Displacement Risk from De Blasio's Jerome Avenue Rezoning

Bronx, New York

By Kartik Amarnath; Alex Valencia
bronx, zoning, affordable housing, gentrification, rezoning

A proposed a rezoning initiative in the Bronx claims to create affordable housing. This project examines the validity of these claims.

Mayor De Blasio’s administration, in a push to create thousands of new affordable housing units across the city, has proposed a comprehensive rezoning of the Jerome Avenue corridor in the Bronx. Under the zoning plan, the corridor will reserve more space for residential land use and require any new development to include a certain percentage of ‘affordable units’. Affordability is measured according to Area Median Income (AMI), which are median income calculations for the region according to different household sizes. For the Mayor’s proposed rezoning plan, the favored definition of affordability is 60% AMI.

However, the Mayor’s plan to introduce affordable housing through mixed-use zoning is highly contested, especially for low-income community members. Local perceptions tend to be that the mandatory units that developers would have to include in any new development are reserved for households that make higher incomes than many of the residents in the area, thus introducing new residents with upper-level incomes and further driving gentrification.

This project aims to juxtapose the Mayor’s plan with local movements to demand deeper affordability. Using the U.S. Census 2015 American Community Survey data, we first mapped census tracts in the affected area according to their AMI percentages. We mapped combinations of percent AMI according to different household sizes. We also included City Council Districts, since Council Members will vote to approve the Mayor’s proposed rezoning. Below is an example of one of the maps produced, looking at AMI percentages for 3 person households.

Here we find that only one census tract meets the 60% AMI threshold for 3 person households. After further research, it was discovered that this particular tract is home to the Fordam Hill gated community. In other words, no area of the proposed rezoning has a median income level that meets the requirement of affordability that has been proposed by the Mayor’s administration at the time this map was made. In other words, many current residents would not have access to any new housing units developed in the area.

One aspect of the rezoning that has not been foregrounded are the potential risks the rezoning could have for HUD Section 8 Project Based Housing. HUD housing projects are owned and managed by private entities that would have more incentive to cancel contracts with HUD once they expire. In doing so, private entities can attempt to generate more revenue by taking advantage of new residential development spurred by the rezoning and abandoning the deeper affordability standards they followed under the HUD program.

To this regard, we utilized a time-based map to determine which HUD building contracts will expire over time, thus illustrating the need to account for this trend as rezoning proposals are considered at the City level.

We also mapped the minimum household size at 60% AMI to see how many census tracts would meet the very minimum threshold of affordability favored by the Mayor’s plan. We also added a layer of Section 8 housing to document where these buildings are concentrated according to income levels. This map gives us an understanding of areas in particular risk of the dual processes of rezoning and HUD contract expirations.

In conclusion, we find that local knowledge should be taken more seriously in determining how to approach the crisis of affordable housing in vulnerable areas such as the Jerome Avenue corridor of the Bronx. We would like to thank staff at Community Action for Safe Apartments for their insights in the development of these maps. We hope they present an understanding of how zoning, even with good intentions, can further harm already vulnerable communities whose knowledge and experiences too often go overlooked in decision-making processes.