Thriving Communities Coalition Proposal for Comprehensive Planning I. Principles & Comprehensive Planning Mandate ......................................... 2 II. Needs Assessment .................................................................................. 3 A. Community-Level Assessment of Current Local Needs, Access to Opportunity, and Displacement Risk 3 B. Borough-Level 8 C. Citywide Assessment of Projected Future Needs 8 III. Goal-Setting Based on Need .................................................................... 9 1. Growth & Investment Goals By Place ........................................................................... 9 2. Addressing the Needs of Disadvantaged Populations ................................................ 11 IV. Creation of Comprehensive Plan ........................................................... 11 A. Land Use & Infrastructure Framework 12 B. Strategic Policy Statement 12 C. Budgeting 13 1. Ten-Year Capital Plan ................................................................................................. 13 2. Four-Year Expense Plan .............................................................................................. 13 V. Implement, Track, Report & Enforce ..................................................... 13 A. Implementation 13 1. Community Land Use & Infrastructure Planning ........................................................ 13 2. Policy ........................................................................................................................... 15 3. Budgeting .................................................................................................................... 15 B. Data Disclosure & Mapping 16 C. Accountability 16 1 I. Principles & Comprehensive Planning Mandate The goal of comprehensive planning is to increase the power of low-income and otherwise marginalized communities over the decisions that affect their future, to advance the equitable distribution of city resources, facilities, and new development. To advance this goal, the comprehensive planning process should be guided by the following principles: • Responsive and proactive planning that seeks to correct historic divestment, meet the needs of current low-income residents of the City, and plan for growth in a way that will allow New York to continue to serve as a beacon of opportunity for future residents of all socio-economic backgrounds. To best meet current and future needs, planning must be coordinated with budgeting and policymaking such that all parts of the planning process and the resources of the City are aligned toward the same goals. • Fair distribution of resources and development: Our communities call for an equitable allocation of burdens and benefits related to investment, infrastructure, new growth, and economic development that correct for historic disinvestment, marginalization, and displacement pressure to eliminate disparities across race, geography, and income. The goal of planning should be to ensure that every New Yorker has equal access to opportunity, regardless of where they live. To achieve this, planning must focus on real outcomes for communities and people – not identical planning treatment or leveld of investment, but strategies tailored to address existing inequality and help to ensure that all people can thrive. • Enforceable commitments – No more empty promises!: Our communities call for the enforcement of commitments made to mitigate impacts from development and investment. • Integration without displacement: Our communities call for the right to stay in and access neighborhoods with quality housing, good-paying jobs, and cultural and social connections. As part of this, we believe that public land should be for public good: used to create deeply and permanently affordable housing, including in high-rent neighborhoods that would otherwise be inaccessible to low-income New Yorkers. • Transparency and accountability: Our communities call for transparent planning shaped by early and ongoing community engagement. The goal is not only to enable New Yorkers to participate, but to ensure that agency and City officials are accountable to the communities they serve, and to the principles outlined by this planning process. • Real community power and ownership: Our communities call for self-determination in the planning process, community-led development, and solutions that are responsive to our identified needs and opportunities. Communities must be equal partners in the planning process, with the goal of planning by, not only for, communities. Community members must have opportunities to set the direction of planning in both their own neighborhoods and at the City level, and have a real voice in decisions. 2 • A Right to Housing. The goal of the City’s planning processes must be to ensure long-term and not just temporary solutions to the affordability and homelessness crisis. A right to housing would direct city policy to focus Steering on permanent housing solutions, with a focus on serving Committees the lowest-income New Yorkers, people who are homeless, and those most at risk of displacement. The City Community members must have must plan for and create deeply affordable housing in opportunities not only to participate in every community and adopt a housing strategy that the comprehensive planning process, centers the needs of those with greatest need, i.e. people but to make decisions that will impact who are homeless and extremely low-income. their communities – and lives. • A balance between local self-determination and To achieve this, we propose that each strategies that make every community a partner in borough be required to create a committee that will help to oversee and building the future our City needs. Each community has coordinate efforts at the community deep expertise and experience and knows its own needs district level, and work with the best – and everyone must do their part to ensure that our Borough President to begin to identify City has what it needs to become a thriving, equitable city. priorities. In addition, a citywide Steering Committee would collaborate with City II. Needs Assessment officials to develop the specific criteria used to assess community-level needs, A. Community-Level Assessment of opportunities, and risks, and – at the point of creating goals for each Current Local Needs, Access to Opportunity, community district – would help and Displacement Risk generate goals that account for both current need, and future growth. The Steering Committee would also help The City’s comprehensive planning process must start with select from among potential land use a community-level assessment of each area’s frameworks and provide ongoing opportunities, unmet needs, and existing displacement support for implementation of local risk. This assessment should include both quantitative plans. data – a common framework of information that will permit comparison among communities, and enable These steering committees should be progress to be tracked over time – and qualitative data – required to include people of color, narratives from community members on the ground who low-income renters, immigrants, youth, are most directly impacted by the City’s planning and others historically excluded from planning processes. The citywide SC processes. Both types of data should then be considered should also include community when goals related to programming, investment in planners, affordable housing advocates, facilities & infrastructure, and growth are set for each and other subject matter experts who community district. This community-level assessment – as can support community members in well as additional steps throughout the comprehensive discussions of technical information. 3 planning process – would be guided by an appointed Steering Committee working in conjunction with the City. Community boards must also be strengthened, supported, and meaningfully representative of the communities they serve to ensure that the local-level needs assessment effectively engages local residents and accurately reflects local concerns. Quantitative Data Collection The quantitative assessment process must be designed to produce results that allow City actors and everyday New Yorkers to answer the question: which areas need what, and where should future growth be directed? Each indicator must produce data that contributes to planning that meaningfully addresses the needs of existing residents, increases access to opportunity, reduces neighborhood inequality, and plans for future growth in a way that limits the risk of displacement. The creation of a comprehensive plan every ten years will allow the City to align its planning process with the release of federal Census data, which occurs every ten years. To the extent possible, the City should seek to account for known flaws in Census data, such as the undercounting of undocumented people, and use community data where available and sound. Access to Opportunity This analysis must include examination of community-level determinants of social, economic, and physical well-being across certain topic areas to be explicitly identified within the charter: Housing, Jobs & Industry, Education & Community, Transportation, Health, and Sustainability & Resilience. The Thriving Communities Coalition suggests that this portion of the analysis could specifically measure indicators related to: ● Housing: ○ The amount and share of deeply affordable housing ○ The amount and share of rent-regulated housing