Petition: Help us Halt Rezonings and Mega-Dev in Western Queens

See and sign petition online:

https://change.org/savequeens/

While living conditions in NYCHA are deteriorating, our elected officials tell us there is no public money for repairs. Instead, they want to hand our buildings and apartments over to predatory private firms whose interest in profit will quite literally overshadow our needs as tenants and human beings.

Meanwhile, the city pours our public money into supporting proposals and projects for several private, mostly luxury developments just next door. This includes $14.4 billion to deck over Sunnyside Yards, which is more than one-third of the estimated cost to address repair needs across NYCHA developments.

In addition to redirecting public money away from public needs, these projects also cause surrounding rents to rise, displacing existing community residents, small businesses, manufacturing firms, and working artists. And we see time and again that this type of luxury development does not yield real opportunities for economic empowerment among working-class residents. 

And the luxury developments right on the water, in LIC and in Flushing, ignore  the impending realities of climate change: where will the flood waters go?

Enough is enough!

We need public money to be invested in repairing and shoring up the existing infrastructure our community relies on—sewers, schools, mass transit, public housing and more.

Towards this end, we call for a moratorium—an immediate halt— to all large-scale rezonings and developments in western Queens.

These specifically include:

1. The huge luxury development at Anable Basin on the LIC waterfront, proposed by a group of developers calling themselves “YourLIC.” This plan calls for 12 million sq ft of unaffordable office space and apartments, with 70-story towers in a low-lying flood zone. 

2. The “new city” the NYCEDC wants to build over Sunnyside Yards, which would cost taxpayers $14.4 billion up front, or one third of what NYCHA, city-wide, needs for repairs.

3. The 5-block upzoning near Steinway Street in Astoria, requested by Kaufman Astoria Studios, Silverstein Properties, and Bedrock Real Estate Partners, which will replace manufacturing firms and parking lots with expensive housing and low-wage service job “opportunities”.  

4. The massive luxury development called for in Flushing, a low-income, mostly immigrant community. Developers want to erect another mini-city on the water for the wealthy, with few affordable units, and parkland that would primarily serve the new residents, not those already living in the community.We are fighting for development and investment by and for the people, and this is only the beginning.