I spent years inside government working on housing and land use policy, and one of the most important lessons I learned was that the most common way an affordable housing project dies in New York is also the quietest. It’s not voted down in some dramatic hearing; it sits in review, withers, and ends unceremoniously.

It suffers a death by a thousand cuts — extra time waiting and paperwork over here, different committees and boards and required votes chipping away at the project over there, all of them costing time and money that get spent on process instead of actually housing people.

The result is less housing, lower affordability, and the families who might have lived there never hear a word about it. This has been on my mind as I watch the City Council attempt to derail extremely qualified John Mangin to chair the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA). This debate over his........

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