December 18, 2025- Queens Chronicle Op-Ed: The city is reinventing the Jewel Streets area

By Ahmed Tigani

The evolution of the Jewel Streets Neighborhood Plan is more than a timeline - it's a story shaped by patience, persistence and meaningful progress. For generations, residents of this neighborhood have faced challenges no New Yorker should endure, challenges that stand in stark contrast to the city around them.

This 15-block area on the border of East New York in Brooklyn and Lindenwood in Queens is often described as "The Hole" due to its sunken streets and enduring flooding even after minor rainfall. With no storm or sanitary sewers, residents experience unsightly and dangerous conditions, such as impassable streets, water flooding their homes, leaks from septic tanks, mold growth, rat infestations and illegal dumping. All of this has contributed to a feeling of neglect that has penetrated the identity of an area otherwise positioned to offer vast promise for current and future residents. That is why this administration is working to take that history and write a better future.

After two years of engagement with community residents and organizations, the city announced a plan to transform the Jewel Streets into a safer, more resilient neighborhood. The plan promises to deliver long-overdue drainage and sewage infrastructure upgrades, new bus lanes and traffic safety improvements along Linden Boulevard and lay the foundation for thousands of new homes. Along with clamping down on illegal uses and noxious activities next to residential areas, these investments are designed to improve the quality of life.

We've already begun implementation of infrastructure and sewer improvements to improve flooding conditions with $1 million spent to build out three new catch basins and city staff deployed to clear 267 illegally parked vehicles, remove 80 tons of dumped debris from neighborhood streets and issue 237 Department of Buildings violations directed at illegal industrial activity. Drainage at key intersections has improved dramatically, dropping from 60 days of standing water to just two.

The city Department of Housing Preservation and Development, in partnership with the Department of Environmental Protection, will install a new drainage system to eliminate the use of septic systems in Jewel Streets and protect the neighborhood from flooding. The drainage plan includes a stormwater and sanitary pump station to be built on a city-owned parcel and a network of storm sewers to direct rainfall into newly created bluebelts - natural water features that store and filter rainwater. The bluebelts will be publicly accessible with plantings and open space. The infrastructure plan also critically includes new sanitary sewers across the neighborhood, ending dependence on septic systems. Further, as part of the neighborhood plan, the city is working on an updated zoning framework that will create better balance in the area and will help transform 17 acres of city-owned land into 1,400 new homes and pursue an area-wide proposal for the neighborhood to unlock another 3,600 homes.

None of these achievements would have been possible without the resilience of the community and the unwavering dedication of organizations such as the East New York Community Land Trust (along with others), which have spent decades demanding the city's attention. Thanks to their persistence, the plan to transform the Jewel Streets has become a reality.

On Feb. 16, 2022, 60 Jewel Streets residents and stakeholders sent a letter to several city agencies demanding a long-overdue investment in their neighborhood and kicking off a multi-year partnership between community stakeholders, city agencies and lawmakers to strengthen the neighborhood. The city acted, and now, we're moving forward to deliver justice for the Jewel Streets.

Another cornerstone of the plan is Resilient Acquisitions, the city's new voluntary home acquisitions program for those interested in selling their high-flood-risk homes and moving to less flood prone areas. Residents in the Jewel Streets will also be offered the option to retrofit their homes to make them more flood-resilient.

Reflecting on the many obstacles we have faced, whether bureaucratic, financial or rooted in the need to set the right priorities, our work up to this point is peppered with reminders that this community lived with an unmitigated problem for far too long. It was the sustained advocacy of the people who call the Jewel Streets home, combined with a renewed commitment from their government to finally prioritize them, that made it possible to find a path forward. Because of that partnership, the foundation has now been laid for lasting change. I see the transformation of this land and the lives of its residents as a powerful testament to the importance of government meeting communities where they are.

This is, at its core, the true challenge and purpose of public service, and it is why smart planning, careful investment, and collaborative engagement must remain our north stars in achieving outcomes that can go the distance.

Link: https://www.qchron.com/opinion/columns/the-city-is-reinventing-the-jewel-streets-area/article_16a5ba8e-b8e9-450e-9f5d-4364b6cf9e5f.html