NAG Town Hall Meeting

Residents new and old packed into the Holy Ghost Ukrainian Church Hall in Williamsburg Thursday evening for the first ever Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG) town hall meeting, where community members were encouraged to voice their concerns, opinions, and suggestions about how to improve the quality of life in the neighborhood.

The meeting, which lasted roughly two hours, featured short speeches from NAG board members and community representatives about specific issues, as well as an organized group workshop during that broke attendees into clusters and asked them to identify specific issues about which they are particularly concerned.

“This was the first meeting dedicated to opening the floor to all issues,” explained Michael Freedman-Schnapp, one of the meeting’s central organizers and the co-Chair of NAG. “In the past, we’ve had meetings to respond to specific issues, but the most important thing now is to address all of the challenges of building a successful neighborhood. We wanted to take a more open approach this time, in order to enable the community to start working on the problems they feel are most urgent.”

NAG is a civic organization that was established in 1994 as Neighbors Against Garbage, and has since adjusted their acronym to include a wider variety of issues, such as affordable housing, public transportation, and positive community growth and development. NAG decided to hold a town hall not only to give residents a chance to speak out about their problems, but also to inspire more civic participation in the organization, as well as to identify more specific issues to tackle in the future.

“There has been a focus on trying to serve as a civic organization as opposed to an advocacy organization,” Freedman-Schnapp said. “We’d like to be able to have people feel like we’re fighting for them, and that they’d like to fight with us.”

Among the many topics discussed were better and more reliable transportation; more expansive rights for cyclists; higher quality parks and green spaces; a greater sense of community cohesion; preservation of the neighborhood’s historical character; and, perhaps the most pressing issue of all, the quality, quantity and preservation of affordable housing.

“There are so many more issues affecting the neighborhood than there used to be,” said Jim Rodecker, a NAG Co-founder. “The neighborhood is growing so fast, so now there’s over-development, landlord harassment, tenant displacement. Long-term residents just can’t afford to live here anymore, and that is a huge problem.”

In June, NAG decided to respond to the increasing problem of tenant harassment and displacement by hiring a full-time tenant organizer, Ryan Kuonen, who also spoke at the meeting.

“It’s all very daunting,” said Kuonen. “There are so many people here concerned about affordable housing. HPD has promised to build 1,000 new affordable units, but it’s not enough. Nowadays, we live in a free market where landlords, in theory, can charge what they want, and I know a lot of people who live in the neighborhood, and want to stay, but are dedicating over 50 percent of their income to their rent. They love the community but it’s getting harder and harder and, eventually, they might be forced to move. As members of the community we have got to draw the line.”

Aside from the more concrete and tangible issues addressed, a common concern voiced among town hall attendees new and old was the need to preserve and develop the character of the Greenpoint/Williamsburg community in the face of enormous physical, economic and demographic changes.

“We’re not here to be the old timers club or the gentrifiers club” Freedman-Schnapp said. “We think there are a lot of issues that people can work on together to improve the overall quality of life here.”

Irene Palmese, a longtime resident of Williamsburg who has lived in the neighborhood for over 40 years, agreed.

“I realize that there are major changes going on in the neighborhood, and so we too must make some changes,” Palmese said. “New and old residents, we all have common problems and concerns. There has got to be multi-generational involvement in the easing some of the pressure. I just don’t want to lose our sense of community altogether. I don’t want this neighborhood to become overly commercialized. I don’t want to live in a Times Square environment.”

On the other end of the spectrum, new resident Blair Blanchard, who has lived in Greenpoint for less than one year, also showed up to the meeting, ready to get involved and try to ease some of the tension between old and new residents that often comes with the territory of any rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

“I have lots of questions about the neighborhood and I’d like to be a part of the answer,” Blanchard explained. “There is a lot of tension in this area. For example, I never go into Polish businesses, and I’m sure they view me a certain way too. But I like that it’s diverse here, and I want to make sure that I’m part of this dialogue too.”