Re: Private lot meeting - what a success!

[Paula Z. Segal, 596 Acres]

Send this to the advisory committee and the board, too! With a link to the improved page!

from somewhere in the city --->>>>

On Jun 27, 2013, at 4:33 PM, Richard Semegram <ric...@596acres.org> wrote:

Dear friends -

Thank you so much for joining us at this first effort to support your efforts.

You're all doing SUCH fantastic, interesting work around accessing privately owned lots. Whether it's for a dog run, a garden, or just more open space, it's all great. 

So - I made the googlegroup and I'll be adding your names to it after I send this email. You can easily unsubscribe at any time. 

Here's the URL to look at it - https://groups.google.com/d/forum/privatelotnetworknyc

And you can just send a message to this address to ask your questions - privatelot...@googlegroups.com

An important disclaimer: We are not fully taking on this project from an organizing perspective at this time. We will try to be keeping up with the messages on this group and chime in if we have a useful communication. But we can't do it all.

That being said - I also think that your collective knowledge might work faster and better than ours. 

I hope you can create a conversation with this group, and I would like to add people to it who get in touch with us if they have questions about strategy and tactics that would be better served by your wisdom. 

AND you can ask each other for support - at Community Board meetings, rallies, whatever!

Please let me know what we can do to improve our private lot page as a resource too! I've sent many of you this link, but we're trying to improve the words there, hopefully as a way to answer more of your questions, faster. Let me know what else could be there/what would be helpful. 

RESOURCES for now - 

----------------------------------------------------

How much does the owner owe in taxes? 

Start here: 

http://nycprop.nyc.gov/nycproperty/nynav/jsp/selectbbl.jsp

Look at the latest "Quarterly Statement." 

The most recent tax bill is also a good place to look for a good mailing address. 

----------------------------------------------------

Tax Abatements & exemptions: https://a836-propertyportal.nyc.gov/ 

----------------------------------------------------

Here's the bill we've worked with Steve Levin's office to have introduced:

http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A07823&term=2013

Here are some other folks who support tax incentives like the one we’ve described:

The Sustainable Economies Law Center, Policies for a Shareable City #11: Urban Agriculture, available at

http://www.shareable.net/blog/policies-for-a-shareable-city-11-urban-agriculture (2011).

And here’s California’s version of a tax incentive bill, in the legislature now:

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140AB551

----------------------------------------------------

There is A LOT of vacant private land in New York City:

THE BRONX: 3,700 lots, 510 acres

MANHATTAN: 994 lots, 139 acres

STATEN ISLAND: 4,255 lots, 1,217 acres

QUEENS: 7,175 lots, 854 acres

BROOKLYN: 6,675 lots, 602 acres

These numbers are from the Columbia Urban Design Lab’s report “The Potential for Urban Agriculture in New York City: Growing Capacity, Food Security, & Green Infrastructure,” available at http://www.urbandesignlab.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/urban_agriculture_nyc.pdf (2012). There’s a caveat here: the Lab’s numbers turned out to be about twice the amount of public vacant land in reality when we subjected the city’s data to a more refined process (see http://596acres.org/en/about/our-data/); we’d love to do the same for private lots but need some fiscal support to be able to do it. But even if we half the numbers above, that is an awful lot of acres.  If we had support to refine the city’s data regarding private vacant lots, the process would look like this: (1) We would start with MapPLUTO, which is the most complete and up-to-date land use database for the city. (2) We would filter the data to find just the parcels with private owners that have no buildings on them. (3) Someone would then look at each parcel individually using satellite imagery and Google Streetview to ensure that the parcel is actually not in use.

----------------------------------------------------

THANK YOU FOR COMING!!

We hope to eventually be able to take on this work in the future. And we'll do our best to remain in conversation with your work. 

Keep an eye out for a forthcoming email from the googlegroup. add it to your contacts!

:-)

-- 

Richard Semegram

Communications Coordinator

596acres.org

c:617-571-0059

Like 596 Acres on Facebook  |  Follow 596 Acres on Twitter  I  Sign up for the weekly News from the Acres