhoods, and how would that view inform your decision making?

(02:05:38)

Thank you for the question. Local voices are paramount in the land use process. They are not the only voices, but I think they are paramount. When we went on the walking tour yesterday and saw housing that was created by East Brooklyn Congregations and others, and some of the Gateway project, it is just an amazing testament to what local communities can do and what they can build in collaboration with citywide officials.

Also in mind, though, is that the problems that communities like yours face cannot be solved entirely by that community itself. It also needs action on a more citywide level. So just making sure that your community has a voice in the full range of decisions that have affected it over the decades. Local voices are paramount. They are not the only voices that matter, and so we want to ensure that all affected voices are included.

(02:06:55)

Thank you for that response. In the same article, you characterize downzoning, community benefit agreements, approval processes, rent control and even a focus on affordable housing over other forms of development as part

(02:07:15)

of what you call a "kludgy" approach by the housing advocacy community. When I looked up the definition of "kludgy," it describes something awkward, poorly designed, clumsy or patched together. That is a broad collection of policies and protections that tenants, housing advocates, communities and elected officials have relied upon. What did you believe the housing advocacy community was getting wrong, and which of these views do you still hold today?

(02:08:05)

Thanks for the question. I believe that all of those things you mentioned are useful tools, some of them absolutely essential — things like community benefits agreements, rent stabilization, absolutely essential. My only point there was that we also need to be doing this other thing along with those things, which is ensuring that we are building enough housing to address increasing housing shortages. The paper was not about New York City. It was about cities across the country, an increasing number of which were experiencing housing shortages that drive this range of policy issues that we deal with every day. So while all those things you mentioned — community benefits agreements, rent stabilization, et cetera — are extremely important and have their uses, my argument was that the housing advocacy community also has to advocate for more housing of all types to address the housing shortage.

You also argued for housing development of all types. What does housing development of all types mean to you today in a low-income community facing displacement pressures? What role should market rate or luxury development play, and how do you ensure that the people already living there actually benefit?

That is a great question. When I say housing of all types, I generally mean all types: multifamily affordable at a range of incomes, one and two family homes that can be appropriate in different parts of the City, and market rate housing, also incredibly important to accommodate some of that demand, which is ultimately what puts pressure on lower income neighborhoods across the City. When people with money go looking for housing in a city that does not have enough of it, they are going to start to put pressure on central Brooklyn, northern Manhattan, the South Bronx and parts of Queens. So all types means all types. New Yorkers have an extremely diverse range of needs and wants, and ideally we can create a housing policy that accommodates all of

(02:10:30)

them. I just want to continue to walk you through some of your past writings and to see how they conflict with some of the things that you are now subscribing to today. When it comes to community participation, in that same article, while discussing public participation and open government requirements, you asked readers to imagine a Tea Party activist being present during high-level federal budget negotiations, using that analogy to discuss NIMBY participation at planning board meetings or community board meetings. What exactly were you trying to communicate with that comparison, and do you still stand by that today?

(02:11:19)

Thank you for the question, Council Member. Going back to the earliest days of my career, I am a huge supporter of community participation in planning decisions. I think my record demonstrates that. That part of the article — did you realize, Council Member, that some other jurisdictions have laws that would outlaw conversations between individual Council members and applicants in the land use process? That means you would not be able to talk to them at all. You would not be able to talk to a developer during the process. That would make it very difficult for individual Council members to hammer out those types of community benefits agreements that we have been talking about, that are so important to making communities understand the value of individual projects.

So in that part I was just saying that we should not have laws such as exist in some other jurisdictions that outlaw Council members talking to applicants. That is a routine thing that happens today in New York on the way towards meaningful community benefits agreements. The idea is you would not be able to have any private discussions without extreme proponents or extreme opponents in the room with you. That would make it really hard to hammer out those negotiations. So I was just advocating for a process much like exists in New York City where you can have those conversations and negotiate benefits for the community. I was not talking about New York in that particular passage.

(02:13:03)

Let us imagine for a moment that residents from the 42nd Council District oppose a development because of concerns about displacement, infrastructure, lack of parking, affordability or even changes to the neighborhood's character. How would you determine whether those residents are legitimately protecting their community or simply standing in the way of development, and where do you draw the line?

(02:13:36)

Thank you, Council Member. Again, local voices are absolutely paramount. I never think of it in terms of whether this input is legitimate or not legitimate. It is all input, and when it comes from a local community it deserves a central place in the consideration of those actions.

(02:13:57)

In your responses to the Council, you say neighborhood input should be listened to quote most closely and carefully, while also saying neighborhood voices should not be unilaterally decisive. Help me reconcile that with your earlier writings about anti-development activists and public processes that can delay housing. When you say a community should be heard, what does that actually mean in practice?

(02:14:37)

Thank you, Council Member. I truly believe that the voices of the community are central to the process, and I do not think that has always been the case in New York City. As I outlined in my responses to Council questions, I think some of the neighborhoods that we think of as being under extreme pressure in New York City — central Brooklyn, east Brooklyn, northern Manhattan, the South Bronx, parts of Queens — those are a result of decisions that were made elsewhere.

My division made a map. We looked at all the different types of protective land use actions that were taken in New York City since the 1960s — downzoning, restrictive special districts, limited height districts or things like that. When we created that map you could see the neighborhoods that were under pressure today. They were the blank spaces on the map. Those were the areas that were not protected, and to me that illustrated in stark graphic terms the way decisions made in other parts of the City affected those blank spaces on the map.

So if you go back to the paper, if you go back to the big citywide actions like City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, it is all a piece of the same theme, the same argument that everybody who is affected by a land use decision should have a voice in the process.

(02:16:15)

I have just a couple more questions and then I will come back in the second round. Give me an example of circumstances where community opposition would cause you to reject or materially change an application that otherwise advances the City's housing goals.

(02:16:38)

Thank you for the question, Council Member. One thing I like about the Board of Standards and Appeals is that they are all site-specific applications. They are a particular project with a particular owner. That contrasts with what the City Planning Commission is typically doing, which is a

(02:16:55)

rezoning. A rezoning allows what it allows. The City Planning Commission and Council often are limited in how they can respond to community comments. You cannot customize it in response to community comments. If it is a site-specific, owner-specific approval, that provides more latitude — again within the legal constraints — to accommodate local input, community input, and that is something that I would absolutely look forward to doing.

(02:17:38)

I guess I will just ask this question again about community benefits agreements. Where do you currently stand on community benefits agreements, and do you believe that they are an important tool for communities negotiating major development projects, or do you still view them as something that can impede production? I know that question was kind of addressed earlier, but I want to again get you on the record as to where you stand now, comparing it to your past writings.

(02:18:16)

Thank you for that question. Then as now, I think they are a tool and sometimes an extremely useful and wonderful tool, in order to underscore that some of these actions — like some of the neighborhood rezoning actions where there is a negotiated package of capital improvements — can be win-win. It is not the City versus a neighborhood. It is the City working with neighborhoods in order to address citywide goals while at the same time providing the investments that communities need to thrive into the future.

(02:18:52)

And at what point does a community's demand for benefits become unreasonable or become an impediment to development?

(02:19:09)

It is not so much a matter of reasonable or unreasonable as it is just trying to keep an eye on feasibility. I can think of some projects over the years where the administration or Council negotiated for more affordable housing or payment for this or that, that just have not come to fruition. Just trying to make sure that we are not blocking the underlying housing and the benefits that are supposed to come along with it. Community benefits agreements that do not quite work — as a policymaker, I feel like that is guidance that I have to give, whether it is to my superiors at City Planning, in community board meetings or to the Council. Just have to keep an eye on that fundamental question of feasibility.

And who should make that determination — the developer, the City, or the people who actually live there?

Thank you for the question. It emerges from a political process. I suppose it is just an argument that the actors in that political process — the folks who have the leverage, whether it is the Mayor, whether it is the City Council or whoever — should just keep that in mind when hammering out these community benefits agreements. Just trying to make sure that we are creating something that works for everybody.

(02:20:44)

Okay, and my last question, and I will come back in the second round. I know you had mentioned in your writings that you compared homeowners to cartels. In the first sentence of your article "The New Exclusionary Zoning," you referred to homeowners as cartels. Is that correct?

Thank you for the question. I am a huge supporter of homeownership, just want to answer that question. Did you refer to homeowners as cartels? That is a term of art from the literature that is not mine. It is a descriptive term from fair housing literature. Do you agree, based on the context in which you wrote that article, that you characterized homeowners as cartels? And do you characterize homeowners who oppose density as cartels? Is that correct?

(02:21:40)

No, certainly not all homeowners are part of homeowner cartels. "Homeowner cartels" is a term of art from the fair housing literature that does not imply any particular orientation towards policy questions. It is just a term from the literature that I did not coin.

(02:22:02)

Okay. And then I just want to note for the record that homeowners who participate in the same public process that is available to all — this is a process that communities are involved in and they are able to engage in — am I correct that this is the land use review process? Yes.

(02:22:25)

Yes, absolutely. Yet you described that participation as cartel behavior. Am I

(02:22:35)

correct? I am sorry, I do not recall the passage they are referring to. Is it fair to say that you disagree with that position because you support allowing greater density in areas currently zoned for single family homes?

(02:22:54)

I am sorry, I have lost the thread, Council Member. I will come back around to a lot of those questions. I just

(02:23:02)

wanted to get clarification as to the term you used — "cartels" — and why that term was used to describe homeowners. Regular, normal folks would take that offensively, especially when they are advocating for their community and they want to make sure that the character of their community is not changing and that the folks who invested in their community have their views respected. But thank you for indulging me and allowing me to get my questions through. I will come back in the second round.

(02:23:43)

Thank you. Great, thank you. I will pass it on to CM Krishnan. Thank you, Chair.

(02:23:54)

Good afternoon. It is good to see you. I appreciate it. Our good conversation and get-together a few weeks ago to talk about the issues — and it is interesting, as we saw from our conversation, we sort of were on parallel tracks. While you were a lawyer in City Planning doing a lot of impressive work over the years, I was a lawyer representing communities in North Brooklyn and Western Queens hit hardest by displacement. My first case out of law school was the Broadway Triangle fair housing litigation that lasted 10 years. You wrote about that in your law review article. I read your law review articles, you read mine. We traded thoughts, and it is interesting to see our perspectives during that time.

I think, as we saw from our conversation, we both saw from our work in different spheres how urgent the housing crisis is today, how much we need to build and build quickly and build faster. One of the things that I wanted to do — and I will take a little bit of time to get there, but I do have a couple of questions — before going to those questions, just to zoom out for a second, apart from your nomination but the larger context.

I think you and I have both seen over the years where we are today. We are in this urgent housing crisis, and at least what I have seen from my work and looking now at the public discourse around housing — which, of course, I pay attention to in some spare time — it seems to me like in the public discussion we have come to a sort of binary point in how we talk about housing. The views are put into two different boxes. One is being against development, anti-development, which I do not subscribe to on average. Another one is that because we are in such an urgent crisis we have to build much more, we have to build faster, which is absolutely true. But there are sometimes strands in the public discourse about how to do so where we have to limit or reduce community engagement because that can slow the process down, and how we have to focus really exclusively on the number of units we build and supply as the way out of the crisis.

I believe absolutely we have to build more and we have to build quickly and cut out all of that red tape where we can. But my own experience has shown me that things are more nuanced about how we address the housing crisis. Community voices, like in Broadway Triangle, can strengthen development and make sure they comply with the fair housing laws. There is a missing perspective that from my work I think is different from the binary that I have seen in public discussion today, which is that we need to focus more on displacement as we think about the housing crisis. As we build more and build new, we have to make sure we keep people in their homes and keep people in the communities they have lived in for generations. I spent far too much time in tenants' kitchens and in their lobbies with buildings crumbling around them because landlords are destroying them to get them out of their homes, and especially that is the case in Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick.

To me, it seems like we have to build quickly and build fast, but also do so from a lens of displacement. When we think about it from a displacement standpoint, I think there are two ways in which community voices can combat displacement. One is because we can make sure that as we develop and rebuild, the housing is affordable to the neighborhoods that it is in. Two, I think it helps us to think about housing in a more holistic way where we are thinking about building, but also about the services that should accompany that new housing build. Take Jackson Heights, for example — we are very dense, but our schools have been overcrowded for a very long time. We have the least amount of green space in all of New York City. Many communities have a major child care need too.

So when we think about housing, we think about how do we build it, but also the services that support that housing: more schools, more open space and green space, better transit infrastructure. There is so much community infrastructure that I think should be folded into a more holistic and comprehensive view of how we think about building housing. I think that perspective, at least for me, has been missing from a lot of the public dialogue, and it comes from my own work. I suspect you also agree with that from what you have seen in your work over the years.

So my first question is, given that this has been exacerbated over time — and I addressed all of this in the op-ed that I wrote very recently that I think you read too — given where the housing crisis is, I think our views have been shaped by all that has been happening over time and we have to address all of these things together. I am curious, in how you see your potential role as the head of leading the agency, how do you think — or even outside of that role, in general — how you see the importance of holistic planning today, where we think about housing and also all the services that support the housing? How do you think about housing and community infrastructure together as we develop, and as a solution to the housing crisis?

(02:29:36)

Crisis. Thank you very much for those questions.

(02:29:41)

I want to wholeheartedly

(02:29:42)

agree that I see that false binary out there as well, that pits supply folks against tenant protection folks. I remember meeting with Dina Levy for beers at China Shell almost 10 years ago, talking about how these two things go together.

(02:30:03)

Exactly. I talked about that too. You know, if you heard Dina coming from the tenant protection side, me coming from more of the supply side, and just seeing: why are people setting these up in opposition when they are so obviously complementary? Exactly right.

(02:30:20)

That of course you need to have specific measures to prevent displacement — this urgent issue that is happening today — while at the same time you work to address those longer-term underlying conditions. I mean, a colleague of mine who I think has also been a colleague of the Council Member at Urban Justice Center had a tweet that one time hit me like a lightning bolt, which was: there are no tenants' rights at 1.4% vacancy. Now that is an exaggeration, of course. There are tenants' rights. We have to fight for them as hard as we can regardless of what the broader situation is. But it just makes it so much harder to do the type of work that you were doing under conditions of extreme housing shortage as well. So there is that false

(02:31:12)

binary. And then you asked about housing plus a broader view of

(02:31:18)

what it takes in a community to make that housing appropriate from a land use perspective. You saw one pole — Greenpoint, Williamsburg. You saw a neighborhood where it was a strategy of let us put as much housing as we can in one place, and that has pretty significant consequences for a neighborhood. It has costs for individual folks who had been there before. It was not just an underutilized manufacturing zone. It was also a place where people lived. I have seen just tremendous evolution on that front and that set of concerns over the last 10 years, where we have moved from just putting a ton of new housing in one part of the city to a broader approach that looks to create a lot of housing, yes, but over a much broader geography, so that we can respect things like neighborhood character that we hear from neighborhoods about — concerns about rapid change — so that we can monitor and ensure that the infrastructure in those places is ready for additional housing.

So that, you know, if infrastructure needs to be augmented, if neighborhoods need investment, that can come along with those actions as well. I see City of Yes as like the opposite pole: instead of a ton of housing in one place, a little bit of housing everywhere, with the infrastructure improvements in order to support that over time. You worked at a time and in a place that definitely looms really large in policymakers' minds in New York City, and I think that we have learned from that.

(02:33:08)

I appreciate your perspective on that. I also appreciate you flagging that it is a false binary, and I think that is a great way to put it, because I do feel that we as a City have to break out of that false binary. I am so glad we are talking much more about housing now. I think you and I and many others in the housing world have been calling attention to these issues for so long, but now we have reached the point where everyone agrees we have to address it. I think that sometimes the conversation — not only in the City but really nationally — while well-intentioned, can lead us towards this false binary, and I do not think that we can subscribe to that. It is more complex and nuanced, and I think that makes for better development to ultimately solve the crisis. So I appreciate your view there and you sharing that perspective.

So another question I have is: how do you think about your role as you lead the agency? There is a class of decisions that will come to you — one example being variances that will come in front of you that sort of sidestep the rezoning process, which can be lengthy. I understand the sentiment that we have to make our processes more efficient and cut out a lot of the bureaucracy. But there is a lot of value in those processes that we have to preserve as well for better development. If you have things that come in front of you — be it a variance decision that does not go through those standard

(02:34:36)

planning processes — how do you think about incorporating this view that we share about planning holistically, about not getting caught in the false binary? How do you think about that in your role as Chair when you have decisions that come in front of you? It could be a straightforward variance application, but I do believe there are ways in there to think more creatively about how we bring in these larger values that we share. I am just wondering if you have given thought to how you could do more of that, since it is a separate process from what normally happens in rezoning and the land use processes.

(02:35:13)

Thank you for that question. Yes, it does represent a dramatic shift away from big citywide planning initiatives towards a humbler but still crucial role of making individual projects work — yes, for the landowner, but also for the neighborhood and also in line with our values as a City. While it has received much less attention, I think one of the true joys of my time at City Planning has been, you know, being the person that you can call from City Hall. It includes calls from individual homeowners in low-density neighborhoods in parts of New York. I am somebody you can call, and I will do my best to talk to the folks I need to talk to in order to answer your question or try to address that problem.

(02:36:12)

I see it as a wonderful opportunity to be the person who can actually provide assistance, can provide help directly in those instances, rather than trying to convince other people to go along with it. Yes, I bring my values to the table as Chair.

(02:36:32)

In many applications, those will not necessarily come to bear — again, it is a very legally constrained entity. When others do, I will do my best to incorporate input from the community, from Council Members and others, in order to reach a resolution that works for the applicant and for the community at large.

(02:36:57)

And you do see your role as embodying the values that we are talking about today, which you subscribe to as well — combating displacement, engaging communities, planning holistically. You do see those values as important, having a central role in your leadership. In other words — and I do not think it should be this way — there is sometimes a view, and I think it has not always been this way in the past, where the agency is seen as a sort of separate entity altogether from the larger vision we have around housing. It would be a marked positive shift forward to have leadership that also sees it as not just an entity that stamps variances and reviews non-zoning or extra applications, but that leads from a point of values: combating displacement, engaging communities, planning holistically. Do you see yourself bringing those values into the leadership of the agency?

(02:38:03)

Thank you for the question. Yes, I do. You see it less in the context of individual applications and more in terms of agenda setting. As I mentioned, I am very excited about the potential for the fast track to create the types of projects that are almost universally acknowledged to be good — publicly sponsored affordable housing projects in parts of the City that have not seen as many in recent decades. The agency has the ability now to save those projects a lot of time and a lot of money that can be used to create more housing, or to lower costs or otherwise tailor projects for their communities. I think there is a lot of potential there.

(02:38:50)

Thank you for your answers, and thank you, Chair.

(02:38:54)

Thank you. Now I am going to pass it on to Minority Leader Carr. Thank you, Chair. Thank

(02:39:00)

you, Mr. Mangin, for being here today. I want to begin by referring to something that came up in a recent back and forth here at the hearing. You talked about in your response to questions that community voices are paramount in these discussions about land use. Then, referring to questions you had back and forth with CM Banks, you referenced the Tea Party as a radical group. Some of us represent districts and neighborhoods chock full of folks with that kind of politics. So my question is: how do you square those two things that you said in your testimony — that local voices are paramount, but certain people's politics are radical? Do people only have a paramount voice when they conform to John Mangin's view of what mainstream politics are?

(02:39:53)

Thank you, Leader Carr. I firmly believe that anybody affected by a land use decision should have a voice in the process. I believe that local voices are paramount in that process. I did not refer to the Tea Party as a radical group. That was, I think, in the questions that I got from counsel, referencing the Tea Party. I just meant groups that are intensely engaged in issues at the time. In 2014, they were an example of groups that were passionately and intensely involved in a given set of issues. That is all it was meant to reflect — the passion and intensity — without casting any particular aspersion on it. So the politics or partisan identification that a community is thought to have, actual or perceived, has no bearing in your view on a decision of the agency or any land use decisions?

(02:40:51)

Thank you for the question. Absolutely, I agree with that. It has no bearing whatsoever. Okay, thank you. On community benefit agreements — I know we have talked about it a lot at this hearing. In one of the articles that was referenced, "The New Exclusionary Zoning," you put forward this idea that there are efforts to prevent particular developments that often go hand in hand with a variety of proposals, and then you go on to include the exact action of community benefits agreements to any development that does occur. This seems to suggest that you see the pursuit of community benefits agreements not as a genuine goal of stakeholders, but rather as an attempt to create a poison pill for a particular development. Can you expand upon that and what you meant by that?

(02:41:30)

Oh, thank you for the question. I actually do not think that I meant it in the way that you suggested. I would never question the earnestness of Council Members or members of the community trying to negotiate a broader set of community benefits around a particular development. That was not my intention.

(02:41:53)

Okay, because community benefits have been particularly important things for the Council to negotiate on behalf of communities, including the addition of more affordable housing units in some projects. You would agree that on the whole they have been a positive thing?

(02:42:06)

I mean, absolutely. As I say in the paper, they have their uses. I have personally been involved in some of the negotiations around City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, around individual neighborhood rezonings, even around individual projects that require mitigations under environmental review. I put that in the same bucket as well, and I think it is good and basic planning. So when a Council Member comes to you with a matter that comes before the agency for a project to be finessed in some detail that could be beneficial to a neighbor who would be getting an impact that did not exist before, those are the sorts of things that you think should be taken into consideration when the agency makes its determination. Yeah, thank you.

(02:42:50)

Leader, within again the legal boundaries that are considered. Yes. You were talking about environmental review just a second ago. There was an environmental review that was done as part of City of Yes, and there was a determination that there would be no significant negative impacts, despite the fact that many neighborhoods already lack basic water and sewage and utility

(02:43:15)

Infrastructure, little access to public transportation, there are overcrowded schools, there is traffic, there is pollution, all sorts of other things — flooding. Do you agree with the finding of the done into those under those zoning applications, thank you, for City of Yes for Housing Opportunity? Yes.

(02:43:33)

It identified a range of impacts that...

(02:43:38)

And yet we were told that we were asked to certify that there was no negative declaration when we had those — I mean...

(02:43:46)

Identifying impacts on a project does not definitively mean it cannot be approved. I would point back to the negotiations that secured $5 billion of capital investment and other community benefits in conjunction with the new housing. Those are all benefits that the administration of the day resisted. The Council drove a hard bargain again.

(02:44:09)

I am grateful for that, and to your credit, the City is in your debt. You were being very modest about the scope of the changes — the Charter revisions that were accomplished by the last Charter Revision Commission. There has been a recent analysis that it takes about 3.4 years for a single new residential building in the City, on average more than four I think in Manhattan. Given that the Council's role, which has been removed, was at most 50 days, why was there not more focus in the Charter Revision Commission on the rest of the process, which clearly takes much longer, rather than on the Council's role, which is a very small space in time when you consider the entire...

(02:44:54)

...development. Thank you for that question. I would say the Charter efforts were part of a range of similar efforts to address those issues. I can say at City Planning, for instance, that we have been engaged in a pretty deep effort to try to streamline pre-certification processes for certain applications, because as you point out it is not just the Council, it is not just environmental review — these are all parts of a single process, all of which should be examined in order to make sure that they are serving the policy goals that we as a City are headed toward.

Earlier in your discussion with CM Banks, there was a discussion of the use of the term "cartel" in relation to, I guess, some homeowners. In your view, could you clarify again what homeowners, in your view, engage in cartel behavior or are cartels? Thank you for the question again. It is a term of art from the literature of the fair housing literature. It is generally...

(02:46:03)

...refers to municipalities, typically smaller municipalities where homeowners do have that entirely decisive voice on all matters of land use. Again, the paper was not about New York City. It was part of a national conversation and so it borrowed that term to participate in that conversation. But it is not a term that I would say applies cleanly to anything in New York City.

But do you see how homeowners listening to this hearing, or having read articles where this was referenced, could hear that as making you an appointee who is simply looking to discount their views when it comes to the public process, even when it does not conform with the drive for more housing, even though there may be plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons why a project as proposed is not sufficient?

(02:46:54)

Thank you. Again, I would point to the fact that I have worked to support homeownership opportunities throughout my career, whether in trying to restart the pipeline of affordable homeownership or even through parts that were intended to support homeownership and homeowners — whether it is missing middle three, four or five story apartment buildings that can make good starter homes for families, or enabling homeowners to add units, which can be crucial to creating homeownership opportunities for populations that might not otherwise be able to afford a home or who have different sets of housing needs. So I am a big supporter of homeownership opportunities and I certainly did not mean to cast aspersions on any homeowners by borrowing that...

(02:47:47)

...term. In your view, how much housing would we need to build in the next 10 years to meet demand for New York City?

(02:47:56)

The administration recently released a draft report that found, in order to accommodate present need, to get to a healthier vacancy rate where tenants and others actually have housing options, in order to accommodate projected household growth, and in order to enable people who want to stay in the City to stay in the City, that it would be about 700,000 units over 10 years. And if that was built to meet demand, we would not need to build — I mean, that is the projection. Obviously, anytime you are talking about the future there are tons of uncertainties. We do not have control over the macroeconomic conditions. We do not have control over immigration policy, things like that. But my understanding is that that is the administration's best attempt to use information that we have to project 10 years out.

(02:48:48)

I think the difficulty with trusting those sorts of projections — and you mentioned some of it, the X factors — but also the notion that New York City has for almost its entire history been a sought-after place for people to come to, whether from other parts of the United States or other parts of the world. And so there is this sense almost that demand can never be met.

There is a lot of discussion in communities now about requiring more and more set-asides of new developments to be for people who already call New York home. We have very modest set-asides for community district and borough residents. I have been to places around the world where they do substantially more than us. What is your view on mandating more set-asides for folks who have lived here, perhaps even...

(02:49:35)

...generationally. Thanks for the question. I am sorry, I have not considered that particular question and I would want to give it more thought. Okay, thank you. That is all I have for now. Thank you, Chair.

(02:49:46)

Thank you. I will pass it to...

(02:49:51)

Hello. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I also want to thank you for meeting with me on a few of these issues, and I want to thank my colleagues for asking many of the questions that I had already written out for myself. I noticed in your testimony you mentioned the words "fair" and "fairer" about five times, and so I am trying to figure out if you can talk a little bit about what that looks like for you, what that means to you and why it is so important to highlight throughout what you mentioned in your...

(02:50:28)

...testimony. Thank you. Yes, as I mentioned, I think a theme throughout my career has been trying to create fairer processes that ensure that anybody who is affected by a land use decision has a voice in that process. I think that that has not always been the case in New York City. As we discussed earlier, I think many parts of the City — not least of which your district — experience some of the pressures of the housing shortage, the high housing costs, the displacement and gentrification pressures. That is a result of not having had sufficient voice in some of the decisions that led to that in the past.

(02:51:15)

And so I think that there...

(02:51:16)

...are a range of things that we have done in recent years to try to improve on that, whether it is trying to do citywide actions that again enable those fantastic conversations about housing and about neighborhoods in the context of the full City, that provide tweaks to land use procedures in order to try to reinforce a somewhat broader perspective over land use...

(02:51:40)

...decisions that affect a broader population, and so on and so forth. So it is part and parcel with the fair housing focus that I have had over the course of my career. It reflects itself in process improvements and one would hope in outcomes as well. So speaking specifically — everyone should share the burden of creating housing. Yes, that is actually a much better, or pithier, way to put it. Yes.

(02:52:11)

Okay. And you talked a lot about community voices and it being paramount. We know from the process that the community board is one of those pillars. I am a former community board member of many years, also served as the chair of land use in my community board, Community Board 11 in Manhattan, and I have witnessed so many community public hearings on land use items having zero attendees. Maybe two people might come out and speak at a public hearing at a community board. Do you see that as approval of a project or a lack of engagement from the community? How do you see it when you have very little engagement at community board public hearings, and how do you plan on using that in your decision-making process?

(02:53:02)

Thank you for that question. It is a very good question and it backs the conversation I had with the Chair around trying to make these institutions more open, more transparent, more accessible. It is absolutely true, as you know from your time on the community board, that many applications do not rise to the notice of a broader public. But when they do, you want to make sure that institutions like the community board and like the City Planning Commission are there so that people who are not frequent flyers can understand what is going on and know how to participate.

But I am asking if you see that — if you are receiving an application and the community board report says there was no testimony from the public, how do you view that? What actions would you take in that particular moment to say: is this a check-off on community engagement, were local voices heard, is there further conversation that needs to happen with the community board? What does that signal for you? In situations like that, I think the board would rely on the community board as representatives of the community. For many applications you will have a lot of public voice, people coming to testify, things that can be reflected in the record. In other situations, as we have all seen, that does not happen, and in that instance I would hope that the community board would provide their opinion on it so that the board could take that into consideration. Okay.

(02:54:40)

In terms of the fact that many of the discretionary approvals that the board is empowered to grant, which permit developments that are contrary to requirements, require a finding that the proposal will not adversely affect the neighborhood character of an area — what does neighborhood character mean to you?

(02:55:04)

Thank you for the question. Neighborhood character is an absolutely essential finding for the board's role within the overall structure of New York City land use. The neighborhood character finding is there because if an application raises issues of neighborhood character and could potentially affect neighborhood character, then the board cannot really touch it. They do not have that level of planning discretion. If something could affect neighborhood character then it has to go to the City Planning Commission and most likely the City Council as well — the Council having the most discretion, the City Planning Commission having more than the board but less than the Council, and the board being very restricted. When it comes to what neighborhood character means, the most obvious is the built context of a given neighborhood. In certain instances it can extend beyond that to zoning context, transit access, things like that as well.

(02:56:03)

So proposed buildings that are out of scale with their immediate context are something that would adversely affect it. Yeah.

(02:56:09)

I mean, if the board were to approve an application that clearly affects neighborhood character, that is a significant legal risk. They do not have the authority to do that.

(02:56:23)

We also talked about the vacancy rate and having to build a lot more. I have had many conversations through the land use process where we are constantly weighing the amount of new units versus the size of those units. In neighborhoods like mine, we are not just talking about one and two bedrooms — sometimes we are needing three and four bedrooms for the families that live in our communities. So how do you see that, in terms of the importance of the amount of units that we are trying to get online?

(02:57:03)

Thank you for the question. I think it is incredibly important and it speaks to the fair housing focus — back to trying to support housing choice, that means housing of all types. There is a dire need for smaller units in New York City for people who want to live alone but do not have the opportunity. There is also a dire need for family-sized units as well. I think we as policymakers in New York City are constantly conscious of the ways that policies can interfere with the full range of housing choices, and in some instances trying to support more family-sized units in affordable housing created through zoning — to make sure that at least 50% are two-bedroom or more, things like that. So it is a huge concern, one that we are constantly monitoring and one that I would stay focused on.

(02:58:03)

Sure, yes. And then in terms of — outside of the amazing website that you are going to build for us that I am looking forward to — what other transparency measures are you looking to put forth to make sure that all community members and everyone is engaged with the process and knows where things and projects are through the process?

(02:58:28)

Thank you for the question. In addition to an accessible website — one that you do not need to be a practitioner to understand — I have also admired ways that the City Planning Commission has become more transparent in recent years. Even things as simple as doing a roadmap at the head of a meeting, like: here are all the agenda items that we are going to cover today, so that people who are there to testify or participate understand what is happening and why. I mean, that is crucial. I have also mentioned wanting to do trainings for community groups around what the board is, what it does and how to participate. You cannot guarantee that anybody is going to use that and show up, but when that controversial application comes through, I want the infrastructure to be there for those members of the community to participate. Thank you.

(02:59:28)

Thank you. I would like to now pass it to CM Hanif. Thank you, Chair.

(02:59:39)

Hi, John. It is good to see you and hear from you. I want to thank my colleagues for their questions. I just want to begin by thanking you for your work over the years and in particular your partnership with the New York City Council over several administrations. I also appreciated you taking the time to visit me in person to discuss your extensive experience in City government and explaining the important role of the Board of Standards and Appeals and what it plays in our City. I would like to just state for the record that I think your track record in housing policy, your depth of technical knowledge and experience engaging communities across not just New York City but several municipalities are all very significant strengths and make you a very strong candidate to serve as Chair. I am really excited about the authority to fast-track...

(03:00:42)

...publicly funded affordable housing projects, which I know you helped get us. So the first question: for New Yorkers who are not familiar with the Board of Standards and Appeals, could you explain what the board does, what the Chair's role entails and how the board's decisions can affect communities? And I think there has been a lot of emphasis on homeowners and private property owners. Thank you for...

(03:01:06)

The question, Council Member. So I see the core function of the Board of Standards and Appeals, as Chair, laid out serving as a safety valve. I mentioned the second class I teach every year for land use law. The first class is the standard state zoning enabling act from 1924 that lays out the structure of zoning that basically obtains in municipalities across the United States. The Board of Standards and Appeals is seen as absolutely necessary when a zoning resolution does not allow an individual owner to do anything possible on their site, just because of the interaction of the zoning with the particular edge of the site. You need a relief valve, somebody you can go to so that you can do something. That was to save zoning resolutions from significant legal risk, and to do that you need to show hardship, need to show unique conditions, and the Board only has the authority to grant the minimum amount of flexibility necessary in order for a landowner to build something on their site. I feel kind of old school about that. At different times in history, variance standards have been looser or stricter. The Board has recently returned to its roots on that matter, and I would support that.

They also do appeals. When neighborhood residents or individual landowners do not like determinations of, for instance, interpretations of zoning provisions, the Board of Standards and Appeals is the first stop if you want to appeal that zoning determination. Sometimes it goes beyond into the court system, but again the Board was there to serve as a body that would keep all the different zoning issues that you might face across the City out of the courts. Otherwise you might clog the courts with those types of issues. The Board also administers various special permits in the zoning resolution. As part of my work on City-wide mandatory inclusionary housing and zoning for quality and affordability and City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, I have helped to create some of those actions as well. For instance, parking reductions for certain projects that have parking requirements that make it difficult for those developments to pencil out, or if you are a Wendy's way out in Queens and you need a drive-through, you have to go through the Board for things like that, or a bank or something like that.

And then finally, there is the affordable housing fast track. We have talked a little bit about that. No projects have gone through that yet. I would be very excited to stand that up with the Board and other stakeholders in order to create affordable housing projects on sites around the City that just do not have the opportunity. Through my work at City Planning over the last 12 years, many faith-based organizations have land that they want to do things with. Not all of them have the wherewithal of, you know, a congregation in Brooklyn. They went through a major rezoning and then built a bunch of affordable housing, or the Christian Cultural Center that did the same thing. But the fast track for affordable housing will open up opportunities for a significant range of those faith-based sites that I have talked to over the years, and so I am excited about that.

(03:04:33)

For the examples about the hypothetical Wendy's and the drive-through, would those decisions be ones that the City Council would make in the first place? In general, the types of issues that go to the Board of Standards and Appeals are seen not to raise any significant planning or land use issues that should go to the City Planning Commission or the City Council. And of course, if it is in a local law or if it is in the zoning resolution, the Council has at some point in the past enacted that provision as well and deemed it not necessary for that action to go to the Council. Great. And then could you talk a little bit more about the rezonings you have worked on? I know you named a bunch, including Gowanus in my district, and how you worked with the Council Members and affected communities when there were disagreements or competing priorities. Thank you.

(03:05:39)

Thank you for the question. Some of the rezonings that I played the biggest role in — I mean, there was the SoHo/NoHo rezoning a number of years back, there was the Inwood rezoning that I participated in. And then some neighborhood rezonings where I served a more specialized role, like in the Jamaica rezoning. I was kind of a liaison to many of the faith-based organizations in the neighborhood that wanted to understand what their options were today or under the proposed rezoning.

And you know, the neighborhood rezonings that I participated in, that engagement continues up until the very end. Everybody recognizes the Council plays a decisive role in those, and that without the support of the Council you cannot get anything done. So across administrations I have seen very earnest efforts to work with the City Council in order to hammer out those benefits agreements that are necessary in order to get those projects over the top. Thank you. I agree with them.

(03:06:43)

Some of what you have shared about community benefits agreements — I mean, I think for Gowanus, you know, 200 million for our two nitro developments and then millions more for climate resiliency projects, and then in a recent rezoning in Windsor Terrace, hundreds of affordable housing units beyond what was required. And you know, one of the challenges is the financing, where we still keep getting stuck. So I certainly have concerns around these lengthy, detailed community benefits agreements to get projects to the finish line, while also remaining concerned about the cost that is not coming from the City itself — it has to come from developers or other private means. So certainly I would want to continue seeing how else the City might be able to build affordable housing without needing to rely on these detailed community benefits agreements that are in addition to getting the project to move along.

As opposed to trying to pass a strong housing project, really in my opinion I think we need more affordable housing, and the community benefits agreements have certainly helped us push projects because they added additional goods in addition to the affordable housing. And then you know, the accessibility and openness to the public — if confirmed as Chair, how would your hearings be different or unique? As we have heard, you have made...

(03:08:46)

...commitments through this hearing, just expressing a desire to engage the Council and the broader public, knowing very well that community engagement continues to be, I think, very dire. Community meetings are not well attended, and the kinds of campaigns that happen to oppose projects and who organizes those — it remains very concerning. So while we moved a very ambitious City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, I would like to see a far greater diversity of New Yorkers participating, not just in in-person meetings but in a multitude of ways.

(03:09:30)

Right, yeah. Thank you. Not every application is going to have extensive public engagement in it — that is fine. But just trying to ensure that the infrastructure is there when projects do come along that have broad interest among the public, so that they can participate. In addition to more transparent websites and community trainings around what the Board of Standards and Appeals is and what it does and how to participate, I think I would emulate some of the previous work under...

(03:10:13)

...a previous City Planning chair who did just very simple things like announcing the agenda with totally understandable descriptions about what each project was about at the beginning of each meeting. Just simple things like that go a huge way to making those meetings friendlier to a broader swath of the public, and not just the land use attorneys who have done this 700 times.

(03:10:42)

Finally, I think... What are some of the challenges going into this role, or of the Board of Standards and Appeals itself, that you are thinking about?

(03:10:56)

Thank you for the question. I think the biggest outstanding issue — and it is a big one — my understanding from discussions with existing staff at the Board is that the Board is in a healthy and effective place. They do need an IT person, especially if we are going to create these new, publicly transparent websites, but it seems like if confirmed I would inherit a pretty well-run ship. Thank you. And I would like to turn it over to CM Carr. Thank you.

(03:11:46)

Thank you for meeting with me. As I pointed out, Manhattan is a different world from what everybody else has been talking about. The first issue: the affordable housing fast track pisses me off, and I will tell you why. To put the Upper West Side, which I have represented for about 20-some years now, in the same bucket with those 12 or so places in the City that do not want affordable housing is absolutely outrageous. I did a study recently and I listed all the as-of-right buildings. No matter how much I tried, nobody at the City government would say that they would force something — they say it is a taking issue, blah blah blah, even though some of the New Jersey cities are mandating that every new building have affordable housing. So I will have two questions. Why can we not do the same in the City of New York, where every new building has to have some affordable housing? Number one. Number two, would you demand that places like the Upper West Side be taken out of any list we have issues with around affordable housing? We want more affordable housing. We are told constantly, "No, we will not put one voucher, one Section 8, one city-sponsored unit — nothing. We only want market-rate to subsidize affordable." I am so tired of that. So I want to understand: in the affordable housing fast track method, would you take out places like the Upper West Side and give us some more affordable housing?

(03:13:16)

Thank you, Council Member. It sounds like you are referring to the affordable housing fast track, which is a separate...

(03:13:23)

It is. But you had some say about it when they were at City Planning. The text that...

(03:13:32)

...lays out the affordable housing fast track is in the Charter at this point, and so there would be extremely limited discretion on how to implement it. There was a rule-making process...

(03:13:43)

...did you ever talk about doing it differently? You personally? I am, as I mentioned in my...

(03:13:51)

...response, the Council had expressed concern at one point about trying to ensure that no community districts that were at the highest levels of displacement risk ended up in the fast track. When we ran the numbers, it turned out that community districts that are higher on the displacement risk index tend to produce higher amounts of affordable housing, so they were not implicated by the fast track.

(03:14:23)

Okay. I am just saying it is outrageous. It is absolutely wrong. Number two: at a public meeting at Community Board 8, we were talking about the fact that so many affordable housing units get lost. Obviously the East Side and West Side are becoming more unaffordable. I think you explained that the only affordable housing you counted was income-restricted housing. Most affordable housing in New York City, but particularly in Manhattan, is rent stabilized or even rent controlled. Can you talk about the role of rent-regulated housing in the City's affordability crisis?

(03:14:58)

Thank you for the question. Rent stabilization is absolutely essential to the New York that we know. It is an absolutely essential affordability measure. It is not the only thing that we can or should do to support affordability and affordable housing in New York City, but it is a crown jewel of that system of regulation.

(03:15:21)

How would you support rent-regulated housing? Because in some cases it gets torn down to build rent-restricted housing. How would you deal with that?

(03:15:31)

I mean, in the post-urban renewal era, I would say that demolition of large amounts of housing is relatively limited. Fortunately...

(03:15:41)

...Gary Barnett just did it on 96th Street and Broadway. The entire building is...

(03:15:46)

...empty, was 100% rent stabilized. That is regrettable. I did not understand that building. I would want to look into it more...

(03:15:56)

...closely. All right. In response to a Council Bill that would require the City to make and maintain a map of zoning lots, you supported the Department of City Planning's position that the making of such a map would be impossible. Do you still believe that creating a map of zoning lots is impossible? The reason I ask is we have about 200-some zoning lots, maybe more, and often the map that is the zoning lot is very strangely designed, and the buildings that end up there — we have no idea how they get to be merged in such a weird way. And then we go to court and we lose. We want to know about the lots.

(03:16:39)

Thank you for the question, Council Member. I personally have been involved in months-long processes to try to figure out whether a given set of tax lots was in fact a zoning lot or not. It implicates historical and transactional information that can date back to 1961, and in some instances can date back even before the zoning resolution. Given that in many instances determining whether or not something is a zoning lot takes that much work, that much historical sleuthing, and can end up in court anyway — yes, it was and it remains completely impossible to create a legally effective map of what is and what is not a zoning lot in New York City. The Department of City Planning will certainly tell you the same thing.

(03:17:38)

But does it not make it harder then to fight for housing that is on a lot that is too tall, bought too many lots, et cetera? You do not have any sense of that without the map. And you did have a case in your district...

(03:17:53)

...200 Amsterdam, which was a dramatically extremely complicated case, and that through your advocacy led to a ruling by New York City courts. But you recognize through that process how time-intensive it can be just to figure out the status of one little plot of land. So to try to do that for the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lots across the City — that is just...

(03:18:21)

...not something that is... I think we talked about them a little bit. How do HDFCs at all figure into what the Board of Standards and Appeals does or will do? Yeah, and if at all...

(03:18:36)

Thank you for the question. So HDFCs, or Housing Development Fund Companies — those are a state law vehicle. I know what they are. So you and I, when we hear HDFCs, we think most immediately of limited equity co-ops in places like the Upper West Side or Lower East Side where I live, or North Brooklyn or Northern Manhattan. HDFCs are actually a much broader category, however, that encompasses basically all newly created affordable housing, whether it is rental or homeownership. In order to qualify for the fast track for affordable housing, you have to be an HDFC. That is again the vehicle for publicly sponsored affordable housing. That requirement in the fast track ensures that only projects under public control can go through that process as opposed to a formal rezoning.

(03:19:31)

Okay. Offsite versus on-site — now part of the... We have had a lot of discussions lately about community benefits agreements. When you have a situation with a developer who is building, would you support only on-site in terms of their contribution of affordable housing, or do you support offsite? This is a big issue right now at Community Board Number 7. My position is very clear, but I want to hear...

(03:20:02)

...yours. Thank you for the question. I have had a hand in creating various City-wide affordable housing programs over the years. Starting with mandatory inclusionary housing, that does include an offsite option. It was seen as crucial to provide as many compliance opportunities as we could in the context of a mandatory program, to make sure that we were creating affordable housing and enabling housing to be produced while avoiding any kind of legal trouble. More recently, we created the Universal Affordability Preference as part of City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. In that, we shifted towards a primarily on-site program. In order to comply with the Universal Affordability Preference, you need to have your affordable units on the same zoning lot, with the limited exception that if you had an offsite option before under the old inclusionary housing programs, then you retained an offsite option — we did not want to take that away from folks. But in the main, that shift in housing policy away from a program with an offsite option towards one that is overwhelmingly on-site is in line, it sounds like, with your views on the...

(03:21:16)

...matter. Okay. I mean, I support on-site because I think otherwise you are basically supporting a segregationist agenda in the sense that you are sending the poor people elsewhere and letting the rich people be in one location. That is the Manhattan situation. So I would like to hear people say on-site only...

(03:21:35)

...is the way to go. Just to add: when offsite options are available, there is a geographic nexus requirement — within a half mile or the same community district — so that you cannot ship your affordable units to some distant location. But...

(03:21:49)

...in Manhattan that ends up being in a lower-income community 100% of the time. I have seen it 100% of the time. So even though half a mile sounds like not so far, it actually is a different location. So you are still supporting offsite if necessary — is that what you are saying?

(03:22:05)

Well, as I mentioned, we have shifted away from that model towards one which is overwhelmingly on-site. Would this...

(03:22:17)

...come up at all in a situation of this type?

(03:22:21)

I cannot imagine offhand a situation where it would, but I cannot answer...

(03:22:26)

Definitively. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. OK, thank you. And now we are actually going to move on to the second round of questions, so I just want to start with myself and a follow-up question. So back to neighborhood characteristics — do you view proposed buildings that are out-scaled to their immediate built context as something that would adversely affect the neighborhood?

(03:22:52)

Character. So, for example, is there any permit that would be granted where there are five or below zoning... for a building that would be, let us say, 14 stories with a density equivalent to an... Thank you for the question. Again, it is not able to approve any actions that would alter the neighborhood character. So we can say that pretty definitively when it comes to individual applications and individual sites. It is harder to answer that definitively because we do have areas in our... through our five boroughs that have, you know, 30-plus story buildings on occasion. Or it is very common, for instance, even in one or two family areas to have pre-1961 six-story buildings around there that could be relevant to neighborhood context. But you know, if you are asking about an edge case — like, could you put a high-rise in a neighborhood where everything else is two stories — it seems extremely unlikely that that would be possible.

(03:23:58)

Okay. Thank you for that. I am going to move on to the new zoning permit that is in the Commission proposal. So given the expressed intent during the Charter revision process that this new permit was for the facilitation of 100% affordable housing projects, will you commit to this Council that you will only grant this new permit to projects when they are, in fact, 100% permanently affordable income-restricted housing?

(03:24:29)

Thank you for the question. Very excited about the fast track and its ability to facilitate publicly sponsored affordable housing. The fast track — the Charter language intentionally picks up the state law language around restriction for 100% affordable housing, in part, for instance, because over the years, HDFCs, limited equity co-ops or things like that often include, you know, one or two tenants — shareholders, residents — who have requirements that would therefore kick them out from the fast track or HDFC eligibility entirely. It is just important in those types of situations to build in a little bit of flexibility so that we are not excluding worthy projects from the pipeline.

But if you look back at, you know, the last however many HDFCs that have been used to create homeownership or rental affordable housing, virtually all of them are in fact 100% affordable. So I do not think that the concerns on that should be too pronounced. OK, so in the absence of specified maximum requirements in the Charter, how does this body ensure the housing meant to be generated by this new permit will be in fact affordable, and what would be the maximum you consider appropriate for projects to apply for this permit? That is a great question. Thank you. So the fast track again picks up the state law definition around restrictions there as well. In general, I think the Charter revision commissioners did not want to overly constrain future leadership at HPD over what types of housing projects were and were not appropriate. I mean, if you look over the last few administrations in New York City — you go back to the Bloomberg era and the affordable housing was being produced at higher incomes, and since the de Blasio era through Adams and now in Mamdani, I think the focus has been on much lower incomes. I would expect that to maintain into the future. But we would not want to overly constrain future HPD around the City's affordable housing mandates through Charter language, which, after all, requires a referendum to change. So would...

(03:27:12)

You today give us a maximum that would be considered appropriate for this project?

(03:27:18)

That is difficult. The fast track has to provide us with a soft letter of commitment for those projects, and so I am not sure that I would want to go way out of my lane and try to dictate what they thought was and was not an appropriate affordable housing project in different neighborhoods around the City. In talking to Council members, I would say most Council members want lower, but that is by no means the only thing Council members want. I have also talked to members who want a full range of mixed incomes, including middle income, and we would not want to...

(03:28:02)

Undercut that. Okay. I just said I am now going to pass it over to our Deputy Speaker.

(03:28:09)

Williams, I am back. I know I said I was not going to talk about your writings, but I just have to follow up from your questions with CM Banks. I know — and I know when we met, you said the same thing — around when you wrote those articles you were referencing some local New Jersey statutes around open meetings law. This is one of the... I am not sure that I was referencing any particular open meetings laws, but just categories of open meetings law that do not exist in...

(03:28:45)

New York City.

(03:28:47)

Okay. Because, as you know, I did read the articles and I was reminded that in that same article, most of the examples you gave were New York examples. So I just want to know what were the New Jersey examples, because I know a part of what you said today is that your comments around open meetings law were not necessarily in reference to how New York City manages open meetings law and land use decisions. I just wanted to know what the New Jersey examples were, because in the same article you primarily referenced New York. Thank you for...

(03:29:24)

The question. I would say that the article itself emerges from my work in New Jersey. The frame that I was trying to use there was — everybody understands exclusionary housing when we are talking about the suburbs, you know, Haddonfield or Mount Laurel or Cherry Hill or whatever — these areas that have very intentionally zoned to keep out lower income people and people of color. You know, an acre lot minimum, single family home only — there are not a lot of low income folks who are going to be able to live in that jurisdiction. Everybody understands fair housing or exclusionary housing through a suburban lens, and it was just an attempt to apply that in an urban lens to neighborhoods in places like San Francisco, or where I spent all my time in the South and Northeast, whereas the Northwest was full of leafy green single family neighborhoods where it was hard to build any multi-family or affordable housing. So it was just trying to take a thing that everybody understood and apply it in a somewhat novel context in order to make a point that we should be concerned about building enough housing to ensure we are providing for the needs of the full range of residents of various urban areas around the...

(03:30:44)

Country. Yes. And in doing that, your opinions about open meetings law — if you could just further clarify that. Because thank you for the opportunity, because I think — I was listening to the exchange with Deputy Leader Banks and I think your explanation was just to say, well, New York does not do it like that, and so it was not really applicable, or you did not see it as applicable to New York. But again, the same article pretty much references a ton of New York examples. I just want to understand how you reconcile what you said and then your views about open meetings law, especially considering, you know, this body does hold hearings. Right?

(03:31:25)

No, that is a great point. So we are all very familiar with how ULURP works in New York City — familiar that for big projects, small projects, projects in between, Council members are often talking to applicants before ULURP, during ULURP and then, especially at the end of ULURP, in order to come to agreements on how to make a project work for a community. And that might be, you know, modifying the zoning districts, it might be negotiating some additional affordable units like CM Brewer just did around Dewitt Clinton, it might be negotiating a package of infrastructure improvements in Jamaica. In some jurisdictions those conversations would be illegal during the process — you would not be able to talk to a developer at the end of a ULURP in order to try to get what you needed in order to make those projects work for the community. And the point there is: if you cannot have those conversations, what do you think is going to happen? I think a lot of those projects would just get turned down. If you cannot have conversations to make a project work, you are just going to say no. Or maybe they get through with far fewer community benefits than they could in a system like New York, where you can have those conversations. So I was merely criticizing perhaps overly restrictive open meetings laws that prohibit the types of conversations that lead to community benefits agreements.

(03:32:58)

Thank you. I appreciate that. So one thing that we did not mention — I just wanted to say — is that the Charter revision of last year, which is still a very charged topic for many in the Council, especially Council members who are part of those 12 community districts with residential zoning, which affects close to 25 Council members. For those projects, the Council members and those community boards are kind of cut out of the process significantly. The Charter revision commission, in their report, defended that by pointing to some of the conversations we have been having around how decisive local input defeats affordable housing.

So I just want to know if you can explain why and how this theory would potentially be put into practice if you were Chair. I know the fast track is not necessarily under the auspices of the Board, but I do think, although they are very constrained within it, there are some theoretical underpinnings that could potentially be put into practice. So I just want to understand your own opinions about how you would put that particular theory into practice as Chair, and just overall your thoughts on what it means to be accountable to the public. I agree that certain communities can be quite difficult when it comes to housing — I live in one and represent one — but I do believe that as a lover of a functioning democracy, that input does matter, and input across the spectrum, not just from the people who show up to the community board meetings, but to make sure that there is diversity within a community and that local input does in fact matter.

(03:35:05)

Yes. Absolutely. You know, at every stage in my career I feel like public participation in these processes is incredibly important. I tend to see that when input is too narrow, when it excludes voices that are affected by those actions, that can be a problem in terms of fairness. Cynicism in that type of process can lead to less than ideal outcomes as well. So it is incredibly important, through any process, to try to ensure that the full range of voices is heard on these decisions.

I think improvements have been made around other aspects of the process as well. Community board input remains part of everything, and community board input remains part of the affordable housing fast track that you just mentioned as well. Attempts to make community boards more representative of their communities has been another really important aspect of this that we have not discussed over the last five or ten years, and I think that will also make these processes work better and be more representative of actual community sentiment around some of these projects.

(03:36:16)

Okay. Thank you. For instance, research has found that homeowners in neighborhoods with large Black populations face higher effective property tax rates than homeowners in neighborhoods with larger white populations — estimated that homeowners in the quartile of neighborhoods with the largest Black population shares would have paid about $17 million less per year if they faced the citywide average effective tax rate. And so you wrote about this in some of your responses to the Council, and I just wanted to know if you agree that property tax inequity is a genuine pressure on Black homeownership. Thank you for...

(03:36:52)

The question. I feel like I am not familiar enough with that particular research to answer on the fly right now, but I do have a huge... how do you have to know about the... I completely agree. I am very much aware of the difficulties and inequities within the property tax system, without being as familiar with them as I could be. And the reason why I ask is because in your written response, you say that in a city with enough housing...

(03:37:23)

Homeowner tax increases would be more moderate. So I was just trying to understand how you arrived at that response, because again, I do not think housing scarcity is the only issue. I think that New York's inequitable property tax system is also a problem that has nothing to do with housing scarcity, and the lack of political will — both from the City and the state — is partly to blame for our property tax system.

(03:37:57)

Thank you for the question. I mean, you and I have both heard many times over the years homeowners talk about the fact that, for instance, their kids cannot buy a home in the neighborhoods they grew up in. They bought their house for X amount back in 1970-whatever, and now prices in the neighborhood are so expensive that they would never have been able to buy — their kids cannot buy. And what I wrote in my response was just trying to indicate that the housing shortage does not just affect low income renters in particular parts of the City. It affects us all. We hear complaints from lower density neighborhoods about illegal subdivisions, overflowing trash cans, overcrowded schools, and some of the runaway housing costs have expressed themselves through taxes that go up way faster than homeowners who bought in 1970-whatever are able to keep up with. Those are all lesser-discussed aspects of the housing shortage, and that is all I meant to indicate in that response.

(03:39:07)

You are a by-the-book lawyer and planner, and the authority is highly circumscribed. If an application comes before you involving a predominantly Black homeowner community — which I have an example of, and I think I briefly spoke to you about that — where residents present credible evidence of legally relevant neighborhood impacts, can you commit that you will evaluate that evidence on its own merits rather than starting from a presumed assumption that more housing is inherently anti-displacement?

Yes, I can commit that I would consider that input on its own merits. In terms of my being a by-the-book lawyer — because, you know, to the extent people know me, they know me as this pro-housing guy — I will often have questions from lawyers being like, if you interpret the zoning this way, that means a hundred extra units, can we get it done? And I cannot tell you how often you take a look and it just does not quite support that approach to a particular application or land use review process. I will always be the first person to convey that information, despite the fact that it results in an outcome that results in less housing or requires more process. I have no problem with that at all. Great.

(03:40:35)

My concern is not whether you and I agree — as you know, we had a very extensive conversation on housing economics. It is truly whether you can distinguish policy advocacy from adjudication. So what guardrails will you use as Chair to ensure that your established views — although I know views evolve and people evolve — in reference to exclusionary zoning, supply and neighborhood opposition, do not predetermine how you view the people who appear before you?

(03:41:05)

Right, and thank you for that question. I think the answer to the last question is relevant here. When facing some of these really difficult zoning interpretation issues, the first stop is always the text of the law that applies in that situation, and it limits what you can do in a given situation. I have no problem with that. I think if anything, I am known at City Planning as being a conservative interpreter of the City Planning Commission's authority, and I would carry that over as well. Like I said, being old school around variances — it was not intended to be an end run around rezoning. It was intended to be a relief valve for sites that meet a very specific set of criteria. Similarly, some of the use requirements have been tightened up as well, and I support that. That is as it should be. Thank you.

(03:42:13)

Thank you. And I would like to pass it off to the Deputy Leader. Thanks. All right, thank you, Chair. Again, having chaired a public housing committee, I want to kind of engage you on the nature of the role when it comes to NYCHA redevelopment — when it comes to RAD-PAT conversions or large-scale redevelopment and demolition of NYCHA developments such as, you know, Fulton and Chelsea-Elliot. What role does the Board of Standards and Appeals currently play, and did any portion of the Fulton-Elliot-Chelsea redevelopment come before it, and under what circumstances would future redevelopments require...

(03:43:05)

Approval. Thank you for the question, Chair. I am unaware of any actual or possible involvement in the Fulton Elliott Chelsea redevelopment. This is speculation, but involvement by nature in the future is possible for publicly sponsored affordable infill on a NYCHA campus. It is possible that fast track could be an avenue in order to make that happen. To do infill, you know... to do only affordable, it would have to be affordable.

(03:43:47)

Okay, so versus ULURP, because there was a ULURP application put in for the redevelopment or the conversion of Chelsea Elliott. Many residents do not understand the difference between a project that goes through ULURP and one that does not. When NYCHA proposes a major redevelopment involving demolition, new construction or changes in use or changes in the physical layout of a campus, what determines whether the proposal must go to ULURP or

(03:44:28)

both or neither? Thank you for the question. It sounds like the situations you are describing are of such a scale that the Board would not likely be involved in those types of situations. Again, the legal authority is very constrained. It is cabined to situations that do not involve significant discretion around planning and land use matters. For situations that do, you have got to go to ULURP and then the Council typically. Okay.

(03:44:58)

And when it comes to private RAD PACT conversions, which can result in private entities taking on management and redevelopment responsibilities of public housing developments, if the PACT development requires a variance or a special permit or any other action within the Board's responsibility, does the Board have to consider the impact of that action on the existing NYCHA or existing NYCHA residents?

(03:45:33)

Thank you again. I am unaware of any role for the Board in a situation like that. I know in certain instances NYCHA has been able to pursue overrides that are consistent with public benefit objectives, but I just do not think the Board has a role in the types of applications that you are considering. Thank you. Let me

(03:45:58)

go to independence. As the Chair, you played a major role in the City of Yes. The permits you can now, basically, oversee. Now, if you are confirmed, you will be overseeing that. Chair, why should this Council be confident that you will administer those provisions independently rather than interpret them in a way that advances the housing policies that you helped create? Thank you for the

(03:46:36)

question. I mean, like other actions, these are pretty tightly constrained by the findings that were written into those actions. So if an application does not meet each and every one of those findings, then the Board would have no legal authority to approve. I tend to think my involvement in the creation of some of those actions is a good thing. It will help me if and when any of those applications are before me, rather than being something that raises any issues. Okay, well, can you

(03:47:11)

... well, I know you spent much of your professional career working to increase housing production, but the

(03:47:18)

Chair is not the City's housing advocate. It is a quasi-judicial position that sometimes, you know, requires you to say no. Give me a concrete example of a circumstance where John Mangin, as Chair of the Board, would be prepared to say yes, New York City needs more housing, but this particular project should not be approved. What would or could cause you to reach that conclusion? Thank

(03:47:56)

you for the question. I fully expect that applicants, potential applicants, will come to the Board and say, I want to do the fast track. Look at my affordable housing development. It is, you know, a ten-story building in a two-family district. What could be better than all this affordable housing? And if in the opinion of the Board and the staff it would not be able to meet a neighborhood character finding, then we would inform that applicant before they start the process. And so that is an instance where, sure, you might have a planning rationale for that project in that particular location, but if it would not be able to meet the neighborhood character finding, then we will send it on its way. We will send them over to, looking back

(03:48:51)

across that record, is there any significant position you have taken on housing development or community control that you now believe you got wrong? I would have to think about that and get back to you. Nothing springs to mind at this moment. Okay, and can you kind of explain what experiences shaped you? You know, your experiences as Mangin, who wrote that extraordinary article at that time — one of the things you think you did not understand then that is different now. Well, I did not have as extensive on-the-ground experience with neighborhoods around the City.

(03:49:45)

That I did not have at the time that I wrote that article. My first job out of law school, which was prior to writing that article, was with neighborhood groups across the City, and I got to form a number of relationships with many of those groups in all five boroughs. But of course I have learned an immense amount about how land use decision-making processes work and in particular, you know, the politics behind them, the way that applications can get to yes, that I did not know at that time. So I agree that that article was not about New York, but it did not have, you know, the sort of textured understanding of a lot of these on-the-ground issues that twelve years at City Planning has helped me to

(03:50:32)

develop. Thank you for that. When it comes to the Board, you said your goal is to make it more open, transparent and understandable. What specifically would you change when it comes to public notice, hearing times, application materials, online records, community outreach, language access or something else? How should this Council measure whether you have been successful? Again, I

(03:51:12)

would be very keen to make a website that is more accessible to a broader range of potential participants in the project and in the process. I would want to make hearings more inviting by more clearly flagposting what is happening at a given meeting and what the different applications are about. I am a lawyer, and so I am keenly aware of how alienating some of that legal language can be. So again, dating back to some of my earliest work in land use in New York City, I have got my little guidebooks where I tried to break down really complicated things like what is ULURP, what is zoning, what is affordable housing, at an eighth-grade level. It was really tough sometimes to take the technical legal language governing zoning or ULURP and put it in a way that folks who do not have that background could understand. And so it has been a commitment of mine throughout the process and I would look forward to doing that. Is there one more

(03:52:18)

question? Finally, given everything that we have discussed today about your writings and your views on community participation, what commitment can you make that residents who come before the Board opposing a project will not simply be viewed as being NIMBY or an obstacle to housing production, but as a stakeholder whose testimony can in fact impact the case that is before

(03:52:53)

you? Absolutely. I commit to carefully listening to all members of the community that want to participate in these applications. And it really does go back to my first job in land use, where if you look at the community organizations and the neighborhood process, it is a real range of folks who are pro-housing, folks who are way more skeptical of development, folks that are more policy oriented, folks that are very activist oriented, and everybody in between. The point was just to try to enable all those groups to participate in the process. And I am the same person today that, you know, wrote this. In fact, maybe I should write a guidebook to the Board and what it does so that more people can understand how to participate. I mean, that would not be a bad idea. All right, thank you. Thank you. The verdict is not out yet, but thank you. And

(03:53:56)

now I will turn it over to CM Brewer.

(03:53:58)

Thank you. I just want to know about air rights. That is what all of my developers hound me about constantly — build taller, no affordable usually. So how would you, if at all, play a role in that issue? Obviously in the past the only air rights we ever knew about were purchased from a public source, and now that has been eliminated so that is not even going to be known to any of us. So the air rights are really... I mean, you will see a church or a synagogue and the next thing you know there is a tall building right next door that just sold their air rights. So how would you play a role in that, if at all, in the Board?

(03:54:33)

Thank you. Are you referring to like the zoning lot mergers that create the tall buildings?

(03:54:40)

Yep. And the air rights. Yes, go

(03:54:42)

ahead. Yeah. I did not know if you were referring to those or the landmark TDRs that are

(03:54:47)

all of the above. I am aware of some.

(03:54:51)

I will start with landmarks. I am unaware of any process that the Board would play in landmarks. If you need any modifications on a receiving site in order to accommodate landmark TDRs, you have to go to the City Planning Commission. In terms of zoning lot mergers, typically the Board would only get involved when you get, you know, more controversial, stickier issues like around the zoning lot for 200 Amsterdam, where the Board was a mere stop on the way to the courts, as you know. But typically for the types of workaday zoning lot mergers that enable development to happen around the City, the Board would not have a role in those.

(03:55:37)

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And I believe the Deputy Speaker has one more question.

(03:55:46)

Yes, it is always in your line of questioning, Deputy Leader Banks. I am like, oh, I have a follow-up. So neighborhood character, which I think is quite a subjective power that the Board has... I am not familiar but wanted to know if there are any set criteria to determine neighborhood character. Like, how does that get determined by the Board? Because that to me seems very subjective. Thank you. You talk to constituents in my district and their community landmarks and their view of neighborhood character is very strict, versus other members of my district who have a different opinion and might live, you know, closer to the downtown Jamaica area, which has a ton of, you know, new units.

(03:56:37)

That is a very good question. Thank you for the question. Neighborhood character is not as subjective as you might think, or as it sounds. I mean, as you can imagine, there is a lot of case law extending back in

(03:56:48)

time around what it means and what it does not. You know, foremost is the built context. Also relevant can be things like zoning context, transit access, things like that. But it is not up to the Board or up to the Chair solely to determine that. There is a lot of history there. But is there a set of criteria to determine that? Like, do you use zoning history? What do you use?

(03:57:21)

First and foremost it would be built context in a neighborhood, and then, you know, what is the zoning, what is the neighborhood zoned for — that could be relevant as well. Is it right next to a subway stop or is it like three blocks away? That type of thing. But it is not a completely open field where the Board can just make whatever determination they want. Okay, because I have a project on Jamaica Avenue that they have told me they are going to go to the Board about, and in my opinion, outside of the fact that it is transit-oriented development — which, we get it, we need to build more near transit hubs — it is significantly larger than the surrounding area. So that is why I am asking, because to me it seems

(03:58:17)

from my perspective, which is why I want to be educated, it seems quite subjective and it does not seem specific to current neighborhood context, because this building is going to produce over 300 units and right around the corner from that is a one-family house. Gotcha.

(03:58:38)

Thank you. I am unaware of that particular application and to provide any additional detail on how the Board interprets neighborhood character, I would have to get back to you on that after consulting with them.

(03:58:57)

Perfect. Thanks. Okay, I see no other members have questions. The nominee is excused and thank you for joining us today and answering all the questions. Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you, Council Members. I will now open up the floor for public comment. I ask that you please limit your comments to two minutes. If you wish to speak, please follow the parent's card to the Sergeant at Arms and you will be given an opportunity to make your comments. You may also submit a written statement. Please provide a copy of the statement to the Sergeant at Arms. I will be calling everybody up in a group as a panel, so first is George James, Tobi Tanini, Anne Marie Gray and Frank Clark. I would just say once one person has finished speaking the next one could just start speaking. You do not have to wait for me. So thank you. So first I am going to call

(04:00:15)

George James. Hi. I am George James. I am an urban planner. I am not representing any client here today. I am here on my own time as a citizen. My first interaction with Mangin was about six or seven years ago and after it, I wrote to my contact at the time, quote, you should not let John speak to people, unquote. And clearly he is smart. Clearly you have heard him speak. He is well spoken, and that is not what I meant. The interaction was memorable because it was so different from any that I have had with those in government. While we might disagree, until then my dialogue with people who serve, especially in planning, has always been one of mutual respect. But from that very first interaction, it was clear to me that Mangin operated differently. As he showed during the City of Yes, he was there to win, to rush past opposition and to get a job done by any means necessary. There are lots of places where this type of hard-charging behavior is appropriate, but government service is not one of them, especially not in land use. In government, the process — or how something is done — is as important as what is being done. And that is the issue and that is why I am here today. I believe Mangin is temperamentally ill-suited to serving in government at any level and certainly not in a leadership position.

I will be submitting written testimony with examples of Mangin's statements and half-truths made on the record during the City of Yes, which will be reflective of my own personal experiences, and I hope you use them as you see fit. Thank you.

(04:02:20)

Good afternoon. There we go. Good afternoon. My name is Anne Marie Graham, the Executive Director of Open New York. We are a statewide grassroots pro-housing advocacy organization that advocates for more homes and lower rents. Thank you, Chair and members of the Committee for allowing me to testify. I am in strong support of John Mangin's nomination to chair the Board of Standards and Appeals. There is no one more qualified to run the Board than John. He spent more than a decade at the Department of City Planning, where he worked so closely with the Council, as we heard, to address the housing crisis through neighborhood planning efforts as well as crucial initiatives like Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. I personally worked with John directly in my prior job in City government and have interacted with him as an advocate over the last four years, and I truly cannot think of anyone more knowledgeable about land use, more committed to fair housing outcomes or more dedicated to public service. I really distinctly remember him sitting in this very room through every single hour of thirteen-plus hours of testimony, both at the City Planning Commission and at City Council hearings for what would become City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, and he did that so that he personally heard every public comment himself. That is just the type of practitioner that he is.

(04:03:38)

New Yorkers would be so lucky to have him at the helm of this agency. The fact that John has long acknowledged the basic reality that for decades New York City's approach to housing and land use has led to exclusionary outcomes should be a prerequisite for the job, not a disqualification. In recent weeks, HPD released the Fair Housing Growth Strategy, a report in compliance with Local Law 167 that was championed by the City Council upon its passage, and it really confirmed what John has been saying for years. For too many New Yorkers have experienced extreme displacement pressures so that the highest-income neighborhoods with outsized political power are allowed to essentially close themselves off to new neighbors. The result is a housing shortage that hurts renters and homeowners alike. Fifty percent of renters and forty-five percent of homeowners spend more than thirty percent of their income on housing alone. My time is up. I am sorry. Please wrap it up. Yes,

(04:04:28)

of course. I really just urge you to confirm John. I am happy to answer any questions.

(04:04:37)

Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Peter, President of the New York City... I am testifying in support of John Mangin's nomination. John brings the depth of experience that few nominees to this Board ever have. Early in his career, he worked as a housing litigator and construction manager for Fair Share Housing in New Jersey, an organization that challenged the exclusionary zoning in cases, meaning he has seen firsthand what happens when local governments use land use law to keep affordable housing out. He has taught land use and planning law for years as a professor at Wagner, and he is a public scholar on zoning policy, having written on the ways housing regulation drives up housing costs in high-demand cities like ours. For the past decade he has applied that expertise at the Department of City Planning, where he now directs the Housing Division, overseeing the development of City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, the most significant citywide reform in a generation, along with multiple neighborhood rezoning plans. He then served as Director of Policy and Research for the 2025 Charter Revision Commission. I understand some members of the body are uncomfortable

(04:05:47)

with this nomination. I ask you to consider why. The record shows us that John Mangin has spent his career making the intellectual and practical case for building more housing in high-cost, high-demand neighborhoods — the same neighborhoods that have historically been the hardest to build in. He helped design the Charter Revision measures that voters approved by large margins last year. That history is precisely what makes him the right person for this job. The Board of Standards and Appeals is not just a technical body for ruling on zoning variances. Since last year's Charter Revision, it has expanded authority to fast-track housing approvals, which makes this one of the most consequential housing appointments in this City. John has the knowledge, experience and conviction to lead the Board and use that authority judiciously. New York needs more housing. This Council should confirm John Mangin. Thank you. Good afternoon and thank you, Deputy Speaker

(04:06:41)

Williams, Chair, Deputy Leader Banks, CM Brewer and other members of the Council for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Frank Clark, Chief of Staff of the New York Building Congress. The New York Building Congress represents over 500 constituent organizations and 250,000 trades people dedicated to the growth and prosperity of New York City's built environment. I am here today to express our strong support for the nomination of John Mangin to chair the Board of Standards and Appeals. He brings the qualifications and judgment this role demands at a moment when the City urgently needs support to help advance housing production.

The Board's mandate does not include policymaking or the exercise of broad discretion. It needs a leader who will apply the law carefully, fairly and without delay. That is exactly what John Mangin brings to the table. His background as an attorney and his deep experience in land use gives him the tools to handle technical applications with rigor, and his years as a public servant speak to a genuine respect for the institutions he will be leading. His experience navigating both the public and private sectors gives him a practical understanding of how land use decisions affect real projects and real communities — an understanding that will serve the Board well as it takes on new responsibilities under the Charter Revision.

At a moment when the City is asking this institution to move faster without sacrificing safety, that kind of grounded, hands-on experience is exactly what is needed. Addressing the housing crisis requires increasing housing supply, including affordable housing. John Mangin's experience will help the Board meet its responsibilities in that effort. As the Council exercises its advice and consent role on this nomination, the Building Congress strongly urges you to approve John Mangin's appointment. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you.

(04:08:37)

Thank you. I am going to call the next panel. The next panel: Carl Weisbrod, Dan Miller, Jason Cone and Brandon Chaney.

(04:08:55)

Good afternoon. My name is Carl Weisbrod. I am a Senior Adviser at... but I am testifying this afternoon in my individual capacity, not as a representative of that firm, but in strong support of John Mangin's nomination to serve as the Chair of the New York City Board of Standards and Appeals. In 2014, when I was the Chair of the City Planning Commission and Director of the Department of City Planning, I hired John to come work for the Department. It was one of the best, but also one of the easiest, decisions I made during my tenure at City Planning. John was and is obviously a brilliant lawyer. But beyond that, when I interviewed him, it was clear that he was deeply committed to affordable housing and to the many millions of low-income people who have been excluded from safe, habitable, affordable housing.

My highest priority initially at City Planning was to fashion a zoning regime for Mandatory Inclusionary Housing. John Mangin quickly became the intellectual brainchild and a collaborative team leader that enabled it to be fashioned and adopted by the City Council. Indeed, although establishing it was certainly a team effort, if one person can be said to have been essential to it, it is John Mangin. Today, all of us can be justly proud of the decade-long experience of New York City's deployment of Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, which has been a model for the nation. John's positive impact on New York City's affordable housing has gone well beyond mere enactment. The first deployment of the program was the rezoning of East New York in 2016. John was essential in fashioning that rezoning and its success.

I will just say John Mangin has the intellectual depth and rigor, but at the same time he is collaborative, judicious and open-minded. All of John's broad and considerable talents will come into play. It is hard for me to think of anyone more qualified to take on this role. Thank you.

(04:11:42)

Hi. My name is Dan Miller. I am testifying as a private citizen in support of John Mangin's nomination. The Council's own required report has found that the City needs to produce about 70,000 units per year. We are currently averaging somewhere from 22,000 to 30,000. When the process is failing at this level, when we have a shortage this dire, ordinary New Yorkers like myself are the ones who pay the price. Acknowledging that failure does not and should not disqualify a candidate from serving in a position for which they are eminently qualified.

John Mangin is a brilliant writer and a strong advocate for building more homes, and he is extremely qualified to serve in this role. While local control is important, I want to urge members of the Council to also consider the impact of housing decisions on people who are not local. When I moved into my current apartment, I did not just look for homes in one neighborhood. I looked all over the City — Astoria, Crown Heights, Bushwick — because I wanted to be in New York. There are many people across the nation who want to be in New York and cannot, because we do not build enough. Our current process does not let us build enough. It is not working. John Mangin understands that, and I hope that you will not hold that against him. Thank you.

(04:13:40)

Thank you, Chair. My name is Jason Cone and I serve as the Chief Public Policy Officer of the Robin Hood Foundation. For nearly four decades, Robin Hood has worked to elevate New Yorkers out of poverty. Housing is central to that mission. We believe that John Mangin brings precisely the combination of deep expertise, sound judgment, independence and commitment to fair and effective government that the Chair of the Board of Standards and Appeals requires.

Over more than a decade at the Department of City Planning, John has developed an extraordinary command of New York City's zoning and land use framework. That expertise is particularly important at the Board of Standards and Appeals, where the Chair must be able to evaluate complex records and distinguish between broader policy preferences and the legal standards governing the individual matters before the Board. John's professional experience has prepared him unusually well for those responsibilities.

We recognize that there are concerns among members of the Council regarding John's academic writing from more than a decade ago and his work on the 2025 Charter Revision Commission. His earlier writing should be examined in the context of long-standing questions about exclusionary land use practices, housing production, affordability and access to high-opportunity neighborhoods. Reasonable people can disagree with his conclusions or with the language used in those debates, but serious engagement with controversial questions of land use policy should not itself be disqualifying for

(04:15:07)

leadership of a land use body, nor should disagreement with a policy argument be conflated with an inability to administer the law fairly. The relevant question before the Council is whether John possesses the expertise, judgment, integrity, independence and respect for the law necessary to lead the Board. We believe he does.

For Robin Hood, this nomination comes at a moment of extraordinary urgency. Two million New Yorkers are rent-burdened. Our experience reinforces a basic reality: New York needs both immediate interventions that keep people in their homes and long-term action that expands the supply and availability of affordable housing. Meeting that challenge requires strong institutions and highly capable public servants. John meets all those requirements. Thank you.

(04:15:54)

Good afternoon. My name is Brendan Cini. I am Director of Policy and Operations at the New York Housing Conference. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. The New York Housing Conference is a nonprofit, affordable housing policy and advocacy organization. As a broad-based coalition, our mission is to advance City, State and federal policies and funding to support the development and preservation of decent and affordable housing for all New Yorkers. We are testifying today in support of the nomination of John Mangin as the Chair of the Board of Standards and Appeals. He is highly qualified for the position and we are excited for him to bring his expertise and experience to the role to help address the housing crisis.

I will summarize briefly in the interest of time. John Mangin's training as an attorney, expertise in land use and planning, and experience with the administration of applications for public approvals are precisely the type of background needed for the leader of the Board. As a career public servant who recognizes the severe affordability implications of our housing shortage, his appointment is particularly suited to the current crisis, and his work has consistently displayed a commitment to the integrity and value of the role of government. Seeing his testimony today, I think you can see that he has the temperament and the patience for the role as well.

Therefore, as the Council performs its advice and consent on John Mangin's nomination, we strongly urge it to approve his appointment. You will also see that included with our testimony is a letter that has gathered signatures from 47 other housing organizations also supporting John Mangin's nomination. Thank you. I am happy to answer any questions.

(04:17:31)

Thank you all for your testimony today. I am going to call the next set of panelists, and with that I am going to go to the Zoom panelists. First we have former Council Member... Geoffrey Thomas, Moloch Meta and Jack...

(04:17:57)

Apologies. I am going to go to Zoom. Cut the in-person, so it is just one panel. In person, come back.

(04:19:08)

I am going to ask the panelists on Zoom to unmute themselves first. Stop, please. Yes, please go first. You may begin.

(04:19:26)

Are you speaking to me? Yes, yes, please go ahead. Thank you.

(04:19:29)

Tom, I do not need to go ahead of such a distinguished panel. My name is Geoffrey Thomas. I am a resident of Central Brooklyn. Thank you all for the opportunity to be here again, virtually. I was

(04:19:39)

absolutely before this Council about a

(04:19:42)

year and a half ago as you all were discussing a project that is two blocks down from my church. I supported that project. It was going to bring affordable housing as well as market-rate housing to an area that badly needed more supply. I remember telling the Council at that time: I do not support it because I care about the profits of the developer. I just want to make sure it gets built. If they only make a couple of cents of profit, I do not care, as long as it gets built.

We had other community members testifying, some saying the developers could certainly build many more affordable units while still making it viable to successfully build a project. The Council approved the requested modifications, which I thank you all for, and then we found out about a month ago that the developers finally decided that it is not going to work for them. They sold the site to another developer that thinks they can make it work, but they can only make it work at the cost of more studios, more one-bedrooms, fewer family-sized homes, more market-rate, one-person housing. We will see if they can make it work. I hope that they can, even if it does... Let us keep in mind that housing delayed is housing denied. We are seeing another developer start over and people unable to move in for another couple of years.

It strikes me that for the most part, this was not a policy disagreement. Just about everyone involved wanted as much affordable housing as possible. Some people thought we could get a 100% affordable building and that is what they were advocating for. Others, like myself, said the funds for that did not exist and we would need to go with some sort of balance. Some people were wondering: do we have the infrastructure, the plumbing, the schools, et cetera, to support more than a certain number of residents? All of these were technical questions, economic questions, not policy questions. The question was: how do we get as much affordable housing as possible? From everything I have learned about him by reading about him, I think John Mangin is an excellent choice for this sort of technical, economic role, which is exactly what he has been nominated for. I will also say that I like most of what I heard from him about policy, but the policy continues to come from this Council, who will make sure that we are fighting for affordable housing and development wherever it is appropriate. City of Yes is a great example.

(04:21:46)

The Council continues... Thomas, sorry, apologies. It is confirmed. Thank you so much. Thank you. I am going to ask the next panelist to unmute themselves. You may begin. Hi. Can you hear me?

(04:22:14)

Yes.

(04:22:15)

My name is Jack. I am a resident of Ridgewood and I would echo the points made by other community members about John Mangin's competence and qualifications, and the earlier point about the importance of balancing local control with the urgent need to build housing for the entire City.

That said, I think that in a housing crisis that is rapidly escalating, we really need someone who does have the granular, situational, local awareness that John Mangin does have. Council members have referred to Mangin's 2014 paper "The New Exclusionary Zoning," but I would point to a different 2018 paper of his called "Ethnic Enclaves in the Zoning Game" that really demonstrates his intimate familiarity and interest in many different local constituencies and their unique, nuanced relationships to land use policy. I think it goes a long way to allay the concerns that many Council members have had about John Mangin's priorities with respect to local control. John understands the need to build 700,000 units of good, affordable housing in the next 10 years and I urge the City Council to confirm him. Thank you.

(04:23:31)

Thank you. For the next panel, let us go. You may begin. And that was Jack. I need the next one. Are there other panelists on the panel?

(04:24:06)

Can you hear me?

(04:24:08)

Yes, yes, I can. Thank you. Please go ahead.

(04:24:14)

Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Moloch Meta and I am New York Director at the Regional Plan Association. Thank you, Chair, Deputy Speaker Williams and members of the Committee for the opportunity to testify today. Our organization strongly supports the confirmation of John Mangin to lead the Board of Standards and Appeals. Sorry, it looks like I got muted. Can you hear me?

(04:24:36)

Yes, we can hear you.

(04:24:40)

Please continue. We are all aware of how critical our City's housing

(04:24:42)

processes are. For years, the Regional Plan Association has been sounding the alarm that we simply do not have enough homes to meet the needs of current and future New Yorkers. We need an all-of-the-above approach to build more housing in more places, of all types and affordability levels. To do so, we need to reform regulations that have too often made good projects difficult to deliver. That is why the work of the Board of Standards and Appeals is so important today.

New Yorkers approved a new process last year that would enable the Board to provide a faster path for certain types of affordable housing development. Along with many of our fellow advocates, the Regional Plan Association has supported the fundamental goal of that reform: to make it easier to advance affordable housing projects while still maintaining a transparent public process. The success of that reform will now depend on how well it is implemented. The Board's leadership, with sound judgment, deep understanding of how housing gets built and commitment to fairness and consistency, is critical to building trust and success.

(04:25:37)

John Mangin clearly brings those qualities to the position. He has dedicated over a decade of public service, working on some of the most consequential housing reforms the City has undertaken while leading housing research and advocacy efforts. We have worked very closely with John over the years. He is a thoughtful and knowledgeable public servant dedicated to responsible governance to solve our housing challenges. The Board must be a credible, independent institution that can review land use questions and make decisions fairly, responsibly and predictably, with transparency and accountability. John has dedicated his career to serving the City and we believe he is particularly well qualified to lead it. We know he will work closely with the City Council and be responsive to community feedback as we all work collectively to solve our housing challenges.

(04:26:26)

We urge you to confirm his nomination. Thank you. Your time has expired. Thank you. I will ask the next person on the Zoom panel to unmute themselves. You may begin.

(04:26:50)

Yes. Good afternoon. My name is Peter Handler. I am a resident of Queens and I am here to testify in support of John Mangin's nomination to chair the Board of Standards and Appeals. In my own work I have seen what the housing crisis means for people with very limited resources and very few alternatives. To me this is not an abstract debate about zoning. When there simply are not enough affordable homes, the most vulnerable New Yorkers suffer the most. We know the scale of the problem. The citywide vacancy rate is just 1.4%, the lowest since 1968, and estimates suggest New York City will need about 700,000 additional homes over the next decade. John Mangin has spent more than a decade working on these issues at the Department of City Planning, including City of Yes and Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning. The Board is now responsible for considering applications to expedite publicly financed 100% affordable housing. That experience matters and, frankly, his willingness to speak honestly about where the zoning and land use system has fallen short strikes me as a qualification, not a disqualification. I urge the Council to confirm John Mangin. Thank you.

(04:28:01)

Thank you. Is there any other person on the panel right now? I will ask the last person on the panel to unmute themselves.

(04:28:22)

Please begin. Is this me? Yes. Can you identify yourself?

(04:28:40)

Yes. Hi. Good afternoon, Chair, members of the Committee. My name is Sam Zimmerman and I am testifying today in support of John Mangin's nomination to the Board of Standards and Appeals. I am a resident of Lower Manhattan. John has served our City for more than a decade, where he led, among other things, the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. He served as Director of Policy and Research for the 2025 Charter Revision Commission, which produced the most significant changes to the City's land use review process in decades. Very few people in New York understand both the mechanics of zoning and the human stakes of housing scarcity as well as he does.

New York City's residents recognize we are in a housing crisis and overwhelmingly approved the affordable housing fast track last year, giving the Board the power to approve certain 100% affordable projects on an expedited timeline. That means the person chairing the Board will determine directly whether the City rises to the moment and carries out the mandate granted by voters, or if it continues to allow affordable housing to die in process as we have done for decades. We need someone who understands both the legal framework and the urgency of this moment. John Mangin is that person. Housing delayed is housing denied, and I urge this Committee and the full Council to confirm John Mangin without delay. Thank you.

(04:29:57)

And now we are moving back to in-person panels. So again, I will call your name. Please come up and when you have finished speaking the next person can start speaking. First you have Christopher Leon Johnson. You have Howard Slacken. We have Joshua Rubinow. And we have Reverend O'Connor.

(04:30:25)

Hello. My name is Christopher Leon Johnson. I did not like how that was handled. Okay, I suppose we go in person first and then Zoom. What you did was you just let all those people on Zoom speak before all of us, and that is not right. I support this nomination, but let me make this right. Now, a former Council member was on that panel and he was not there in person. So you guys completely misled us. Your security detail misled me. I want to say right now I support the nomination 100%. But look, if you want people to support you, you should be treating people fairly. In person should come first. I almost said that right now.

I also want to say that the City Council Speaker voted in favor of Intro 117 in 2022. I support this nomination 100%. The way she handled the nomination is really, really wrong. She helped sell the City out for City of Yes in 2024 and many of you did too, and some of you actually support that. But everybody knows what is going on here. She is going to find a way to get this guy not nominated. But he deserves the job and that is why I have to say he deserves his job. I mean, look, I am not here to stop this guy from working. He deserves to be the chair. I am saying this is what it is. My belief is that the chair should chair. But I will say right now that the way you guys handled the panel was really wrong, and the way a former Council member was on the panel to try to sneak those folks in was very wrong. So that is what I have to say. Thank you.

(04:32:27)

Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Josh. I am here to testify in support of John Mangin and it is an honor to be here. We cannot ignore that our housing crisis is largely driven by distrust of residents who feel suspicious about new developments in their neighborhoods. They have every right to feel how they want to feel. To me, however, John Mangin not only has the chance to make life better for all of us, but to repair trust that will go far in making both a more harmonious and affordable city. I want John Mangin to fast-track affordable housing for the same economic and social reasons that others have mentioned here before me, but in addition to that, I also do

(04:33:10)

want housing that fits the neighborhood and is approved by people in the neighborhood. I truly believe that building housing that looks like it fits the neighborhood and was approved by and involves people in the neighborhood not only just builds housing but builds trust — builds trust between those who advocate and those who are more skeptical. Listening to those who disagree encourages them to listen to those who want a more equitable society. Rebuilding trust between different parts of society is a virtue and I think John Mangin will do that and we can make a more affordable city in the meantime. Thank you very much.

(04:34:01)

Thank you. Good

(04:34:10)

afternoon. I am Reverend Patrick O'Connor, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica and a leader with Metro Industrial Areas Foundation. We have organized for thousands of units of affordable housing. My congregation and the neighborhood of Southeast Queens has lost many families because there is not enough affordable housing. I am here to testify in support of John Mangin as chair of the Board of Standards and Appeals. Last year I actively participated in the Jamaica neighborhood rezoning, incredibly led by Deputy Speaker Nantasha Williams and approved by the City Council. It was my experience that John Mangin and his staff listened and were responsive to multiple interests and perspectives of community residents, landowners, for-profits, nonprofits and different economic and racial groups needed to produce housing at the volume and scale needed to respond to the neglect and overpricing that has pushed out many families. Confirming him will ensure that New York City has an experienced, knowledgeable, skilled and capable leader who can respond to the Council's objectives, the Mayor's housing agenda and ultimately the hundreds of thousands of families who, amid this housing emergency, have no place to go. The Council should support and vote for John Mangin as the new chair. Thank you.

(04:36:19)

And we are going to go back on Zoom right now. I will ask the people on the Zoom panel to unmute themselves. I am going to call former Council Member Garodnick to unmute himself. You may begin. Hello there, Madam Chair, can you hear me?

(04:36:40)

Yes, we can. Wonderful. My name is Dan. Good to see you.

(04:36:43)

As you know, I served for 12 years as a member of the Council and over the past four years as the Director of the Department of City Planning. I am here today to strongly support the nomination of John Mangin. I was just going to submit my testimony by paper, which of course I did, but I was listening to the hearing online and I heard a presenter on an earlier panel take direct aim at John Mangin's character, his temperament, his honesty and his suitability to serve in any level of government. With that, I wanted to join the hearing myself. Those sorts of attacks are totally unacceptable, particularly for someone who has distinguished himself as a smart, dedicated and, yes, honest and direct public servant.

You know, a lot of what happened at the hearing today was taking small bits and pieces of words that John has written in law review articles. And yes, he is an academic. And yes, he is a booster of more housing, more types of housing at all levels and all corners of the City. But what should not get lost here is that he is as qualified and excellent a candidate as one might find for this role. He is a lawyer. He has integrity. As you all know, the Board has a very specific and narrow focus. I am certain he will follow the law. He has already said today he will have an open door to the Council. I have seen that he has the patience to be able to digest complicated issues and to bring them into reality and to listen to community concerns. He will be an excellent choice and I certainly hope that you, Madam Chair, and your colleagues will confirm him. Thank you for hearing me out.

(04:38:18)

Thank you. I believe the next Council Member has a question.

(04:38:21)

I do. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, former Director Garodnick. It has been a while since you have had that title. It is great to hear from you and I think your perspective is particularly valuable here because you have sat on both sides of this. You served in this body representing a district dealing with land use issues and then obviously your role at City Planning, which you alluded to. Let me ask you to put your Council member hat back on for a minute because, you know, I have never been shy about asking your advice about how to be a good Council member. One of the concerns that I have about John Mangin is not his intelligence or his knowledge of land use or his integrity, which you cited. Those are pretty obvious. It is a philosophy that seems skeptical at times of how much influence local communities and their elected representatives should have over development. When you were sitting where we are sitting, did you ever think that member deference and neighborhood opposition served a legitimate purpose? And are there cases where you think a local Council member actually does know something about his or her district a bit more than the planners downtown?

(04:39:32)

I love that question. Thank you, Council member. It is good to see you. The short answer is yes, of course. Council members know their communities the best and they advocate for their communities and they want to make sure that they are delivering the right outcome for their communities. It is equally true that New York City is facing a historic housing crisis with a 1.4% vacancy rate in housing, something as low as it has been since 1968, and we need to find some citywide solutions and find ways to deal with this. Which is why the City Council deserves so much credit for having taken big steps in the last few years to advance citywide housing initiatives.

But you are really asking me to put my Council member hat on. The short answer is yes, local Council members have a significant role. They need to make sure that the voices of their communities are heard and that needs to be balanced with the citywide needs and the crisis that we are in at this moment. I believe the nominee who is before you gets it. He understands that. He is a booster of housing supply. That is not a secret. He understands that we need to actually turn the ship around in New York City in order to reduce costs, make sure that tenants have rights in New York, reduce pressures of gentrification and displacement, and really take the burdens off of some of the neighborhoods that have really struggled for a very long time doing the work for most of the rest of the City, which has not seen much housing.

He understands all of that. But importantly, he also knows how to follow the law. He knows how to look at the facts, the circumstances and the very specific findings that will be presented before him. I heard him say earlier in this hearing a number of times that he will have an open door to members of the Council to hear them out. I believe that if I were in your shoes, I would look at a candidate like that and I would say, hey, he has a very narrow, very legal focus. He has the ability to evaluate very specific opportunities in a very narrow scope. This is a person who understands the law. He understands the boundaries of what he can and cannot do and he also understands the Council. I know he understands the Council because I worked with him for four years directly. We talked about the City Council — you might not be surprised to know — a lot, and I made sure that we were working together to find ways to respect the City Council, to make sure we were hearing, understanding and delivering in those areas where we could. So I think you have a great candidate and I would view him that way if I were sitting in your seat today.

(04:42:09)

You had a ringside seat for that kind of work.

(04:42:13)

Have you ever seen John Mangin take seriously a community's objection to development and conclude, you know what, they are right, this should not be built or this proposal needs to be changed? He was the one who was thinking about bigger, broader housing policies for the agency. But when he was brought in to talk about specific issues or needs or concerns, the issues of community interests and needs were always there. He always took them seriously and we all worked together to try to find ways in which we could address the issues that actually could be addressed.

(04:43:05)

Thank you. Now I am moving back to in-person. I am going to call Brad Greenberg and Ariel Hirsch.

(04:43:28)

Hello, Council Members. I am Brad Greenburg. I am the Executive Director of the Furman Center, a joint academic research center of the School of Law and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. We are an organization committed to leveraging rigorous evidence-based research on housing and urban development, and we are here today to talk and contextualize some of what has been discussed in the academic literature.

A couple of things I want to say first about the Board of Standards and Appeals and the role it plays in New York City's land use process. Like the City Planning Commission, they do not take as active a role in land use policy, including initiating changes to planning policy and referring items to the ULURP process, but they do determine individual applications and approve and deny special permits and variances, which you have heard about today. So the role is really a highly structured, cabined process focused on reviewing individual applications, and it requires someone with a lot of technical expertise in the case law and regulations governing land use in New York City. So the Council should be very focused on the nominee's expertise in this highly technical area.

The other thing I will say about the Board of Standards and Appeals is that the structure and governance has a lot of checks and balances in the process. There are five members appointed for a six-year term. The mayor appoints one member as the chair, but everything is done by a vote even as the chair oversees public hearings. They also imposed in the statute governing the board a lot of transparency requirements, including obligations to go through a community board process as well as solicit Council input on individual applications. The Council has previously, in 2017, also changed the governance of the board and retains a decent amount of power over how it is structured, so that is important to remember. There are a lot of checks and balances in the process itself.

I do also want to say one thing about something that has come up a lot today. Obviously, we are one of the leading academic research centers on housing policy. I just want to say that the article itself does build on many decades of work and research, including Richard Rothstein's book "The Color of Law" and Bill Fischel's book and previous books on home voters and the economics of land use. It is absolutely within the scope of the academic literature. I am sure there are words that everyone would take back. I am sorry, please... that is all I wanted to say about the academic work.

(04:46:02)

Thank you. Thanks, Chair, and members of the Committee. My name is Ariel Hirsch and I am the Director of Policy at UHab. For 50 years, UHab has empowered low- to moderate-income residents to take control of their housing and become homeowners in the buildings where they already live. We turn distressed rental housing into lasting affordable co-ops, provide comprehensive training and technical assistance to keep these homes healthy and stable in the long term. We would like to offer our support for the nomination of John Mangin to the chair... I am sorry, to the Board of Standards and Appeals.

The majority of our work does not concern land use policy, but obviously in affordable housing so many of these things are interconnected. We will submit written testimony, but I do get to be the first person to bring this prop today. I am bringing it because it still lives in our office. This series on what is affordable housing, zoning, and land use is something that John Mangin helped to create and draft in his time at CUP, the Center for Urban Pedagogy. It has helped us to educate many decades now of community members and homeowners in understanding their rights and obligations, their land use and housing policy, and how to engage in their local community.

I cannot personally think of somebody who is more qualified to engage with community in a thoughtful, considered and respectful way, having done so much legwork in our city to help folks not only understand their rights and responsibilities but also how to engage with those structures of power and to be able to shape and change them. I will also note that it is really important to have someone who is a technical expert. I am glad to go after Brad because I do not have the technical expertise, but I noticed in the testimony earlier, Mangin mentioned some of the particulars of some of these appeals. These are the kinds of nitty-gritty technical specifics that are really useful to have in a chair, and we strongly support his nomination. Thank you.

(04:48:05)

Thank you both for your testimony. You are now excused. Okay, nobody else? Yes, thank you. Seeing no other members of the public wishing to speak, this public hearing is now closed. I would like to thank the candidates, the members of the Committee, Committee staff, the Sergeant at Arms and the members of the public for their participation in today's meeting. The meeting of the Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections, Standards and Ethics is now adjourned.