I attended a community board meeting wit Katie, Alec, and Nicole in Sunset Park on February 18th.There was a fairly small turnout at the meeting as a result of poor weather, meaning that quorum was not met and nothing could be considered official. In spite of this, the meeting was conducted in a serious and professional manner. Representatives for many significant community offices such as senator and assemblymen showed up and gave brief updates on tasks that were being worked on and accomplished in their respective offices. On top of this, the majority of the meeting was dedicated to discussing three primary issues – education, traffic, and housing.

Sunset Park is in desperate need of more schools for its children, and a portion of our meeting was spent discussing a current plan to build a new K-8 school, as well as some of the difficulties it may face. The two primary issues were the process of obtaining the land, and the presence of extremely dangerous traffic in the area around the proposed school site. If necessary, community leaders are confident that they could claim the land through eminent domain, but they’d like to explore other options first. There is less confidence regarding a solution to the traffic problem. People proposed the introduction of an overpass/underground tunnel, as well as more crossing guards, but there was no dominant opinion.

Traffic is a prevalent issue throughout all of Sunset Park, and there are a surprising amount of trucks running throughout the community. In addition to being a significant safety hazard, they also introduce a great deal of noise and environmental pollution. Many people voiced opinions against the high density of truck traffic in the community, but few people really proposed solutions. There was brief mention of planning to build parking complexes for the trucks to try keeping them in a more safe, centralized location, but very few concrete details were addressed.

Finally, there was a portion of the meeting dedicated to the discussion of housing. There is a fairly significant housing crisis in Sunset Park, which is the result of two smaller, albeit still significant, issues. There are a number of Sunset Park residents enrolled in community schools who have, as a result of some strange flaws in the housing system, have had to take residence in shelters in the Bronx. For people still residing in Sunset Park, overcrowding is a rampant issue affecting large portions of the population. Families are doubling up in apartments designed for single families. There were some rumblings of building a new homeless shelter in Sunset Park, but they seemed equally as unreliable as those brought up about truck traffic.

The discussion of housing was particularly interesting, as it lined up with what I saw during the community observation visit. There was a surprisingly small number of residential buildings, especially compared to the extremely large population of people roaming the streets. Seeing as many of the residential buildings seemed to have vacant, broken down rooms, it’s not hard to see that there are far more people in the community than there are places to store them. Lack of housing is a serious issue in this community, and I’m glad to have seen it discussed – however lightly.