My Testimony to the New York City Council Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises

Approve City of Yes for Housing Opportunity

My panel was called at about 6:15pm yesterday; the hearing began at 9:30am, and went until a few minutes before midnight. I’m here on the left in black.

To: NYC Council – Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises
From: Daniel Golliher, Founder of Maximum New York
RE: Zoning, City of Yes for Housing Opportunity (N 240290 ZRY)
Tuesday, October 22, 2024

My name is Daniel Golliher; by day I teach classes on New York City government, and today I’m here to speak as a happy advocate of the city’s future. I’m also an adopted New Yorker, what E.B. White once called “The Third New York”—I originally grew up on a farm in Indiana, and I’m one of millions who’ve come here to live life on their own terms, seek opportunity, and contribute to the greatest city in the world. Members of the council, thank you for having me. And Councilmember Hanif, who isn’t here at the moment, thank you for your earlier remarks welcoming people to this city, regardless of their point of origin.¹ 

New York City has a housing crisis fundamentally driven by lack of supply. To meet current demand, the city needs hundreds of thousands of new units of all kinds; to achieve this, the Council should pass City of Yes in its entirety as the first of many actions. 

I’m quite hopeful it’s changing—but if the prevailing political attitude of the modern day were projected into the past, we never would’ve gotten: the original subways, the Brooklyn Bridge, or almost any of the great public improvements for which the city is now known, that it often funded unilaterally, and upon which it relies today.

As you can imagine in the case of the subway, digging trenches up and down Manhattan along major thoroughfares wasn’t popular with abutting landowners, several of whom launched lawsuits to stop subway construction. And yet: we have subways. 

And so: can’t we have housing today? Many Council members have concerns about the impact of this text amendment on infrastructure, especially sewers—concerns that many people at the dawn of the twentieth century had about subway construction, which required a reconstruction of sewers, steam pipes, pipe galleries generally, and other critical infrastructure (although I will note, Chair Garodnick explained at length yesterday that City of Yes will not have a significant impact on current sewer systems; the issues they have predate CoY).

Whatever reservations you feel today about allowing the city to build needed housing, your counterparts in the past felt similarly—and they chose to move forward at many crucial junctures to our great benefit today. The city government of the past met fear and complication with action. Bold action that birthed the subway between 1900 and 1940, and bold action that accommodated population growth from 3.5 million in 1900 to 7 million by 1930. They did all this with far less wealth, technology, and benefit of hindsight than we have today. 

My hope for this Council is that it will meet the ambition and energy of the city government’s past, the one that largely built the city the present inherited. First by passing the City of Yes, then by continuing to legislate in grand ways throughout the twenty-twenties, by passing more text amendments, approving more ULURPs, boldly negotiating the capital budget for the infrastructure its members care about, finally bringing comprehensive planning to New York City, and far, far more. 

Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and have faith in your ability to adjust in face of new information. As a New York City voter, I am on your side, and I am optimistic. Franklin Roosevelt, when he was governor of this state, delivered the following remarks to Oglethorpe University at its commencement celebration in May 1932: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.” Let the New Yorkers of the past exhort you to action today, and greater action tomorrow.

Thank you, and excelsior.

1. I added this line in response to an earlier remark from another Council Member denigrating people who come here from other parts of the United States as “not real New Yorkers.” When she subsequently spoke, CM Hanif issued a direct welcome to those people.