The stakes are high in the City Council race in Brooklyn's District 35, which covers parts of Crown Heights, Prospect Heights and Fort Greene. Residents in this gentrified brownstone district hold diverse views on housing, displacement and streetscape issues, often influenced by class and race.
Incumbent Council Member Crystal Hudson is popular, and if she wins, some political insiders have speculated that she has a chance to become Council Speaker. That said, there are plenty of candidates that are seeking a change.
Crystal Hudson
Incumbent Crystal Hudson said she has a clear policy vision: forging a better path for affordable housing, preserving tenant protections and increasing street safety.
“Affordability is the number one thing, and that spans across all areas, not just housing,” said Hudson, pointing to the most dire issues constituents are sharing with her.
Hudson said she wants to increase investments in food pantries and organizations that provide essential assistance, as these services will help residents cap their growing cost of living.
“We [also] want to make sure that people have access to good-paying jobs, so that they don’t have to visit food pantries,” said Hudson.
Free childcare is also a priority, and she pointed to her legislation that conceived The Bridge Project, an income assistance program for a cohort of 161 pregnant mothers facing housing insecurity.
Also on Hudson’s agenda are streetscape improvements, a controversial topic in District 35.
“We need to have streets that are safe for everyone using the street, but that are safe for those who are most vulnerable,” said Hudson, mentioning pedestrians, cyclists, wheelchair users and parents and caregivers with strollers.
The council member cited the 2023 death of 7-year-old Kamari Hughes, who was fatally struck by a New York City Police Department tow truck while crossing the intersection of North Portland and Myrtle Avenue in Fort Greene.
“Since then, the city has invested in daylighting, which means you can’t park as close to the curb, the parking starts a few spots in,” said Hudson. “Simple fixes like that save lives, and those are the types of things that everybody should be able to get behind.”
Dion Michael Ashman
Crown Heights native Dion Michael Ashman wants to "transform neighborhoods into communities," or recapturing the community cohesion he witnessed in the early 1980s.
“We’ve lost our way with that,” said Ashman, recalling his adolescence in the neighborhood, witnessing residents helping elders with housekeeping tasks and business owners with heavy deliveries. “Being communal is having a real, legitimate say-so, it’s leveraging yourself collectively for the better of the whole.”
To rebuild community spirit, he aspires to tackle the root causes of crime, working with violence interrupters, counselors and getting more youth to enter the trades.
“A lot of the kids that I went to high school with, they went straight into the workforce,” said Ashman, a graduate of Midwood High School, recalling his classmates securing stable opportunities in building maintenance or culinary arts.
“When people can earn enough money to pay their bills, save a little and maybe put a little into a kid's education or a family vacation, that’s a big thing – and crime gets reduced when you do that,” he said.
Ashman said his experiences in music production and as a youth coordinator with Community Board 8 helped create his vision for the district, which includes creating what he calls a “cabinet” of city agency officials that would directly address constituent concerns in District 35.
“It’s not a bunch of phone calls and emails,” said Ashman, mentioning that this cabinet would meet with constituents quarterly. “In that way, you could be more dialed in, getting the services that your district needs.”
Hector Robertson
For Hector Robertson, fighting for housing justice is personal.
Robertson, a lifelong tenant of Crown Heights and the founder of the Washington Avenue Botanic Block Association, has advocated for tenants in his building for over two decades. He says the city's enduring housing crisis is more complicated than it should be.
“Most of the problem is because we don’t sit down with these developers and say, okay, let’s make a deal – this is my vision of what I want my city to look like, and I want you to be a part of my vision,” said Robertson, while criticizing the City of Yes housing plan.
Robertson suggests a simpler process for communities to negotiate with developers, rather than the current rezoning process to create adequate housing.
“There’s no forward thinking here, it’s like a game of whack-a-mole,” said Robertson.
This is Robertson’s second run as council member; he ran in 2021, but lost in the primaries to Hudson.
If elected, he hopes to address several quality-of-life issues related to parking, regulation of bikes and providing designated areas for food delivery bikes to park in the neighborhood.
Robertson proposes requiring licenses and insurance for bikes, citing a lack of enforcement against bikers who hit pedestrians.
“I’m not opposing bikes,” he said. “The only thing I have an issue with is that we have to have a mechanism to enforce how they conduct themselves on the street. That’s it.”
Sharon Wedderburn
Sharon Wedderburn, the current chair of the land use committee on Community Board 8, is known as the “whippersnapper,” for her tendency to raise questions. But it wasn’t always this way, she admitted.
More than 20 years ago, Wedderburn realized her lack of involvement in Crown Heights when she discovered a traffic change on her block that she was unaware of.
“Am I reading, am I not going to meetings enough, how is this going to affect me beyond traffic patterns?” Wedderburn asked herself decades ago.
This lack of knowledge of the community led her to seek a seat on the community board. “I thought it was time I did some direct service,” she said.
Wedderburn, a graduate of Midwood High School, said she hopes to bring better educational opportunities to the district. Her starting point: developing strong relationships with state legislators to craft law that has a direct impact on children and increasing school curriculum options.
In addition, Wedderburn said she will focus on policies that stop displacement, relying less on private developers and more on the local and state government to develop housing.
“Not only would we increase the percentage of people that would have a preference but we would also like to have a look back period for persons that were displaced from the community,” said Wedderburn, pointing to the considerations cited in Community Board 8’s approval for the Atlantic Avenue rezoning as an example.
