As the IBX gathers steam, some New Yorkers may be at risk of displacement

In “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,” author Robert Caro estimated that master builder Robert Moses displaced “hundreds of thousands from their homes and tore the homes down” during a seven-year stretch of New York City development projects that included the creation of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

Now another interborough transit development project is being fast tracked and a non-profit wants to make sure its development doesn’t lead to displacement for New Yorkers living along this new transit corridor, where vacant lots and vulnerable buildings may be ripe for development.

The Center for NYC Neighborhoods (CNYCN), which works to protect affordable home ownership, recently released a report tied to the coming Interborough Express (IBX) route connecting Jackson Heights, Queens to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. (In October, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the environmental review phase of the $2.75 billion project had begun.)

Among its many solutions, the CNYCN report recommended include enacting cease-and-desist zones, passing the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) and Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), supporting local businesses, and the equitable ownership requirement implemented by NYC's Department of Housing Preservation and Development in 2020.

The IBX will likely improve quality of life for those in the outer boroughs who typically need to travel into Manhattan to go from Queens to Brooklyn or vice versa. According to the report, the IBX will reduce travel time for the 80,000 daily weekday rides that take place between Queens and Brooklyn by at least 30 minutes, and will offer door-to-door travel time of about 39-45 minutes.

At risk neighborhoods along the IBX

The report by CNYCN’s Julian St. Patrick Clayton, director of policy and research, and Ariana Shirvani, senior program manager, focused on the one- to four-family houses, co-ops and condos near the route’s proposed stations. It also included a displacement risk score based on HPD’s equitable development tool for each of the associated neighborhoods near the stations.

Clayton and Shirvani found neighborhoods near four stations along the proposed IBX line are at the greatest risk: the Roosevelt Ave. stop in Jackson Heights, Grand Ave. in Elmhurst, Atlantic Avenue/Broadway Junction, and Livonia Avenue.

The IBX will run through predominantly Black, Brown, and immigrant neighborhoods, they wrote. “If we’re to prevent displacement, we must work to ensure that the new spaces being created prioritize the community before the capital inflows and profiteering arrive,” the report said.

Proactive anti-displacement protections

In an interview with Brick Underground, Clayton said that several of the report’s numerous proposed solutions already exist—such as deed theft protection programs—but need to be expanded or fully funded in order to have a bigger impact and reach more owners. A broad, multi-level plan has a “multiplier effect” that will “create durable outcomes,” he said. Not just in regard to the IBX “but changes happening in NYC at a breakneck pace.”

 The report makes three main sets of proposals:

The first is to enact proactive anti-displacement protections by creating cease-and-desist zones, property tax exemptions, an anti-flipping tax and allocating more funding for existing homeowner stabilization programs, including an “evergreen” capital pool for homeowner preservation programs.

Owners would opt in to a no-solicitation registry enforced by the New York Department of State and that prevents homeowners from receiving harassing calls, door knocks, and fliers from speculators. Property tax exemptions can reduce owners’ expenses and exempt them from potential inclusion in a tax lien sale.

The second set of recommendations focus on expanding affordable housing options through TOPA and COPA, boosting funding for city and state programs that incentivize first-time buyers, consolidating public properties and vacant land into a single community land trust, or multiple land trusts, along the proposed IBX line.

Community land trusts can provide permanently affordable housing and they also put development “on a shelf” or pause projects, Clayton explained, giving residents and advocates time to organize and collaborate on what they want to see be developed.

The third set of proposals is aimed at supporting small businesses and creating affordable housing integrated with the community, for example: the equitable owner requirement that minority or women-owned businesses or qualified nonprofit partners hold a 25 percent ownership stake in any affordable housing project on public land.

The takeaway

“Engagement of the community has to be loud and sincere and meet people where they are and give them the tools they need to succeed and help them maintain their place in the community,” Clayton said. “Whenever there is development announced, you see a flurry of activity and upheaval in the neighborhood. People want to capitalize on zoning change for investment.”

With the IBX becoming a reality, change along that corridor is going to accelerate, he said. “We’re now on the clock to make sure the protections are in place.”

Clayton also cited a positive trend: Many U.S. cities are enacting protections for owners from predatory speculators and boosting affordable housing measures, like the Longtime Owner Occupant Program that Philadelphia implemented for its vulnerable homeowners in 2014.

Similarly, he said he thinks the incoming Zohran Mamdani administration will build on major zoning initiatives like Mayor Eric Adams’s City of Yes and protect affordable housing. "I'm hopeful the incoming administration is part of that national trend. I don’t have any reason not to expect" this stance, he said.