There was a “huge” turnout last week at a City Hall protest as leaders of major North Brooklyn housing groups, along with Council Members Diana Reyna and David Yassky, demanded the restoration of the HPD’s proposed $730,000 cut in $2 million anti-displacement funding provided as part of the city’s 2005 waterfront rezoning.
Said Richard Mazur of the North Brooklyn Tenant Anti-Displacement Collaborative, “The proposed cuts constitute an egregious breach of the agreement that was essential to the city obtaining community approval of the Williamsburg-Greenpoint East River Waterfront Rezoning.
“And more important, those funds are critical to protecting long-term residents against the devastating gentrification and displacement impacts of the massive luxury housing development permitted by that rezoning.”
The Collaborative is made up of Churches United, Southside United, St. Nicholas’s Neighborhood Preservation Corp., The People’s Firehouse, Neighbors Allied for Good Growth, North Brooklyn Development Corp. and Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A.
Together these groups provide support and assistance to tenants and businesses subject to inappropriate and often illegal efforts to oust them from their long-term homes to make room for the more lucrative newcomers pouring into the neighborhood.
The Collaborative was recently advised by the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) that the $1.3 million, two year contract that it had been awarded, out of the total $2 million fund to protect current residents from the massive impact of gentrification exacerbated by the rezoning, would be reduced by 30% in the first year retroactive to July 1, 2008, and then reduced by 43% as of July 1, 2009.
For more information, please call Lauren George, Office of Council Member Reyna, 347-881-6663.
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