Q&A: NYC’s Charter Revision Could Reshape Housing and Democracy
With housing costs hitting record highs and voter turnout stagnant, New York City officials are considering new ways to help locals have more say in addressing cost-of-living issues and other quality-of-life problems across the boroughs.
At the helm of those efforts is the Charter Revision Commission, a temporary government body that is aiming to make major reforms to New York City's foundational legal document, the City Charter. The Commission's efforts are focused on overhauling guidelines for land use and election procedures—two matters that have profound impacts on New Yorkers’ quality of life.
Currently, the Commission has recommended placing four questions that would amend the city Charter on voters’ ballots this November. All of the amendments directly address livability issues.
Later this summer, the Commission will finalize which amendments will be placed on voters ballots.
The Civic Pulse spoke with Charter Revision Commission Executive Director Alec Schierenbeck about why city dwellers should care about the Commission's proposed reforms and how those potential changes could make New York more livable.
Let's get into it:
Civic Pulse: For those who may not be familiar, what exactly is the City Charter and why is it important?
Alec Schierenbeck: The Charter is the city’s constitution. It establishes the offices of mayor, city council, borough presidents, the public advocate, and the comptroller, as well the FDNY and NYPD, defining how they operate. It also sets the rules for decision making, including land use.
So, if you want to change zoning or use public land for housing, the charter governs how that happens. It’s foundational to how New York City runs.
Civic Pulse: The proposed ballot initiatives cover everything from housing to election reform, but the proposals focus heavily on land use. Why?
Alec Schierenbeck: I spent the better part of the last two-plus years working out of City Hall on another housing proposal called City of Yes. That was a historic reform we’re very proud of—it’s going to make it easier to build a little more housing across the city. But, City of Yes was [only] what we could get done through the system of land use that we have today.
If you think long and hard about our housing crisis, you realize that we need to change the system itself if we’re going to deliver the amount of new and affordable housing that’s actually needed to get prices under control.
The Charter Revision Commission is a natural next step after City of Yes. It’s about reforming the system of zoning review itself to unlock more housing.
Civic Pulse: Of the five ballot proposals, four focus on land use. If voters approve them, what changes would New Yorkers actually see?
Alec Schierenbeck: Let’s break it down by each question [that will be on voters’ ballots]:
Question 1 would fast-track affordable housing. It would make it easier to build more affordable housing across the city—at a quicker pace and at lower cost—as well as ensure that every community contributes. Right now, some neighborhoods don't contribute at all to efforts to create more affordable housing.
Question 2 would simplify the review process for modest housing and infrastructure projects. That includes things like small housing additions, flood protection, resiliency efforts, new open space, or adding solar panels to public buildings. These are things we need to be doing more of and at a faster rate.
Question 3 would strike a better balance between local, borough, and citywide officials. Right now, the local councilmember can block a housing project, regardless of broader needs. That’s not the process New Yorkers approved when they adopted our current charter. This proposal would eliminate the mayor’s veto and replace it with a new appeals board made up of the borough president, city council speaker, and mayor, bringing a wider range of voices to the table.
Question 4 would modernize the city map. Today, the city map is made up of more than 8,000 pieces of paper stored in five different borough offices. That slows things down. We want to centralize and digitize the map so changes that currently take months or years could be done in minutes or days.
Civic Pulse: If voters approve these new fast-track proposals, would we be able to build more affordable housing on public land?
Alec Schierenbeck: Absolutely. Question one, in particular, is targeted at creating a path for affordable housing to be built quickly in more places and at lower costs. If we spend money on processes, we're not spending it on housing.
These changes would allow us to get more housing at deeper levels of affordability and in neighborhoods that currently don't have it. Today, just 12 community districts produce more housing than the other 47 combined. That's a broken system, with some communities seeing transformative levels of growth while others are barely changing at all.
Right now, a local council member can block a housing project, irrespective of citywide needs or interests. That's not the land use process we're supposed to have. It's not the one New Yorkers approved when they approved our current charter.
We spend a lot of time and effort on lawyers and lobbyists and consultants. A lot of that public energy and those dollars could be going toward construction workers and engineers who are actually building. If we spend less money on white-collar people, we can put more blue-collar people to work.
Civic Pulse: This Charter review is complex. What is the Commission doing to communicate the stakes of these amendments to everyday New Yorkers?
Alec Schierenbeck: We’ll have a big public education campaign once the ballot questions are finalized. That will start this summer and continue into the fall. We’ll be creating simple explainers and working with civil-society groups across the city to help summarize what voters are being asked to decide.
Civic Pulse: You're proposing moving local elections for offices like mayor to even-numbered years, in addition to considering whether to end closed primaries. What impact could these initiatives have on our local democracy?
Alec Schierenbeck: Even-year elections are a big deal. New York City has a really robust civic life, but turnout in local elections is terrible—and it’s been going down. We just had higher turnout in the Democratic primary last week, but even that is still well below what we saw for most of the 20th century.
Other cities have seen big turnout increases when they move their local elections to years when the president is on the ballot. In New York City, presidential elections bring 2.5 times or 3 times more voters than local elections.
Very rarely is there one simple change that could double or triple the number of voters participating in local races, but this could be one of them. That’s good for democracy.
The Commission is considering another reform that would end New York City’s system of closed-party primaries. Currently, if you want to vote in a primary, you have to be a registered member of a political party. That excludes over a million New Yorkers who don’t belong to any party.
Most big cities in the U.S. do it differently. They either have nonpartisan elections or open primaries where every voter can participate and all candidates compete in one race. That’s the kind of reform we’re still looking at.
Civic Pulse: How much public outreach have you done? Can people still weigh in?
Alec S.: We’ve held nine public hearings across the five boroughs, heard from hundreds of New Yorkers and received hundreds more written comments. We’re still accepting written testimony through July 15. So, if people have feedback or ideas, now’s the time [to submit them].