Click on to examine a few of the Myths vs Details about Metropolis of Sure: https://freelancersunion.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/myths-vs-facts.pdf

New York has all the time been a beacon of prosperity for impartial and entrepreneurial folks making an attempt to make it on their very own. Whether or not they’re newly arrived immigrants beginning small companies, new faculty grads with a toolbox of expertise in design and advertising and marketing, or seasoned professionals on the lookout for extra flexibility, the way forward for work is going down right here. However regardless of all of the well-understood challenges that freelancers and small enterprise house owners face, there are different rules that many don’t understand is usually a barrier to success: our zoning rules.

That’s why we help the Metropolis of Sure for Financial Alternative. The second of Mayor Adams’ “Metropolis of Sure” zoning initiatives, this proposal would help our metropolis’s financial system in quite a lot of methods – together with plenty of ways in which would assist freelancers particularly. This laws is within the last levels, which is why it’s essential for New Yorkers to contact their Metropolis Councilmembers to voice their help.  Listed here are a few of the causes we’re backing Metropolis of Sure for Financial Alternative:

First, Metropolis of Sure for Financial Alternative can be the biggest enlargement of area accessible for clear manufacturing “maker areas” within the historical past of New York’s zoning. From corporations like pottery studios or microbreweries to smaller Etsy sellers, present zoning requires profitable clear manufacturing operations to find in far-flung “manufacturing” zones – a relic of the factories of the Sixties, reasonably than a contemporary understanding of how issues are made within the 2020s. 

Second, Metropolis of Sure would additionally modernize and finish often-discriminatory restrictions on house occupations. Particularly in a post-pandemic financial system, when even New Yorkers who’re full-time staff are working from house, banning house occupations like barbers or inside designers is outdated and out of contact with the way in which New Yorkers are working as we speak.

Many of those restrictions on house occupations had been established partially by individuals who aimed to discriminate towards ladies and folks of colour. It’s long gone time that we get zoning out of the way in which of people that wish to arrange a house enterprise, and make sure that longstanding house companies don’t function in worry of an arbitrary crackdown. (Cheap restrictions on noise and different environmental results would live on.)

And third however definitely not least, Metropolis of Sure for Financial Alternative would replace outdated and counterproductive guidelines on nightlife and leisure that make it more durable for artists, performers, and musicians to make a dwelling in New York.

At this time, zoning prevents some venues from promoting present instances or gathering cowl expenses, even in locations the place music or performances are already permitted – an pointless restriction that makes life more durable for the individuals who have made New York the artistic mecca that it’s. And zoning guidelines make it unlawful in some locations for patrons to face up and dance to dwell music, even in venues the place music is already allowed.

Metropolis of Sure would lastly change that, placing an finish to the final vestiges of the Cabaret Regulation that exist within the zoning textual content. Nightlife and leisure will probably be regulated the way in which they need to be: by venue capability and quantity, not primarily based on arbitrary distinctions between zoning districts.

These are just some of the ways in which the Metropolis of Sure for Financial Alternative initiative would enhance New York’s financial system, make life simpler for freelancers, and guarantee New York stays a artistic hub for future generations. This initiative is within the last levels, and it wants each voice mustered in help. Freelancers, impartial staff, and anyone who has ever loved a band with dinner or needed to journey throughout city for a birthday celebration ought to converse as much as their area people board and Metropolis Councilmember in help of this very important proposal.

New York has all the time been a spot the place should you had a dream, you could possibly make it a actuality. We will’t let the zoning of the Sixties maintain us again from that imaginative and prescient in 2023.