Affordable housing activists Real Affordability for All are organizing a rally at City Hall today that will include residents, workers, business owners, unions, and community advocates from the six neighborhoods that the city has targeted for rezoning. There is some confusion about what exactly they are planning to call for, however—Crain's reports that an internal document from Real Affordability for All demands 50 percent affordable housing in new developments that benefit from rezoning, but individuals involved in organizing the rally are walking back that demand. "Their strategy is to push a united front and shared agenda," said a Real Affordability for All spokesperson.
The disagreement seems to center on whether 50 percent affordability is even a reasonable starting point for negotiations, as the de Blasio's efforts to cajole developers into including affordable housing so far has yielded far less substantial results. (Astoria Cove, for instance, was the first major project where de Blasio got into it with the developers, and that ended up with 27 percent affordability.) The focus of today's rally will instead be limited to the things that the advocates do agree on: construction jobs for local residents and measures that will ensure that longtime residents of the rezoned neighborhoods are not harassed or displaced.
· Activists soften message of City Hall housing rally [Crain's]
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