The Daily Dirt: Can a pro-housing candidate beat an incumbent?

Nimbyism has long been a campaign strategy. Is it now a vulnerability?

Local elected officials have historically sought to shrink apartment projects in response to constituents’ impassioned — or hysterical, depending on your point of view — opposition.

The future residents, meanwhile, are voiceless because they don’t know who they are until the housing is built and they move in.

Supporters of adding housing supply, however, have become more vocal of late. This year, one is betting that an incumbent’s opposition to projects will motivate citizens to vote her out.

Scott Budow is challenging Brooklyn Assembly member Jo Anne Simon in the Democratic primary. Simon sided with Boerum Hill townhouse owners against Alloy Development’s all-electric, two-tower project at State Street and Flatbush Avenue.

Despite Simon’s advocacy, then-Council member Stephen Levin only reduced the project by 15 percent. The nearly complete first tower, 505 State Street, will have 441 apartments and 30,000 square feet of retail at 100 Flatbush Avenue. The second tower will have 512 apartments, 100,000 square feet of office and 20,000 square feet of retail. Affordable units will total 188.

Simon also tried to delay the Gowanus rezoning, which is creating 8,500 homes, and opposed the Soho/Noho rezoning, parroting the widely debunked claim that upzoning makes housing less affordable. Her challenger’s position is fact-based.

“While housing can be complicated, the basic problem behind skyrocketing costs is straightforward: lack of supply,” Budow, 35, writes on his campaign website. “In the last decade, New York City grew by nearly 800,000 people, but added just 200,000 housing units.”

Turning to Simon, he continues, “Remarkably, in the midst of this housing crisis, our current representative has consistently opposed the development of new housing, repeatedly maintaining that ‘we can’t build our way out of our housing crisis.’ She describes herself as ‘generally anti-development.’”

Incumbents almost never lose, but if Budow can make the race close, he could show that highlighting an incumbent’s not-in-my-backyard attitude is an effective strategy — at least in Brownstone Brooklyn.

The attempt alone shows that the pro-housing movement has gained momentum.

What we’re thinking about: What does a Brooklyn nonprofit’s decision to auction off its rent-stabilized buildings, citing operating costs and nonpaying tenants, say about the slogan “housing for people, not profit”? Email me at eengquist@therealdeal.com.

A thing we’ve learned: Demolition permits for eight buildings with about 400 of the city’s more than 900,000 rent-stabilized apartments were issued last year, City Limits reports. Razing or substantially renovating a building is the only way to permanently remove it from rent stabilization.

Elsewhere…

— Basketball announcer Rebecca Lobo’s on-air, off-the-cuff remark, “Good luck finding something to do in Albany,” prompted the city’s top columnist, Chris Churchill, to write a piece about how lousy real estate development has contributed to that perception. He cited Empire State Plaza, the University at Albany uptown campus and the W. Averell Harriman State Office Campus as “massive investments built as islands apart from the surrounding city, rather than as places that connect to it.”

“The three places don’t encourage people to walk from where they work or go to school to nearby streets, which means they don’t encourage the types of businesses that depend on lively sidewalks,” he wrote. “The Harriman campus, in particular, was built with a wide ring road that acts as a moat, discouraging workers from venturing into the surrounding city.”

— Rent in the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro area rose 4.3 percent between March 2023 and last month, and 5.7 percent nationally, according to inflation data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Homeowners fared worse, as their rent equivalent went up 5.6 percent in the New York area and 5.9 percent in the U.S.

— At a press conference this week, a reporter tried to get Mayor Eric Adams to say whether he supports “good cause eviction.” Adams didn’t bite. His response:

“People get caught up on terminologies and phrases on everything in life. I said I support tenant protection. Everyone likes me to say, no, you have to say this this way. I’m not saying it this way.

“Tenant protections. Whatever we can do for tenant protections, people can call it whatever they want, but I don’t fall into this neat little box that if you don’t call it this, then you are not in support of that. We got to get away from that.

“I support tenants being protected and I support, particularly, small property owners being able to deal with holding onto their properties.”

Data

Residential: The priciest residential sale Thursday was $19.6 million for an 8,200-square-foot townhouse at 14 East 81st Street on the Upper East Side. Lauren Muss of Douglas Elliman had the listing. 

Commercial: The most expensive commercial sale of the day was $39.1 million for 188-192 Sixth Ave and 82 Washington Place, part of a four-building, $60 million portfolio sale.

New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $17.5 million for a 5,600-square-foot penthouse at 505 West 19th Street in Chelsea. The Leonard Steinberg Team at Compass has the listing.

Breaking Ground: The largest new building application was for an 80,600-square foot, 17-story, mixed-use project at 1530 Third Avenue, aka 171 East 86th Street, on the Upper East Side. Jeremy Zuidema of Archimaera filed the permit.