The thing that has most stuck out to me in my time working on Gale Brewer’s staff is the enormous amount of no-win situations that pervade policy making. It’s a good perspective to gain, because it is far easier to advocate for change and revolution when you are not the one responsible to the public once they go through. I think one of the most striking experiences I have had so far has been attending a Town Hall meeting last week. The topic of the meeting was housing – an issue which is extremely emotional for almost everyone in this City. There are a lot of issues in the District we represent (District 6 – the Upper West Side) surrounding affordable housing, illegal hotels, large-scale development, and housing for specific populations (the homeless, mentally ill, etc.). While the meeting was almost comical at some points, because of the colorful personalities the topic brought out, it was also frustrating viewed through the lens of policy making. There truly is no way to make everyone happy for a lot of these issues.

In one particularly interesting display, an obviously well known man, large in size and personality, presented an (in my non-expert opinion) extremely well researched argument in favor of a proposed development that would create affordable housing units for the mentally ill. The basis of much of his case was a refutation of the arguments presented in a flyer dispersed throughout the neighborhood, attacking this project. After this gentleman very forcefully, but factually, challenged this flyer and the protests of those against the project, another man, apparently equally well-known at these meetings, had a psychiatric nurse come to the front of the room and explain why she felt the project should not go through. From this point, the entire subject got emotional and passionate. Mothers feared that the development would attract drug dealers and criminality to the (very quiet, residential) neighborhood. Residents felt that, though they acknowledged the need for increased affordable housing for the general public and for special populations, that they were being asked to shoulder a greater amount of this burden than residents in other areas of the city. Others essentially called all of these people crazy, citing that the patients were not going to be “just released from institutions mental cases” but people who just needed additional support – support which would be provided. The crux of the issue seemed to be a lack of knowledge and understanding of the project.
In response to this, one of the panel members, Jessica Katz, from HPD, presented her view of the project (which HPD is supervising) and the facts of its development, and finished by offering to take anyone who wanted it on a tour of the site. What was interesting to me, however, is how clear it was that there was pretty much nothing she could say that would get those opposed to the project to look at it objectively and factually, there was too much emotion, passion and fear wrapped up in the issue.

Late in to the meeting, the Manhattan Borough President, Scott Stringer, arrived, and at the urging of the crowd presented an extremely well articulated and delivered summary of how he wanted to see the city progress into the future, with 2030 being the current year of focus – the year in which NYC is predicted to have increased by a million people. What was incredibly refreshing about Mr. Stringer was his emphasis on looking ahead at the need for sustainability and “greening” of the city, the need to shift focus away from targeting the extremely rich (which are needed to create a prosperous tax base, etc) and toward increasing the amount of affordable housing and opportunity available to the lower and middle classes, and the importance of keeping the amount of time and energy spent on relatively trivial matters of difference in perspective, in order to be able to make true progress. He got a huge applause from the entire room. I thought he was pretty fantastic at not catering to the crowd and maintaining focus on the issues that truly matter for the future of this city.

Though I feel everyday that I am playing catch up and trying to learn about various issues and ideas that have a million angles, I am consistently struck by how incredibly fantastic it is to be exposed to policymaking in this City at this point in time. There is so much change that has happened as of late, and will continue to happen into the future. Examining the different perspectives of constituents, officials, etc, and envisioning how in the world it might all come together to create something positive, is simultaneously fascinating and frustrating.