![]() “The New York metro area is facing a shortage of 772,000 apartments affordable to very low-income households ($28,020 to up to $60,050 for a family of three). It includes neighborhoods like Throggs Neck, Bergen Beach, Middle Village, and the South Shore of Staten Island. The New York Housing Conference, a leading coalition that advocates for affordable housing, has created an online tracker that identifies particular council districts where affordable housing simply isn’t getting built. To make matters worse, large swaths of the city have mastered the art of discouraging any form of development, presenting a hostile united front to for-profit and nonprofit builders alike. We’ll never cure the housing shortage at that snail’s pace. The plans that did advance took, on average, two and a half years to get approval - delays that add an estimated 11 to 16 percent to the cost of building. A recent report by the Citizens Budget Commission notes that a paltry 107 requests for zoning changes went to the Department of City Planning in the four years between 20, and 40 percent of them were not approved. One reason for the price spikes is the time-consuming expense of securing the zoning changes needed to build or expand apartment buildings in New York. Those are the highest prices in history. We’re seeing more Airbnb units available than vacant apartments in our city. The average asking rent in Manhattan is now over $5,000 a month, with Brooklyn following at $3,800 and northwest Queens at $3,300. But the scale and scope of New York’s housing emergency demands a much quicker pace of development, one that doesn’t bog down in a political firefight over every tiny new project. Because while we’re bickering and bargaining, the laws of supply and demand are grinding families down. Rallies, debates, and public hearings are the beating heart of democracy, and I’m all for it. The fight has grown so heated that Marjorie Velasquez, the local council member (who opposes the project), skipped a community board meeting about the rezoning, citing “a number of threats made against me on several community forums.” We just want to keep it the way it is,” said John Cerini, president of the Bronx Coalition Against Upzoning, which opposes the project. One sticking point for opponents is that the proposed buildings would be eight stories tall in a neighborhood where most homes are half that height. “We have a beautiful community. The City Planning Commission has unanimously approved an upzoning that would move the deal forward, leaving final approval (or denial) in the hands of the City Council. The Bronx project would include 168 lower-cost apartments, 99 of which would be reserved for senior citizens and 22 for veterans, along with a supermarket and recreation space for local kids. We need to find places where the rent can be affordable,” said Adams. On the same day, Mayor Eric Adams joined a rally on the steps of City Hall with members of the construction and building service unions to push the required rezoning. Last week, members of the City Council sat through six soul-sapping hours of testimony about an effort to build about 350 badly needed affordable apartments at the corner of Bruckner Boulevard and Crosby Avenue in Throggs Neck. Even with tens of thousands of people living in shelters, our city continues to waste time, money, and energy battling over even small efforts to increase the stock of reasonably priced apartments. Know Your Meme points to a recent resurgence of the meme on iFunny, but the snail eventually made it to TikTok this month.New York has become sadly inured to the ongoing housing crisis that is driving so many other municipal problems, including poverty, eviction, homelessness, and racial segregation. It was also referred to as the “ snail assassin.” Reddit The question popped back up on Reddit throughout the years, though with some hypothetical variations. “This is the dumbest hypothetical question ever,” laughed Rooster Teeth Productions co-founder Gus Sorola. ![]() Additionally, the money gives you immortality but the snail is also immortal. In that scenario, initially proposed by Rooster Teeth personality Gavin Free, you’re given $10 million but in exchange you’re followed by a snail for the rest of your life, and if it touches you you’re dead. While it’s become popular again in the last few months, it’s already ancient in internet years: Know Your Meme traces its origin back to an August 2014 episode of Rooster Teeth Podcast. ![]() The essential question: Would you take millions of dollars in exchange for being trailed by a snail-which kills you if it touches you-for the rest of your life? Have you made it to SnailTok? Then you’ve likely pondered a hypothetical question involving an immortal snail.
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