Interview: Zellnor Myrie, The YIMBY Running to be Mayor of New York
An Urbanist among New Yorkers
Zellnor Myrie is the sitting New York State Senator representing the 20th district in Central Brooklyn. He’s one of fourteen candidates running in the New York City Mayoral race and in a field with a population density befitting NYC, he’s set out to differentiate himself as the one true YIMBY candidate.
The following is a transcript of my conversation with the Senator covering his origin story, his positions on policy, and what he believes it would mean to be a truly pro-housing New York City Mayor.
Zellnor Myrie: Who he is and what people should understand about New York City
Jeff Fong: Let’s start with your backstory. Who are you, what part of New York are you from, and how did you get into politics?
Zellnor Myrie: So, my parents came to New York City from Costa Rica and they both came to Brooklyn. They worked in factories, then went on to have union jobs. My dad was a teacher, my mom was a healthcare worker, and then she also had a small business.
I went to public schools in central Brooklyn, went to elementary and middle school in Crown Heights, and then Brooklyn Tech for high school, Fordham University for undergrad and grad school, and then Cornell for law school. Then I worked at a law firm for a bit, and then ran for state senate to represent the very communities and neighborhoods that my parents had moved to close to 50 years ago.
Getting into politics, I wanted to provide those same opportunities to others. I had the benefit of going to really good public schools and going to an amazing after school program. I had community folks that looked out for me, and I wanted to use the tools of government to provide that to others as well. That has been what has marked my leadership in the state legislature over the past seven years, and it is why I have put my hat in the ring to be the next mayor of the city I was born and raised in.
JF: As a New Yorker, can you describe the city to the rest of us non-New Yorkers?
What's special about New York? What do you think people misunderstand about the city?
ZM: I think a number of things. There’s no other place on the planet where you can get on a subway and hear five different languages being spoken at the same exact time. And no place that when you get off the train and go to a neighborhood where you can have such an array of options of not only places to eat, but of entertainment, of culture. That, to me, is truly the essence of our city.
My parents came to what is known today as Little Caribbean because a lot of the folks that they knew from back home in the Caribbean were in Central Brooklyn. Being able to find your community, whatever that community is, is a part of what makes us special.
But it also used to be that you could come to New York City, you could work hard, and you would have an affordable place to live and be able to go on a path to success. That was whether you wanted to be a teacher, a social worker, an entertainer, a lawyer, a business person. But that opportunity is slipping away. And that really informs why I’m running.
Being able to hustle your way up was part of the New York City journey. And I think that that is something that many people share. It's why people from all over the country and all over the world come here, or used to come here, and I want to preserve people's ability to do that.
Congestion Pricing
JF: Let’s get into policy starting with congestion pricing. For or against?
ZM: I was a big supporter for a number of reasons. One, I'm a lifelong asthmatic, and the quality of our air is incredibly important, and not just for me, but for all New Yorkers. So one of the components was reducing traffic, reducing cars on the road, and improving our air quality. But I also was supportive because I take the train every day.
Our public transportation system is the reason that we became a thriving metropolis, and it was in bad need of revenue. Given the decades of neglect and disinvestment, congestion pricing was a tool to get that needed revenue.
It's been implemented for close to five months now and all the data suggests that it is achieving exactly what it set out to do. It’s reduced traffic, it’s produced revenue for the MTA, and businesses in the congestion zone have not seen fewer customers. In some cases, they have seen more.
There’s been an increase in riders on our public transportation system, the commutes for people who are still driving are faster, and the bus speeds in the congestion zone are faster. And we have not seen any increase in traffic outside of the congestion zone, as some people feared. So, it appears to be working as it should, and it is a good example of leading even when something does not poll well, even when it doesn’t seem popular.
Building a Million More Homes in New York City
JF: Let's talk about housing. What's the problem in New York City as far as housing goes, and what's your plan to fix it?
ZM: We are not building enough and we are not building in enough places. We used to build close to 70,000 units a year in the 1920s and the 1930s. That number now is closer to the high 20s, low 30s. We are in a housing crisis. We have too scarce a supply and we have lacked the leadership to get the supply to where it needs to be.
I have a really bold plan to deliver 1 million homes over the next 10 years and I want to do that in several ways. We need to increase production and that is going to look like commercial real estate office conversions to residential; converting industrial areas sandwiched between residential neighborhoods to residential.
It's going to be utilizing our public land in our public housing authorities — in conjunction with those residents [currently living in public housing] having no displacement — but allowing for mixed income, so that we can get badly needed revenue into the public housing system. That is going to include other sources of public land that can build affordable housing, and I think it's going to take an approach that requires every level of our city government to be working towards this end.
CompStat is our public safety tool that we use to update the public on where certain crimes are, and we index things and baseline them over the year prior. And I think we need a similar approach on housing. I want to be the housing mayor, the one that is held accountable for how much we are creating but also how much we are preserving.
I grew up in a rent regulated apartment. My story would not be possible without it and it's important that we extend the protections that we provide by way of something called right to counsel for those tenants facing eviction. That we fully resource it and we expand it to our homeowners who are facing foreclosure or who are facing deed theft.
We need an all-of-the-above-approach in this moment, and I think that we have not, up until now, truly had bold vision and leadership to address this issue. It is why I want to rebuild NYC, and it is why I have centered housing in my campaign.
JF: Getting into the specifics on policy, I'm assuming this would have to include additional, significant upzoning…permit streamlining…more by-right approvals…is all that fair to say?
ZM: It's going to include some of those things. There are current upzonings already in place that I think can be utilized a bit more aggressively. On the state level, we raised the floor-to-area ratio cap for places like Midtown that I think are just starting to be used in a way that would increase density. I want to accelerate that.
Part of my plan is something called Mega Midtown that would do that on a larger scale than has already been employed by the city. There's some statutory things as well. We look at, for instance, our height restrictions on single staircase buildings and I think that, like in other jurisdictions, we can increase that amount. The current cap is at six [stories]. We increase that to ten and we can then build bigger rooms and bigger units that are more family accommodating. This allows for families to get into some of that construction and free up some of the housing stock that might be better suited for individuals with smaller needs.
Making Office —> Residential Conversions Make Sense
JF: Returning to the commercial to residential conversions for a second, city governments in places like San Francisco have been trying to encourage conversions via tax incentives, but they mostly don't pencil out given existing building codes.
Have you thought more deeply about how to actually see those conversions take place given financial constraints?
ZM: Yeah. In many cases, it’s building dependent. It's not always feasible, as you mentioned, for that conversion to make sense financially for the developer. There are the ways in which the offices were built that don't lend themselves to conversion. But I think that we have an opportunity here in the city. We have a lot of these offices that can [be converted], and this is based on my conversations with developers and stakeholders in this space. They say that we can do this. It doesn't always require a heavy government subsidy, but I do think it is worth some investment if that is what it requires.
JF: Let me ask you this. Building codes require things like external lighting for every room (and this prevents a conversion where we create a bunch of apartments by subdividing an office with an open floor plan, since many wouldn’t get an external window). Or, take bathrooms as another example. Plumbing in an office typically goes up the middle of the building through a central column. If you wanted to have bathrooms in individual apartments, you'd have to extend piping outwards to all the newly created units.
Is there a world, though, where we jettison some of those requirements in pursuit of getting more housing? Is it just about finding ways to make conversions to existing standards pencil or is there also a world where we actually relax those standards and meet somewhere in the middle?
ZM: I think there are opportunities for us to relax those standards, of course within the spectrum of safety. But I think all of the current codes and restrictions are worthy of examination to determine whether this is still a safety concern or a need for the soundness of the building. Or whether this was born out of, you know, a well intended effort 20 or 30 years ago that no longer holds the same need because of changes in technology or the built environment. If we can do this without compromising the safety or the soundness of the building, I think it is worthy of examination, because unless there is an incentive for the conversion to happen, it's just not going to happen.
I think that there is sometimes this mythical thinking that the real estate industry will always just figure things out. And I think we have to be a lot more creative and realistic to say that if we are going to meet the housing demand, if we're going to have a city that has as many options as possible for every band of New Yorker, then we're going to have to incentivize the market to do that.
Doing the Politics to Pass the Policy
JF: Makes sense. In the last few minutes, let’s talk about the politics.
What does it take to enact something like the policy platform we've been discussing here? What does it take to get that through the political system?
ZM: We’ve had some well intended efforts in the past that were made in reaction to urban policy that had ill intended consequences. We often talk about the impact that Robert Moses had and the reactions to that came from a good place. There was a lack of conversation with the communities. There was a pushing out of lower income and working class New Yorkers. There were environmental consequences (I mentioned my asthma as one of those earlier in the interview). So in response to that, there were new things put in place to ensure that people had voices in the process and that we were being really cognizant and careful of what the adverse consequences might be.
I think we have now gone in a different direction, where sometimes these well intended regulations have been a source of stifling of certain development. I think we have to be careful where we need to continue and where we need to pare back, but I think we have a city where the alternative has been that there's too little housing built. That there are many points of veto to development that do not have anything to do with abating the housing affordability crisis.
So the role of the mayor is multi-fold in trying to overcome these obstacles, while also communicating and working with the community. It is going to require, as I mentioned, a technical approach and having a war room in City Hall, an interagency approach, where everyone is singing from the same sheet of music about how many units we are creating and preserving.
It's also going to require discernment in hiring. We're going to have to have more people in our housing agency and our Department of Buildings and our Department of City Planning. And it can't just be the folks that have been politically loyal or political cronies. These have to be real experts, people who have subject matter expertise and that are ready to do big things for the city. I have centered this in my campaign, so that when we win, I will have a political mandate to get this done. And I am going to use that mandate to work in collaboration with the City Council, who is required in order for these developments to move forward.
I don't want to do it from a position of antagonism, or, you know, requiring them to fill out forms to speak to our city agencies, and then asking them to support our efforts.
I want to build relationships. I want to start that early, not just when we need to vote for an upzoning. I want to work in collaboration so that City Hall can be helpful to the council members in their districts, so that when we have a perhaps difficult housing conversation, it isn't the first time that they are interacting with us.
I also want to utilize our bully pulpit. This is the media capital of the world. I cannot stop talking about housing once we win. I have to continue to do so, have to continue to work with communities. I have in my own district supported development where some of my constituents did not feel great about that development. So it is not a dynamic that I am unfamiliar with. I'm prepared to have those tough conversations. This is what New Yorkers do. We disagree.
But if people understand my values, people understand how I came to making that decision, I think that they are willing to walk with me forward on the journey to more options, and that that's the approach that I'm going to take as mayor. I am incredibly empathetic to New Yorkers who are skeptical that more development is going to mean more affordability for them. If the government has not delivered for you in other areas, and if you have yourself been pushed out of several neighborhoods, that skepticism is born out of a real thing.
It is going to be on me to convince New Yorkers that I have their best interest in mind, that I want this to be a city that you can raise your family in, where you can start your career in, but if we do not have a vision for that, and if we are not bold in this moment, we're going to continue to see people leave the city, and that's not the type of city that I want to lead.
JF: So it sounds like you recognize a need to change the system. I’m also hearing a need to wrangle the bureaucracy along with a desire to increase the efficacy and capacity of the bureaucracy. And also a plan to proactively court your council members. That sounds like a holistic view on the political challenges.
One more question for you, both as a sitting representative of part of New York and as a prospective representative for the entire city. And, by-the-way, your staff wasn’t warned about this ahead of time, so don’t blame them. But I want to get you here on record: best pizza joint in town — where is it?
ZM: Oh, my goodness. Well, this is an impossible question to answer when you are trying to court voters from all over the city. So I'm going to say, in my home neighborhood, Gino's pizza on Flatbush, where I went to almost every day after school, has one of the best slices in the city.
JF: Senator, thank you for your time and good luck in the rest of the campaign.
Postscript
Truthfully, that was one of the more pleasant conversations I’ve ever had with an elected. Senator Myrie is obviously fluent on policy and that’s never a given with politicians. More than that though, he talks about his city in the way that deeply resonates with me.
When I think about what a city’s for, I think about places that exist to help people get ahead. Whether that’s economic opportunity, social acceptance, or whatever else, cities provide opportunity because they provide people with options. I’ve thought about this often and it’s something that I see as deeply, fundamentally American in the best way possible. Given all that, it’s heartening to see some of that reflected in the views of a candidate running for such an important office.
Now, I don’t live in New York and I can’t say I truly understand the city’s politics. So, I’m not in a position endorse anyone or otherwise tell any of my New York friends how to vote. That said, if I ever ran into Zellnor in a bar, I’d buy him a beer (and I wouldn’t even ask him to expedite inspections on any consulate buildings in return). Take that fwiw.
Great interview! And the best pizza in New York is in New Haven.