iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Shot / chaser from Great Kills, Staten Island abc7ny.com/post/staten-...

ABC 7 headline “Some Staten Island residents worried about impacts of City of Yes affordable housing plan”

From the article: “Mark Balistreri lives in 104 Oakdale. He says the actual plan is to build two, two-family homes.”

Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Even those who don't traditionally get involved in housing questions have supported them. The League of Women Voters, @citizensunionny.bsky.social, @cbcny.bsky.social, @nylcv.bsky.social and environmental advocates, Democratic clubs, and LGBTQ+ advocates have spoken out.

Op-ed from leaders of New Kings Democrats and Brooklyn Young Democrats headlined "Brooklyn! Vote 'Yes' on the Affordable Housing Proposals

Citizens Union Announces Support for All 2025 Ballot Questions

NYLCV's graphic reading "Vote Yes on Prop 3"

Abundance NY's tweet reading "Those roadblocks are particularly threatening to our most marginalized communities, like LGBTQ+ New Yorkers seeking safe haven in the city. That’s why @JimOwles @LIDbrooklyn @sageusa and @AliForneyCenter are all in the coalition."

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

And advocates pushing to re-shape our housing system to deliver deeply-affordable, community-controlled social housing have supported these proposals as a step toward a more equitable city.

Michael Kinnucan's column "You Can't Have Social Housing Without Building Housing"

Gianpaolo Baiocchi and H. Jacob Carlson's op-ed "YES on Proposals 2-4 for social housing"

A screenshot of Ben Max's tweet that Cea Weaver is voting yes on housing ballot measures

Barika Williams (ANHD)'s op-ed "Yes on 2 to speed affordable housing"

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Longtime housing experts and policy thinkers have made it clear that these are long-needed, commonsense reforms to the city's land use and housing systems.

Howard Slatkin (CHPC)'s op-ed in support

Rachel Fee (New York Housing Conference)'s op-ed in support

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

The people who advocate for, and build, affordable housing in New York have been clear about how important these measures are.

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Not to mention the elected officials in support, who have fought for a more affordable city and state for years: Kathy Hochul, @bradlander.bsky.social, Donovan Richards, @bkbpreynoso.bsky.social, @marklevinenyc.bsky.social, @keithpowersnyc.bsky.social, Erik Bottcher, and many more.

Brad Lander, Kathy Hochul, Mark Levine, and Keith Powers flyering.

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

They've also been supported by eminent columnists and urban policy thinkers, including @errollouis.bsky.social, @felipedlh.bsky.social, Jessica Katz, and @profschleich.bsky.social.

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Tomorrow is Election Day. I hope you'll vote for proposals 2-6. If you'll indulge me, a quick run-down of the remarkable coalition of supporters: Starting with the editorial boards of the Daily News, Post, and Crain's, and though the Times has declined to weigh in, Mara Gay.

The Daily News Editorial Board endorsement

The New York Post editorial board endorsement

The Crain's New York editorial board endorsement

A paragraph from a Mara Gay New York Times column

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

Marathon day vibes are immaculate

A man in a banana suit holding a sign that reads “Welcome to Queens the world’s borough”

A sign that reads “may your time be faster than game 3 of the World Series”

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Would recommend you read the elections section in the Commission’s report (it’s very readable, I promise!), but this in particular is on page 95 www.nyc.gov/assets/chart...

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

These are straightforwardly just descriptions of *what already happens today.* We don’t have to speculate: a wave of cities have moved to even-year elections, and what has happened is that more people vote, and when they do, they spend time looking into what’s downballot. That’s a new audience.

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Very cool* how Councilmembers are weaponizing 130% AMI units that come from 421-a to stop proposals for city-financed deeply affordable housing, or MIH levels (avg 60% AMI = $2187 for a two-bed). *not cool

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

NY Daily News endorses Questions 2, 3, and 4: www.nydailynews.com/2025/10/27/d...

The lack of affordable housing in the five boroughs is an emergency, like a raging fire, and decisive action is needed immediately. The Council has specialized in stalling and killing development and they must lose that power. The public, not the pols, will have the final say with the trio of ballot proposals.

Proposal 2 would move affordable housing plans faster through the approval process instead of the seven months now required. Proposal 3 creates a faster review system for smaller land use projects and Proposal 4 has a new appeals structure, where the Council retains a role, but not sole discretion, to sign off on a rezoning.

The Council has been wielding that power irresponsibly, which they politely call “member deference,” but we correctly label it as “local veto” over entire developments with hundreds or even thousands of units.

That obstinance has to end and it will when the three amendments are made to the City Charter.

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

open.substack.com/pub/derektho...

But digital media hasn’t become the antidote to television. Digital media, empowered by the serum of algorithmic feeds, has become super-television: more images, more videos, more isolation. Home-alone time has surged as our devices have become more bottomless feeds of video content. Rather than escape the solitude crisis that Putnam described in the 1990s, we now seem to be more on our own. (Not to mention: meaner and stupider, too.)

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

The fifth proposal that will be on NYC ballots this November would move NYC toward holding elections in even-numbered years, when more than double the number of people vote.

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Yesterday, the 2025 NYC Charter Revision Commission voted to adopt its final report and put five questions on the November ballot - four on housing and land use. These would help build more housing more quickly, especially affordable housing and modest housing.

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

New history of housing and the NYC Charter! Come for the present-day implications, stay for this amazing cartoon from 1936. www.nyc.gov/assets/chart...

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

"If we're concerned about equity, allowing apartments everywhere has strong support from the least affluent, and is only opposed by the wealthiest households." cityobservatory.substack.com/p/the-week-o...

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

This is quantifiable! tcf.org/content/repo...

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Residents of Oyster Bay Cove on Long Island are so committed to the village’s “exclusivity” that they’re protesting the adaptive reuse of a former girl’s school to house 28 graduate students. (Kudos to them for admitting it, I suppose) nypost.com/2025/01/26/u...

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

There’s always a zoning angle: anti-missile activists in suburban Massachusetts were motivated in part by a fear that military employment would lead to denser housing (from Geismer’s DON’T BLAME US)

Picture of a book with highlighted text:

Residents like Edward Kendrick of Wakefield and Beverly Bjorkman of Reading got involved in the anti-ABM effort because they feared the installation would force local officials to change their zoning laws to allow apartments for army employees.

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

Lovely write up of why City of Yes matters from Ginia Bellafante: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/19/n...

The guiding principle behind City of Yes is to distribute the responsibility of creating housing more evenly, essentially extending it to every neighborhood in the city. Say you are a homeowner with an underused backyard. Under certain conditions, you can now build or repurpose a structure of up to 800 square feet to rent out long term (Airbnb use is not approved) or generously hand over to your aging parents. The crux of the plan, though, is an emphasis on modest structures of five or six stories rather than 30.

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Can’t get enough of these congestion pricing anecdotes via @dodai.bsky.social nytimes.com/2025/01/11/nyregion/new-york-congestion-pricing-reaction.html

Ms. Robbins, who grew up in Manhattan but now lives in Queens, compared navigating the intersection where she works, at Canal and Lafayette Streets, to a game of Frogger — at least in the old days.

“It would stress me out just getting lunch,” she said. Thursday was her first day there post-congestion pricing. “I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I was able to cross safely, and cars weren’t honking. It was like a whole other world.”

“It was much easier to cross the street,” said Mr. Dandia, a 32-year-old native of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. “Definitely quieter. Definitely calmer.”

Mr. Dandia, who also teaches a New York City history course at CUNY Guttman Community College, added that he saw great potential in congestion pricing. “I think it could lead to a renaissance — a street renaissance.”

In an email, Mr. Sethi, 42, reported that his Lyft driver got him from downtown Manhattan to Newark Liberty International Airport in just 23 minutes. “No honking, zero congestion around the Holland Tunnel, no need to leave an extra half-hour early to account for traffic,” he said.

On Tuesday, a social media user named Ali Lyles posted a video on TikTok in which he compared being charged a toll as he crossed a bridge to “being robbed without a gun.”

Just a short time later, he posted another video, acknowledging that he had saved half an hour from his commute. “There wasn’t no traffic, bruh,” he said. “I might actually like congestion pricing!”

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

Whole interview with @schatz.bsky.social is worth reading but something that I think is underlying a lot of the language/Groups/campus activism debates, including this answer: the internet has basically flattened the various roles of political actors. www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Q: How did that happen? How did Democrats become the party of trying to sound like the precise vocabulary of whatever the latest campus lingo is?

A: I don’t know, except that there is a category of folks on the left and the right who define themselves by their willingness to say unpopular things. And saying an unpopular thing to them, is definitionally courageous. And so even though if you look at most of our great leaders throughout American history, they tried to find the most popular way to say the thing they were working on. Not the most provocative way to say it. And yet, if you define yourself online or in real life as against the establishment, then however I phrase something, is definitionally not good enough.

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

I’m thrilled that NYC passed City of Yes. More than a unit count, what we've done is change the deeply inequitable status quo for housing in NYC. Allowing more housing types in more places - and ensuring that *every* neighborhood allows housing - is how we'll build a more affordable, integrated NYC.

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Casey Berkovitz @caseyberk.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

"NYC has done very little to build new housing, a grave mistake that drove rents out of control, making it increasingly difficult for many people to live in the nation’s largest city. Finally, tho, the city may be on the verge of changing course." @maragay.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12...