💡 5 Things I Learned About Community Advocacy in 2025

🌟 Author’s Note

Hello 👋 to the 123 Members of the Better Block Project. I hope you all are having a restful holiday break and enjoying whatever you are celebrating this year. As we close out 2025, I find myself grateful to the countless people in this group who’ve helped support our advocacy over the past year. Whether it was donating space, co-writing policy, picking up trash, writing email introductions, or telling me how things actually work in New York City — so many in this group have provided time, money and insight to push forward our cause to make New York City work better. Thank you so much for the partnership. I’m excited for what we can accomplish in 2026 🍾 

💡 5 Things I Learned About Community Advocacy in 2025

As we countdown to 2026, I wanted to share the 5 biggest things I learned about community advocacy this year. Advocacy work is new for me. My day job is in startups and technology. This whole effort started with a desire to improve a vacant property on Claver and Fulton, and so with each project we have taken on has come a lot of learning about how to effectively drive change in the city. I wanted to share the top 5 things I learned this past year, with the hope it helps support some of the causes many of you are working on. And, in the spirit of a midnight 🕛️ countdown, we’re going backwards!

5. 🧠 You Can Be the Smartest Person in New York on Your Problem

The way New York City works is…complicated. There are more than 50 city agencies. Over 300,000 people work for New York City servicing the 8.2M people who live in the city. As a result, at any given time the state and local government is managing a wide variety of issues. Whether it is improving vacant properties, better tree maintenance, or pushing landlords to pay more of their fines, the city has a vast portfolio it manages, and in my experience, most city and state officials don’t know much more than you about every issue, unless it’s their specialty. When we held calls about property tax reform, often times we were educating officials on how the system worked and the latest proposals.

While this was initially frustrating, it also presents a clear opportunity for education and advocacy. As an advocate, you can become one of the smartest people in New York on the issue you are trying to change. In addition to that, often when discussing policy with city council teams they are actually looking for your ideas (we’ve been asked multiple times about what we think should be done about property owner fine collection). What’s the best way to learn how things work? The city provides a wealth of resources to make this easy: NYC Open Data, City Comptroller Reports, and the Property Information Portal are just some of the many resources you can use to learn how the city works, why things are the way the are, and effective ways to change them for the better.

4. 🏛️ City and Elected Officials are Allies, Not Adversaries

Once you get involved in local NYC politics, it’s very easy to get frustrated with city and elected officials. After all, everyone who works for NYC government is responsible for delivering on what citizens need, so we should hold them accountable for doing that well. While it’s tempting to approach city and elected officials as adversaries, I have found it has limited effectiveness and can frankly be counterproductive. The first reason is while New York City is large, the group of people who work on local issues in your community board district is actually quite small (<30 people). They are also all really great individuals, many who’ve been working in the community for years. It’s critical to build solid working relationships with everyone, as the odds are you will be working closely with the same people to solve multiple problems in your neighborhood.

The second reason is many city and local officials are dealing with the same bureaucratic challenges we have to navigate. While our local NYPD precinct wanted to get the lights for the bus stop, they were dependent on a separate org to get that done (and even the UN!). While our City Councilor wanted to have more patrols near the bus stop, he is dependent on NYPD. While our State Assemblywoman agreed to remove the seating at the bus stop, the bus stop is actually run by the MTA so she didn’t have that authority. We can and have to fight this bureaucracy to make New York City work better, but we also have to be empathetic that everyone working in New York state and local government has to deal with it as well.

3. 🏃 Persistence (and Patience) is a Requirement to Get Anything Done

The aforementioned bureaucracy of New York City government is unfortunately a fact of life in New York. As a result, persistence and patience is crucial to getting anything done. Someday I will post a burn book of all of the out of office emails I’ve received, calls straight to voicemails, or even in one case, an elected official I had to 💨 chase out of a meeting to get their attention. I’ve internalized that while the city actually does a great job of managing many of the existing responsibilities it has (I am writing this after driving on to a plowed street less than 12 hours after one of our heaviest snow storms in years), for new things we advocate for it aw3takes a lot of time to compel the city to act.

It was only after 8 months of advocacy with 1105 Fulton and 26 Jefferson that we saw inspections that finally held the property owners accountable for the conditions of their buildings. It took 5 months for the MTA to remove the construction in front of the bus stop. One of my hopes with Better Block is we will find ways to speed the advocacy process up to make change happen faster. But, for now, we’re going to continue to be like the persistent widow (thanks Patricia for the story!), and follow up again and again until we see the positive change we’re trying to create in the neighborhood.

2. 🙋 When in Doubt, Do it Yourself

There’s two ways to approach solving problems in New York City. The first is to appeal to the city, and ask and advocate until you compel them to act. In some cases (like moving city construction), this is the only option you have, but unfortunately can take a very long time to get done. However, the second approach is to treat the city as just another stakeholder in your neighborhood, who can work with you to solve your problem, but is not the only entity that can solve the issue you are looking to change.

As I reflect on the most effective advocacy Better Block has done over the last year, in multiple cases it was the result of just doing the work ourselves. Whether it was removing the Wasp’s Nest in Williamsburg that was causing issues for a local business or gathering to pick up trash on Fulton Street, when we took action ourselves we were able to move a lot faster and instantly see the outcome we were looking for.

1. 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 There is Power in Numbers

The most meaningful thing I have learned this year is the power that the community can have when we band together. Two of the most successful advocacy efforts Better Block has had, improving the vacant properties on the Claver and Jefferson, and seeing the construction move on the Franklin bus stop have come as a result of many of us banding together as neighbors, block associations and businesses. City and elected officials respond when many of us reach out about the same issue, show up at Community Board meetings and advocate in person demanding action. I’ve seen it work multiple times and believe it is one of the best tools for driving change in New York City.

The other thing I have learned is if you see a problem in New York, whether it is a dirty street or a bus stop you’d like to improve, odds are there are a lot of other people who are experiencing that exact same problem. You just have to find them. I’ve met people connected to issues by passing out fliers on the street, speaking at Community Board meetings or just being overheard while talking to a friend on the street! It doesn’t matter how you meet people, but the more people you can bring together for your cause, the more effective you will be.

That’s all for this week’s update and the last update for the year. As usual, if you like what we’re doing at the Better Block Project, please forward this to someone you know that is looking to get more engaged in the neighborhood.

See you next year,

David