East Harlem Rezoning Challenged By Legal Group

EASY HARLEM, NY — A legal advocacy group is suing the city to block a recently passed rezoning proposal for East Harlem. The Legal Aid Society filed a lawsuit Thursday in state supreme court challenging the proposal on the grounds that it will displace more rent stabilized tenants than the city's studies indicate.

The Legal Aid Society argues that the methods the city used a flawed methodology to determine socioeconomic impacts of the East Harlem rezoning plan. The city's methods for analyzing potential indirect displacement of the rezoning only assumed non rent-regulated tenants are at risk of displacement, but the rezoning will also displace rent-regulated tenants, the Legal Aid Society argues.

An influx of market- and above-market rate residential units in East Harlem as a result of the rezoning will contribute to the displacement of the neighborhood's rent-regulated tenants, the lawsuit argues.

"From Brooklyn now to El Barrio, the City continues to employ a flawed methodology that ignores that realities facing rent-regulated tenants and the consequences of land use decisions on their rents and livelihood," Jennifer Levy, supervising attorney of the civil law reform unit at The Legal Aid Society, said in a statement.

The City Council overwhelmingly passed a city proposal to rezone East Harlem during its final legislative session of 2017. The plan had been heavily modified since it was first presented by the Department of City Planning in the fall of 2016, and many of the new changes were presented during the vote by former Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and City Councilman Bill Perkins.

The plan — which will increase density in East Harlem to spur greater housing and business development — was modified to include building height caps on East Harlem's major avenues, a $50 million investment in the neighborhood's public housing and other community investments such as a $25 million investment in the outdoor market and event space La Marqueta.

The plan also allocates $83 million to expand the Harlem River Greenway Link between West 125th and 132nd streets and a $15 million investment to the East River Esplanade.

A City Hall spokeswoman called the Legal Aid Society's challenge of the rezoning plan "sad." The city estimates that the plan will result in nearly 4,000 affordable homes and expanded tenant protections for residents.

"It’s a sad day when groups try and grab headlines by trying to halt new schools, parks, anti-eviction services and thousands of affordable apartments for some of the lowest-income New Yorkers," the City Hall spokeswoman said in a statement. "This plan invests in the very people who call East Harlem home today. We stand by it."

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