– Kenneth Kearns Desk

Files pile up, emails are coming in, and the phone can’t stop from ringing. While trying to satisfy everyone on the other end of those emails and phone calls, community board members gather at the round table to face the bigger issue. High rise buildings, and wall-to-wall apartments being built and accumulating a higher population into neighborhoods. Residents can’t imagine being forced to sell their precious homes, destroying the moments they’ve already created and having to alter their future.

Being denied by all fifty-nine-community boards in New York City, the Mayor’s Housing Plan is certainly not being welcomed with open arms. Especially not by a neighborhood like Throgs Neck, who strive to preserve the area, ideal for family homes. District Manager Kenneth Kearns, for Community Board 10, does not seem convinced with the plan and is dedicated to making sure the Throgs Neck neighborhood is preserved.

“Right now if the zoning for quality and affordability, and mandatory inclusionary housing passes the city council without any amendment and if it goes in the way it is” said District Manager Kenneth Kearns “The chances are very strong that this neighborhood is not going to look how it looks right now”.

The properties in Throgs are more likely to be owned by more than half of the population, than it is to be rented, according to the Findahome website. Families waterfront properties may be replaced by high-rise buildings, the population would sky rocket, road cut in’s would be put into place, and strip malls would take over East Tremont Avenue.

– East Tremont Avenue

For some residents the physical change is not their only worry, to preserve the neighborhood for them means keeping ownership of their homes. The plan offers affordable housing to low-income families, seniors, and the 60,000 homeless people in New York City. Will this plan be able to provide home for them and everybody else comfortably?

Members of Community Board 10 have discussed the possible long-term outcomes of this plan. The future generations being at the top of their list, without the ownership of family homes, families won’t have anything to pass down and may be forced to relocate themselves. Providing homes for those in need may not sound like a bad thing but members question the deeper issues that come with it. Having a roof over your head comes with the basic need of having food to feed yourself and a more complicated need, shaping a future. Can providing shelter take care of all of the above?

No one can imagine a city full of no progress. Having denied the plan, all community boards may agree that some things are not as good as they seem and other things could just use a different solution.

“All your going to do is clump people together in high rise buildings with no space between them, your just creating ghettos” said District Manager Kenneth Kearns “You cant do that if you want to see how its suppose to be done with high rise buildings go to co-op city, there’s so much space”.

The New York Times described Throgs Neck as one of the last middle and upper middle class areas in the Bronx. Residents feel so lucky to have the feel of living in the suburbs but still being right in New York City. Relocating would mean leaving behind something residents define as priceless. The housing plan seems to already be pushing some away.

“I raised all four of my kids here, and two of them now live walking distance, providing the best for my three grand children means the world to me. So If I go they go” said Maggie Santiago, a longtime resident of the Throgs Neck neighborhood.

Not only are community board members putting their inputs, residents are weighing in on the decision. Being so use the natural setting and spacious living, residents won’t think twice on whether they would stay or go. The bad outweigh the good for Throgs Neck residents especially since the bad may be long term and chances are the good is temporary. A lot is at stake if the Throgs Neck neighborhood fails to preserve it.

While residential communities realize what may be at stake others can’t seem to figure out how anyone would not want to help provide a possible solution to the homelessness epidemic New York City is going through.

“I disagree with the residents of Throgs Neck because they are not being open minded to accepting people in unfortunate circumstances, that aren’t in their tax brackets, into their community” said Lawrence Smith, who works for the Board of Elections.

The question of whether Mayor De Blasio will make any changes to the housing plan still remains. Community board members anticipate the meeting taking place in early January 2016, that will reopen the discussion about the housing plan.