Tag Archives: Brooklyn

Industry City in Brooklyn

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Some readers of the blog may be interested in this upcoming event at Brooklyn Law School, sponsored by the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE):

Presentation by Andrew Kimball

Director, Innovation Economy Initiatives, Jamestown
and CEO, Industry City

About the Presentation
Manufacturing is once again widely seen as an important and growing component of New York City’s economy. Andrew Kimball, CEO of Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and former President and CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Corporation, will discuss the strategies behind adaptively reusing and transforming these massive and long underutilized industrial complexes into creative communities that are now at the forefront of manufacturing’s rebirth in New York City and the evolution of the innovation economy.

The event is on Wednesday, September 17, 2014 from 6:30 — 8:30 pm

Location
Brooklyn Law School
Feil Hall
Forchelli Conference Center, 22nd Floor
205 State Street
Brooklyn, NY

RSVP online: www.brooklaw.edu/cubepresentation
before Monday, September 15, 2014

Directions
www.brooklaw.edu/directions

Reiss on BK Live!

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The BK Live segment on Mortgage Inequities in Brooklyn has been posted to the web. Mark Winston Griffith (Brooklyn Movement Center Executive Director), Alexis Iwaniszie (New Economy Project) and I discuss mortgage inequities and how they effect Brooklyn (and beyond). REFinblog.com gets a nice shout out from BK Live.

Reiss on Mortgage Inequities

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I will be appearing on a segment on BK Live on BRIC , the Brooklyn Public Network, about “Mortgage Inequities/Fair Housing in Brooklyn” on Thursday, February 13th at noon (running again at 2pm, 8pm, 9pm and 10pm (Cablevision Ch 69, Time Warner 56, RCN Ch 84, Verizon Ch 44 or online at: www.bkindiemedia.bricartsmedia.org).

I will be appearing with Mark Winston Griffith, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, a community organizing group based in Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, and Alexis Iwanisziw of the New Economy Project.

We will be discussing The New Economy Project’s recent study about inequities in mortgage lending based on race in NYC:

Mortgage lenders made markedly fewer conventional home mortgage loans in communities of color than in predominately white neighborhoods in New York City, according to a series of GIS maps published today.

The maps show unequal lending patterns based on the racial composition of communities in New York City, controlling for the number of owner-occupied units in each neighborhood. New Yorkers who live in predominantly white neighborhoods on average receive twice as many conventional home purchase loans as New Yorkers who live in predominantly black or Latino neighborhoods, for every 100 owner-occupied housing units in the neighborhood.

“The maps show that banks continue to redline communities of color across New York City,” said Monica M. Garcia, Community Education Coordinator at New Economy Project, which produced the maps. “For decades, banks have excluded neighborhoods of color from fair access to mortgage financing, allowing predatory lenders to flourish right up to the financial crisis. Now it’s déjà vu all over again, with banks failing adequately to provide conventional mortgages to people in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods.”

“The maps highlight the profound and continued need for strong government action against banks that violate fair housing and fair lending laws,” said Sarah Ludwig, Co-Director of New Economy Project.

The series includes a map of New York City and borough-level maps of Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx.

To produce the maps, New Economy Project analyzed home mortgage lending data for 2012, the most recent year for which the data are publicly available. New Economy Project received partial funding to produce the maps from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Housing Initiatives Program.

Reiss (and Others) on Post-Bloomberg Brooklyn

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The NY Daily News ran a story on a panel I moderated last night at Brooklyn Law School, The Fab Four! Brooklyn Heights Councilmen Since 1975 Share Stage and Talk About Past, Future, Bloomberg.  The speakers gave their thoughts on a variety of topics, including what’s next for New York City:

David Reiss: What are your predictions for a post-Bloomberg Brooklyn?

Levin: The likely mayor is going to be very far to the left. (Bill de Blasio) has been more engaged with people that are not elite and he has a greater vision of equity. It’s a big challenge because it’s a big city, like steering a gigantic ocean liner. I don’t think there will be lots of changes on day one but there will be policy changes that can be shifted that will cause a big change, like universal pre-kindergarten and mandatory inclusionary zoning. His goal is to decrease the economic disparity in the city and it’s a big challenge.

Yassky: A lot of the changes you’ve seen are here to say. There’s a much bigger swatch of Brooklyn that will be professional office workers, people who are working in Manhattan and not in traditional blue collar jobs. That spread throughout Brooklyn is here to stay. So many neighborhoods have excellent public spaces which is ameliorating inequality in the near term. It’s taking better public goods, like parks, to do it, and you don’t need rose colored glasses to see that. These changes don’t reverse very quickly and easily.

Fisher: He’ll be a mayor from Brooklyn, so it’s got to be a good thing for all of us. The nostalgia here is over; Brooklyn is the world again. When I grew up, people were nostalgic for the good old days. No one is nostalgic for those days now. Brooklyn has really reached a turning point. The bar has been raised in post-Bloomberg Brooklyn. So many people in Brooklyn now expect government to function and be responsive. As long as people feel invested in the borough, they’ll make it possible for Steve and whoever comes after to keep the progress going.