Outskirts Of Crown Heights Gets Relief From Alternate Side Parking — What About The Jewish Section Of The Neighborhood?

by a Crown Heights Car Owner

The New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) has launched a seven-week Alternate Side Parking (ASP) pilot program in portions of North/West Crown Heights and Prospect Heights, a predominantly white neighborhood, reducing street cleaning regulations from twice a week to only once a week on participating streets.

According to NYC Council Member Crystal Hudson, the pilot program comes after years of hearing from local constituents on those affected blocks which are located near Washington Avenue just past Crown Heights, who allegedly questioned whether twice-weekly Alternate Side Parking was necessary for them.

The pilot, which already began on August 3, will test whether those streets can remain just as clean while easing the burden on the local residents. However, an overwhelmingly majority of residents in that yuppie enclave are pro permanent “open streets for pedestrians” and “anti-cars,” making one wonder the urgency of the requests in that specific portion of the neighborhood which despises all vehicles.

If successful, the program could become permanent and even serve as a model for other neighborhoods and council districts.

The announcement, however, has raised questions among many in parts of nearby Crown Heights North, a predominantly black neighborhood, which is represented under the very same city council district, vehicle owners question why they are deliberately left out and wonder why their neighborhood was not included in the pilot despite facing similar concerns.

For years, drivers in Crown Heights have dealt with the same challenges of finding parking, moving vehicles multiple times each week, and receiving costly parking tickets.

As well in Crown Heights South, which is a diverse and multicultural neighborhood where the Jewish and African American residents beautifully live side by side as one united community. Local leaders say that back when Councilwoman Crystal Hudson was initially elected and there was a much better Shprachbetween the newly elected Crown Heights council member and the Jewish community before she publicly became “Pro-Palestine” following the terrorist attacks by Gazans on October 7th. Askanim pointed out then to Councilwoman Hudson that most of residential New York City streets along with all other Brooklyn Jewish communities only have one day a week Alternate Side Parking and if those locations can perfectly manage with street cleaning once a week—so can we.

Askanim additionally noted that the Alternate Side Parking regulations on Friday which heavily interferes and overlaps with the community-wide early school dismissal of 14,850 students across all Chabad yeshivas of all age gaps. Buses coincide with the busy weekly Erev-Shabbos end of school rush, creating havoc, tension, drama and sometimes even road range incidents and arguments between bus drivers, parents picking up their children, and local neighboring residents in front of and near nearly every single Crown Heights Yeshiva and local Jewish school.

Ironically on the select Fridays that are ‘legal holidays’ in which Alternate Side Parking is suspended, even with all the yeshiva buses and parent vehicular pickups, the roads of the Shchunah are quiet, calm, relaxed and the neighborhood is peaceful. It’s a completely different experience for all those that live and work nearby both Jewish and Non-Jewish locals alike near each and every Yeshiva compared to most other Fridays when there are sanitation street sweepers aggressively honking, along with DSNY and NYPD traffic vehicles double parking blocking traffic so they can ticket those that parked in regular parking spots for two minutes to pickup their young children from school.

Askanim have repeatedly asked council members Crystal Hudson, Rita Joseph, and other local elected officials to advocate on behalf of their constituents to City Hall and to DSNY to discuss having one day a week of Alternate Side Parking. Community leaders expressed that if they doesn’t want to help and that if the neighborhood will be stuck with twice weekly Alternate Side Parking on each side of the road, then if the councilwoman can at the bare minimum at least request that the Friday Alternate Side Parking street cleaning permanently be switched to another day during the week to avoid the weekly Friday chaos—however, Crown Heights representatives have been waiting over four years for a response, to no avail.

If reducing Alternate Side Parking is worth testing in Prospect Heights, vehicle owners are asking whether Crown Heights should also be given the opportunity to participate in a similar pilot. Residents deserve to know what criteria were used to select the pilot area which consist predominantly of white residents, and whether surrounding neighborhoods—including the African American, Caribbean, Black, Brown and Jewish communities in Crown Heights will receive the same consideration.

In a message to the local elected officials, a member of anash said: “The noticeable disaster burdening the entire neighborhood each Friday afternoon during school dismissal of thousands of students can be avoided and fixed with two simple words “Common Sense.” Switch the Friday ASP (alternative side parking) to mid-week, or to remove the Friday ASP and have only one-day street cleaning each week instead—like nearly the entire Queens, Staten Island along with large swaths of Brooklyn and The Bronx which already have.”

“The combination of heavy neighborhood traffic on Friday’s, limited parking, schools buses and cars picking up our dear and precious yeshiva students along with the need at the very same time to move vehicles for Alternate Side Parking creates bumper-to-bumper grid lock congestion across the Shchunah and added stress to each and every resident both Jewish and Non-Jewish alike, even to those that are walking and  witness the streets and atmosphere their community declining.”

Residents also highlighted the fact that near many of the local dangerous buildings in the center of Crown Heights which generally have loitering, hangouts and drug-usage outside, along with most of the homeless shelters on the outskirts of Crown Heights, there are many abandoned vehicles left rotting for months and that if the local elected officials are even remotely serious about having “clean streets” in their district they would facilitate the removal of those abandoned vehicles which is another issue that constituents feel their concerns are actively being ignored.

As the pilot moves forward, many Crown Heights residents will be watching closely to see whether City Hall and the Department of Sanitation ultimately decides to expand the program to ensure that all communities are evaluated fairly.