A sweeping zoning change pushed by the administration of Mayor Eric Adams and approved by key City Council committees Thursday is expected to accelerate housing construction and make a dent in the city’s housing crisis.
Despite concessions that will likely result in spurring less new housing that originally envisioned in the boroughs’ more suburban-like neighborhoods, advocates for more residential development said this represented the most comprehensive effort to increase supply in decades.
“In a momentous win for housing, the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity is moving forward in the City Council, bringing us closer than ever to substantively addressing our housing crisis,” said Rachel Fee executive director of the New York Housing Conference, a key organizer of the coalition pushing for passage.
She added: “This is really the best version we are going to get.”
The Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises voted 4 to 3 in favor of the compromise measure, followed by an 8-to-2 vote in the Land Use Committee with one abstention. The City Planning Commission will now review the changes and then send it on to the full Council for a final vote next month.
Moments after the vote passed in the subcommittee, Mayor Adams and First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer praised what they called the “historic” plan.
“We can’t exist as a city with a 1.4% vacancy rate,” he said. “It is uniform across the city, no matter where we go — all of us, all elected officials in this state, we’re hearing the same thing — affordability, housing, housing, housing.”
The number of dissenters in the committee suggested final approval will be by a narrow margin. One critic, Councilmember David Carr (R-Staten Island), warned of possible legal action to delay the implementation of the changes; another Staten Island representative, Democrat Kamillah Hanks, voted it down as well.
The City of Yes Housing Opportunity agenda makes a variety of changes to city zoning codes to make it easier to build more housing, designed to promote development in every neighborhood, including areas that have previously had strict protections in place.
Key provisions encourage more development near transit stations, allow developers to decide how many spaces to build for car parking, and make it easier for homeowners to safely add apartments in backyards, garages, and other spaces on their property.
Each of those features got pared back in the final dealmaking between the mayor and City Council.
To get the 26 Council members’ votes ultimately needed for passage, the Adams administration agreed Thursday to keep rules that require a minimum number of parking spaces based on the size of the building in lower density districts rather than eliminate them entirely, put some limits on adding “accessory dwelling units” and slightly downsized the size of more dense transit-oriented development districts near LIRR stations in southeast Queens and parts of The Bronx.
The result will be that the plan could produce as many as 80,000 additional housing units over the next 15 years, the administration says, about 20% less than the 105,000 projected under the original Adams administration proposal. City of Yes is a key part of achieving the mayor’s “moonshot goal” of building 500,000 new housing units by 2032.
The rest of the sweeping proposal remains intact, including measures to accelerate conversion of office buildings to residential use, create a 20% density bonus for projects that add lower-cost apartments above and beyond already existing mandates, allow apartments to be built above retail stores up to five stories in commercial areas known as “town centers,” and allow added development within housing complexes except those run by the city’s Housing Authority.
To win over the undecided, the Adams administration promised to increase spending $5 billion on infrastructure and on funding housing agencies, $1 billion of which Gov. Kathy Hochul newly pledged to include in the next state budget.
Political Victory
Given how much the mayor has been weakened by the scandals engulfing his administration, the deal constitutes a major political victory.
The reduction in the expected impact comes as a result of the weakened provisions on parking and ADUs. The elimination of parking mandates could have produced about 50,000 new homes, the Regional Plan Association estimated. ADUs could have resulted in 40,000 new units, according to the environmental impact study conducted by the Department of City Planning.
While complete details have yet to be released, the compromise splits the city into three areas. Parking requirements are eliminated in most of Manhattan, Brooklyn and parts of Queens. A second zone would cut the number of required parking units by three-quarters.
While the third zone maintains the current parking requirements, it eliminates them for ADUs, transit oriented districts and town centers as long as new construction contains fewer than 75 units. Fee says the exemptions will add an important number of units.
ADUs can only be built on lots that are owner occupied and in the new transit districts, They are prohibited in areas of the city prone to flooding and historic or certain other districts with restrictive zoning. They can only be one story unless they are above parking.
With those changes, ADUs may not be as successful as in California, where they now account for 20% of new homes.
The new transit oriented districts will allow more density within a half mile of transit stations — except that area will be reduced to one-quarter of a mile in Southeast Queens, home of Speaker Adrianne Adams, and the four new Metro-North commuter rail stations being built in The Bronx, a district recently rezoned to promote more housing development.
While housing advocates who had mobilized to support the proposal celebrated what they called a victory, many said the compromises went too far.
Before the vote, mayoral candidates Brad Lander, the city comptroller, State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, and former comptroller Scott Stringer all warned against weakening the proposal. Lander focused on the news that parking mandates would not fully be retracted.
“New York City will never pull out of our housing affordability crisis if we continue to prioritize parking spaces over housing in transit-rich neighborhoods,” he said.
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso called the changes to the original proposal “a mistake.”
The Citizens Budget Commission, another major supporter of the original proposal, also said it was disappointed that the changes would reduce housing in the neighborhoods that have produced the last housing. Given the budget gaps the city faces, the CBC said it needed to see the details to comment on whether the increased spending is responsible.
Some real estate experts agreed.
“By potentially restricting accessory dwelling units and town-center zoning, the Council is not just reducing total housing production,” said David J. Rosenberg, a leading land use and zoning attorney with the firm Rosenberg & Estis P.C. “They’re eliminating housing options that could help seniors age in place and young families remain in their communities.”But those who fought hardest for the proposal are claiming victory.
“Today’s vote is, by any measure, a big step forward for addressing New York City’s need for housing,” said Howard Slatkin of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council and previously a longtime staffer at the Department of City Planning. “The modifications do leave room for improvement in the future, but people hoping for changes that significantly expand the ability to add housing in neighborhoods throughout the city should be pleased and heartened at what was approved by committee today.”
Additional reporting by Katie Honan.
