City Council’s Faux Outrage Over Mamdani Nominee for BSA

To begin this column, I had to check the spelling of “hissy fit.” What better term to describe the City Council’s reaction to John Mangin?

Mayor Zohran Mamdani nominated the pro-housing Mangin to chair the Board of Standards and Appeals. The BSA is an important body for the real estate industry and recently gained more authority over land use — at the City Council’s expense.

The board can now fast-track publicly funded affordable housing projects that used to be in the City Council’s domain. The change was among the City Charter revisions crafted last year by a Mangin-led panel.

Outraged at the prospect of losing some power, the Council spent $1.5 million of public money to fight the reforms. But New Yorkers wanted more housing, not more hostage-taking by the Council, and approved them last November.

Now the Council is upset that Mamdani chose Mangin, whose appointment is subject to its approval. You don’t have to be an expert on politics to figure out why members are throwing a tantrum. Still, the Council cannot admit to being petty, so it’s coming up with fake reasons.

As my colleague Caroline Spivack reported in TRD Policy Pro, Council Speaker Julie Menin said her chamber didn’t like Mangin’s references to homeowners in his 2014 paper, “The New Exclusionary Zoning.” And Council member Kevin Riley bristled at his statements about community benefits agreements.

What did Mangin write that was so terrible?

He mentioned homeowners 19 times. The only remotely provocative reference was to “wealthy homeowner cartels.” He wrote:

“Housing advocates should become the most forceful constituents for increasing development throughout high-demand metropolitan regions — especially in high-cost, high-demand areas where wealthy homeowner cartels successfully prevent denser development.”

Mangin also wrote that extracting community benefits agreements from developers is among several strategies that might be useful in some ways but “increase housing costs by restricting a housing supply response or by increasing development costs.”

“If the goal is to moderate housing price increases so that existing residents can remain in the neighborhood, this is not the policy agenda to pursue,” he advised.

Any Council member who disagrees, please contact me. My email address is at the end of every column. I promise to wait at least a week before writing about your faux outrage over the phrase “wealthy homeowner cartels” and your failure to champion housing supply sooner.

Reality check: Mangin does NOT blame homeowners for stopping denser housing. He says opposition is perfectly rational for them, because housing scarcity makes their homes more valuable.

It’s also understandable that election-focused politicians kowtow to NIMBY homeowners rather than side with an apartment project’s future tenants, who don’t yet know they are future tenants and probably don’t live in the district. That’s why the BSA is a better venue for certain land-use decisions.

Mangin’s paper makes a clear and compelling case that:

Housing prices soared in New York City and other urban areas where demand outpaced supply for three decades.
Advocates for housing affordability made things worse by ignoring the need for more supply, and often by suppressing it.

I had the same realization during the Bloomberg and de Blasio eras. Self-proclaimed affordability advocates were fighting upzonings, claiming they caused displacement when the opposite was true. Unfortunately, it took the City Council another 10 years to come around to the idea of “abundance.”

Now it’s regressing. Council member Nantasha Williams said, “I think a lot of the things [Mangin] has been involved in, I personally see as in direct conflict with how the Council sees its powers.”

Officially, the Council rejects the notion that this has anything to do with its position on housing development. A spokesperson asserted that it remains “unequivocally committed to building the affordable housing New Yorkers desperately need.”

Unequivocal means clear, unambiguous, leaving no doubt. The Council is certainly equivocating about confirming the pro-development Mangin.

Riley, the Council’s land use chair, said he’s eager to see if “John has the same ideologies that he did have when he made a lot of these statements.” Ideologies?

Supply and demand is an economic principle, not an ideology. Community benefits agreements that make housing more expensive reduce housing production. Stating basic facts doesn’t make Mangin an ideologue.

Spivack and I met Riley for coffee not long ago and found him to be pro-development and reasonable. I can see why he and other elected officials love community benefits agreements, but Mangin is correct that money is better spent on alleviating the housing shortage.

Riley is also a big believer in homeownership, which is good. But that doesn’t mean homeowners should get to choose — by pressuring their Council member — what gets built near them. They will always act in their own interests, not in those of society at large.

Homeowners can make their case on project applications before a board with a citywide perspective and led by a competent and expert chair, namely John Mangin. Council members should stop their meltdown and usher him into the BSA.