The Chinatown Group Rezoning Plan was developed by members of the Pratt Center for Community Development together with community members from Chinatown and the LES. The plan gives the community control of what gets built in our own backyard, keeping development accountable to the communities of color that make up the LES and Chinatown.

The planning initiative will include the area south of Houston from the East River to Bowery; east of Avenue D from Houston to 14th Street; and east from Centre Street from Spring to Park Row. Our community plan is based on the following principles:

1. Protect the homes, workplaces, and businesses of the people who currently reside and work here; and not a plan driven by tourism and for the benefit of developers.
2. Includes and gives equal protections to the members of the Chinatown and Lower East Side community as one with common interests; not divisive, exclusionary, nor discriminatory.
3. Provides for the building of low-income housing and preserves the stock of rent-stabilized, Mitchell Lama, Section 8, and NYCHA housing in which the majority of current residents reside, particularly prohibiting the privatization and sale of NYCHA housing.
4. Preserves and protects the ethnic small businesses that serve our community, by prohibiting key money practices, providing for rent regulations for small businesses.
5. Provides for mandatory, on-site low-income housing for every new residential construction.
6. Defines affordable housing according to what is affordable to the low-income working families that live and work in the community.
7. Limits luxury high-rise development.

View the plan here