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Essay On Community District 16

1431 Words6 Pages

In Community District 16, better known as Brownsville-Ocean Hill, there are many improvements that the community needs. The biggest need is more affordable housing. According to Community District 16’s “Statement of Community District Needs and Community Board Budget Requests for Fiscal Year 2018,” over half of the district’s population receives income support and it also has an extreme unemployment issue. The report states, “The issue is severely impacting our young people, with unemployment rates for 20 to 24 years old at 28 percent, compared with 20 percent for Brooklyn. Males are experiencing higher unemployment rates in the district than females, with rates of 19 and 11 percent respectively.” With high poverty rates and a median household …show more content…

Although his outlook on being able to accomplish this is fairly optimistic, after analyzing the plan one can find detrimental flaws. In the report it states, “Affordable housing is now mandatory—not optional—and permanent in areas rezoned for residential growth. We also overhauled the zoning resolution to make it easier to build affordable and senior housing.” To be able to create this affordable housing, the mayor would have to rezone many low-income areas of the city. This is because money is needed from real estate developers to build the housing and they are primarily interested in creating buildings with high occupancy, which often serve middle-income people. Additionally, the deal with the developers would entail Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, where percentages of buildings are reserved for affordable housing while the rest is rented out to middle income people. This method of incorporating affordable housing into middle-income buildings would increase gentrification in the area by inviting wealthier inhabitants in. This would endanger neighborhoods like Brownsville and Ocean Hill by increasing the likelihood of displacing their residents. Displacement would not solve the problem of getting permanent affordable housing for these poverty-stricken individuals, but instead increase homelessness, which is already an issue in this

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