Make NYC more affordable by extending Manhattan: professor

[Kamaji]

Make NYC more affordable by extending Manhattan: professor

By Hannah Frishberg
January 19, 2022

The answer to New York City’s affordable housing crisis? Make Manhattan bigger.

Rutgers professor Jason Barr believes there is a single solution to both cheaper NYC real estate and the issue of increasing global warming-related climate threats: Build more NYC.

“There is a way to help tackle both issues in one bold policy stroke: expand Manhattan Island into the harbor,” Barr, the author of “Building the Skyline: The Birth and Growth of Manhattan’s Skyscrapers,” wrote in a New York Times opinion piece this month. “This new proposal offers significant protection against surges while also creating new housing. To do this, it extends Manhattan into New York Harbor by 1,760 acres.”

The new acreage — which Barr proposed to be named “New Mannahatta” — would be built from landfill and reshape the borough’s southern shoreline, making it jut out into New York Harbor past Red Hook. New Mannahatta would be bigger than the Upper West Side — which is 1,220 acres — and could fit a comparable amount of housing: close to 180,000 units, ranging from brownstones to mid-level and high-rise apartment buildings.

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Source:  https://nypost.com/2022/01/19/make-nyc-more-affordable-by-extending-manhattan-professor/

[Kamaji]

Why don't we try some simpler, more tried-and-true ideas, like getting rid of rent control/stabilization, getting rid of by-permission-only use and going to as-of-right zoning, getting rid of the fascist historical preservation committee (which, for the sake of some 1960s spec office building that has some "neato" decoration on the outside, can designate an entire city block a historic district), and pretty much getting rid of most of the stupid whack-a-nut liberal regulations that have stifled the NYC real estate market for 80 years.

Then, if those don't work, then we can try some brand-new lunacy.