Join this webinar with Village Preservation Executive Director Andrew Berman, who’ll break down what these measures would do and why all New Yorkers should oppose them, as well as what you can do to help. Q&A will follow. 

Mayor Adams engineered placing several questions on our ballots this fall which would permanently change our city’s Charter or Constitution. Promoted as “affordable housing” measures, they’d radically change the rules for a slew of development initiatives, many having nothing to do with affordability or even housing. They would permanently disenfranchise communities, roll back democracy, likely result in less affordable housing, and promote worse outcomes for healthy neighborhoods. 

Even though the Mayor is no longer running, the questions will nevertheless remain on the ballot, and with strong support from real estate and other interests, stand a good chance of passing. If they do, they will permanently bypass the legislative branch of NYC government on a whole host of important land use decisions, disempowering communities and making it easier for powerful forces to manipulate the system to their advantage. 

Find more information on the ballot questions here. 

Co-sponsored by the City Club of New York, Midtown South Community Council, Save Chelsea, SoHo Alliance, Committee for Environmentally Sound Development, Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, Broadway Residents Coalition, Council of Chelsea Block Associations (CCBA), Congress for New Urbanism NYC Chapter, and Friends of the Upper East Side.  

Andrew Berman has been the Executive Director of Village Preservation since 2002, during which time the organization has secured landmark designation for over 1,300 buildings and zoning protections to guide smart, contextual development and preservation for nearly 100 blocks. A lifelong New Yorker, Berman previously worked in government and politics and is an architectural historian by training. Village Preservation, a non-profit founded in 1980, is dedicated to documenting, celebrating, and preserving the special architectural and cultural heritage of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. It is New York City’s largest neighborhood historic preservation organization, and has been responsible for groundbreaking landmark designations preserving sites connected to Black, LGBTQ+, immigrant, and artistic history.