🗓️ New Year, Renewed Focus for Better Block

🌟 Author’s Note

Hello 👋 and Happy New Year 🥳 to the 2 new members of the Better Block Project, bringing our total group to 125 members and growing 💪 Before I dive into this week’s update, I wanted to share an amazing New York Times article one of our members, Jenny, shared with me about how neighborhood activists in Philadelphia are beautifying their blocks to improve safety and build a deeper sense of community. So much of what they are doing in Philadelphia rhymes with what we’re trying to do here in Brooklyn: adding streetlights, cleaning up vacant lots, and building community gardens to invest in the quality of their blocks. The result has been closer-knit communities and safer streets. It’s a testament that the work that we are doing together at Better Block is working, and it’s only the beginning.

🗓️ New Year, Renewed Focus for Better Block

The New Year brings an opportunity to reset on where we are with Better Block and how we’re operating. This New Year, I wanted to take the opportunity to share that we’re focusing the problems Better Block is working on to help us increase our impact and move faster. Over the next 6 months, we’re going to narrow our focus to sticking the landing on our most important priorities, which include:

1. 🚌 Improving the Bus Stop on Franklin and Fulton

2. 📜 🏚️ Policy to Hold Negligent Landlords More Accountable

3. 🏗️ Removing the Scaffolding on 1105 Fulton Street

We chose these three specific issues as they represent areas where 📣 this community has expressed the most interest in seeing the problems improved, and it’s where we still have 🔨 work to do to get these issues in a better state. As a result, it means we’re going to be spending less time on the following:

1. 🌳 Building a New Park: While this is an amazing opportunity to improve vacant lots in Bed Stuy, it’s simply too large of a project for us to take on given our resources today

2. 🏚️ Working on Other Vacant Properties: We believe the best way for us to make an impact on vacant properties is through our policy to hold negligent landlords accountable, so we’re focusing there

It’s painful to stop working on each of these issues as there is work to do on all of them. However, by focusing on our top three priorities we increase our chance of success and will maximize the impact Better Block can have. Note, we’ll also be aligning on next steps with trash on Fulton in our upcoming Tiger team meeting this Thursday. If you still want to discuss re-activating a vacant lot or improving a specific vacant building, reply and let me know. I am always here to help!

Where We Are on Better Block’s Top Priorities

With that, here is a quick state of the union on each of our top priorities, and the next steps we’re taking to push each of these issues forward.

🚌 Improving the Bus Stop on Franklin and Fulton

The state of the bus stop on Franklin and Fulton has dramatically improved since the construction has been removed. I walked by the bus stop both during the day Thursday and at night on Friday and in both cases, there was no illicit activity occurring. However, we still haven’t heard back from the MTA on our remaining three asks to improve the bus stop including add lighting, removing the seating near Fulton and adding temporary security until it is fully safe. It’s also worth noting that after multiple months, the NYPD lights are still in the wrong place on Fulton Street.

Our primary focus over the next few months will be our second top ask 💡 adding lighting, specifically 1-2 street or wall lights on the Franklin side of the street. After walking the bus stop at night yesterday, it’s clear the area at the bus stop is very dark at night, and by adding street lights this can reduce the likelihood of any illicit activity occurring. It’s also an achievable ask, as there are large street lights both across the street and on the corner of Franklin and Lefferts Place, as seen below.

We’ve already had conversations with DOT about adding lighting, and it is in the MTA ask, which is a solid position for us. My plan is to follow up aggressively with both organizations to get this lighting live, with a target of completing this by the end of Spring 2026.

📜 🏚️ Policy to Hold Negligent Landlords More Accountable

We’ve narrowed our focus on policy to hold negligent landlords more accountable. We’re focused primarily on increasing the collection rates of fines from violations on derelict properties, in order to create a real incentive to keep vacant properties in better shape, or in the best case, get them occupied as soon as possible.

Our next steps here are calls with both the Department of Finance (scheduled this Friday) and OATH (to be scheduled) to better understand why collection rates are so low to recommend the best policy solution.

In positive news, in Mayor Mamdani’s first couple of days in office it’s clear holding negligent landlords accountable is a top priority. Mamdani’s third executive order was the re-establishment of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, with a stated purpose to hold landlords accountable for repairs and crackdown on repeat offenders — the exact same goals we have for our policy.

🏗️ Removing the Scaffolding on 1105 Fulton Street

After almost two years of advocacy to improve 1105 Fulton Street, unfortunately, the property is still a blight on the block. The scaffolding, which has been up for nearly 12 months, continues to attract trash underneath.

Despite promises from the DOB that the demolition would move quickly, the demolition is still in plan examiner review as of December 23rd, 2025. We plan to follow up with the DOB to understand next steps, with the specific goal to remove the scaffolding as that is causing the primary disturbance on the block.

That’s all for this week’s update. I welcome any feedback or thoughts on the priorities discussed above, and would love any help if you’d like to pitch in! 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 week,

David