The City Council ultimately said yes to what the mayor has called New York City’s “most historical housing reform,” but just barely.
The Council on Thursday voted 31-20 in favor of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, an expansive zoning text amendment that is projected to add 80,000 housing units, beyond what would otherwise be built, over the next 15 years.
To cobble together enough votes to pass it, the Council shaved nearly 30,000 homes off the measure’s projected total and secured a promise from Mayor Eric Adams for billions of dollars in housing-related spending.
Proponents argued that the proposal, though modest in terms of how much housing it would generate, would ease rules that have reinforced racial segregation in the city and allowed some areas to avoid building their fair share of housing.
Detractors saw City of Yes as neighborhood-destroying, foisting Manhattan-style density on quiet, suburban streets in Queens and Staten Island.
The approved version bowed to some of those concerns, exempting areas zoned for single- and two-family homes from changes that would allow five-story apartment buildings and, in some cases, backyard granny flats. Parking minimums were also preserved in most of Staten Island, southern Brooklyn and eastern Queens.
The Council also added affordability requirements to provisions that allow developers to build larger residential projects than previously permitted.
Before Thursday’s vote, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said the modifications sought to respect neighborhoods’ differences while ensuring that they each contribute to growing the city’s housing stock.
“We can’t be the council that says no to giving people places to live,” she said during a press conference. “The bottom line is that we cannot not do anything.”
Some of the Council members who voted against the measure continued to call it a one-size-fits- all approach and expressed concern that future administrations will not uphold the pledge for $5 billion in funding, much of which is spread out beyond the mayor’s first term.
Staten Island Council member David Carr said City of Yes is so sweeping that it could result in legal action. Queens member Joann Ariola also voted no, saying she was not opposing affordable housing but the prospect of neighborhoods not being able to accommodate more housing.
“We do not need to push our infrastructure past the breaking point,” she said. “The City of Yes will only add to the heavy burdens residents face every day.”
Ariola said she would introduce legislation to exempt flood-prone areas from the text amendment.
Real estate professionals and trade groups have supported City of Yes, but do not expect it to transform the development landscape.
Building in New York will remain expensive, and while passage of the text amendment signals a shift in the Council toward pro-housing policy, it doesn’t mean NIMBY battles will become a relic of the past. The coming years will determine to what extent City of Yes spurs construction or changes attitudes about whether New York can build its way out of the housing crisis.
As long as a project does not have a temporary or permanent certificate of occupancy, developers in areas where parking restrictions have been loosened or eliminated can forgo garage space. Their upside is clear: Off-street parking adds as much as $150,000 per spot to project budgets.
Still, not all developers are taking those steps. Rose Tilley, head of development at Charney Companies, said her firm “will optimize our parking strategy to meet demand, rather than relying solely on code requirements” at its 827-unit project at 175 Third Street in Gowanus, where parking minimums have been eliminated.
Developers who were already planning affordable housing in a project — including those seeking the 485x property tax break, which requires at least 20 percent of units to rent for below market-rate — can use City of Yes’ density bonus program, dubbed Universal Affordability Preference. The program replaces Voluntary Inclusionary Housing and offers a less generous bonus.
Thursday’s vote was a victory for the mayor, but one he shares with the City Council speaker. She was able to ensure passage of her own signature housing plan alongside the mayor’s.
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It includes $5 billion for housing and infrastructure improvements. Dubbed “City for All,” the Council’s add-on includes adding 200 staffers to the city’s housing agencies over five years and $2 billion for sewer upgrades, flood mitigation, stormwater drainage and other infrastructure. Council members had expressed concern that additional housing would burden sewer systems, despite assurances from city officials that the impact would be negligible.
The approval of City of Yes comes as Mayor Adams faces federal corruption charges, including allegations that he received illegal campaign donations and luxury travel from Turkish officials and businesspeople, and, in exchange, helped them get approvals from city agencies.
The mayor has pointed to the City of Yes as proof that his administration can still get things done — that “no matter what they throw at us, we’re going to land the plane,” as he told reporters in November.
But since his indictment in September, the public push for City of Yes has been left largely to the mayor’s lieutenants, with Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer leading the effort. Ahead of Thursday’s vote, the speaker thanked City Hall housing staff, Department of City Planning Director Dan Garodnick and her own team for working together to reach a deal. When asked about her failure to thank the mayor, the speaker would not say that she worked with him.
After the vote, the mayor, joined by Gov. Kathy Hochul, Torres-Springer and Garodnick, stood in the City Hall rotunda to celebrate the measure’s passage. He praised City of Yes for potentially generating more housing than previous mayoral administrations and called it the “most ambitious pro-housing plan in the city’s history.”
When asked by a reporter about the speaker’s comments, the mayor said the speaker gave him “marching orders” to focus on selling City of Yes to New Yorkers, rather than her fellow Council members. He did, however show that he was at least slightly needled by City Council members emphasizing City for All.
“People can call it whatever they want,” he said. “We passed City of Yes for Housing Opportunity.”
Hochul, who was only at the press conference briefly, said she was eager to provide $1 billion as part of the City for All package when she learned the mayor needed it to get City of Yes over the finish line.
“I will be the person who works with you, who works with anyone who believes in this city and is willing to break down, and work past all the naysayers,” she said.
A prevailing sentiment during the public debate about City of Yes has been that it is not enough to address the city’s housing shortage. To that end, the City Council on Thursday passed other measures.
It revived the J-51 tax abatement program, a year after the state legislature authorized the city to approve a new version that provides a tax break worth 70 percent of the cost of major renovations. The annual abatement lasts 20 years and cannot exceed 8.3 percent of the renovation cost.
Under the program, projects must either be substantially funded through government funding, owned by a limited-profit company or at least 50 percent of the apartments have to be made affordable at “qualifying rents” established by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Landlords groups have said the heightened affordability requirements would likely deter many landlords from using it.
The Council also legislated a pilot program to allow basement and cellar apartments to be legalized in 15 of the city’s 59 community districts. The action was authorized in this year’s state budget. (Though the City of Yes legalizes accessory dwelling units, state law still largely outlaws basement apartments.)
Council members also approved building code changes to ease the construction of ADUs, and required HPD to issue status reports on certain publicly financed housing projects.
City of Yes Cheat Sheet
The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity text amendment is expected to add more than 80,000 new homes over the next 15 years. Here are some of the key provisions:
- Parking requirements
- The original text amendment would have eliminated parking minimums citywide for new construction. The final version of City of Yes creates three zones: One where parking restrictions remain intact, another where minimums are reduced and one where they are erased.
- Accessory dwelling units
- Such units will be legalized under City of Yes, but with restrictions. Ground floor and basement ADUs are barred in coastal flooding areas or inland areas prone to flooding. Detached and backyard ADUs are also not allowed in historic districts nor in R1A, R2A and R3A (low-density contextual) zoning districts, unless those areas are also located in the “Greater Transit Zone.”
- Transit-oriented and town center development
- The transit-oriented development provision allows apartment buildings of three to five stories in low-density residential districts near transit. For such projects with 50 or more units, at least 20 percent of housing must be permanently set aside for applicants earning 80 percent of the area median income.
- The same affordability requirements apply to so-called town center developments, where two to four stories can be added above commercial space in low-density districts. Such developments are barred from blocks with commercial overlays that are full of mostly single- and two-family homes.
- FAR cap
- After years of false starts, state lawmakers finally lifted the city’s cap on residential density as part of this year’s state budget, enabling the city to create two new residential zoning district designations: R11 and R12. Areas zoned R11 and R12 would, respectively, permit construction of residential buildings 15 or 18 times larger than their lot size (an FAR of 15 or 18).
- City of Yes simply allows R11 and R12 to be mapped. Areas must still be rezoned to enable construction of residential projects of this size. The Adams administration has indicated that it wants to do so in Midtown South.
- Universal Affordability Preference
- This replaces the city’s Voluntary Inclusionary Housing program, and unlike its predecessor, will be available citywide. UAP provides a 20 percent density bonus to projects if all of the extra space is dedicated to permanently affordable housing. The affordable units must, on average, be affordable to those earning 60 percent of the area median income. For projects with 50 or more units, at least 20 percent of those units must beaffordable to residents earning 40 percent of the AMI.
- MIH
- Currently, the City Council can apply Mandatory Inclusionary Housing options 1, 2 or both to a neighborhood or site rezoning. Developers can also apply for workforce or “deep affordability” options, or both. These last two, however, are only on the table if options 1 or 2 are also available.
- City of Yes changes that. It allows the Council to make “deep affordability” its own thing. Meaning that for a rezoning, the Council can mandate that developers set aside 20 percent of a project’s units for households making an average of 40 percent of the area median income, with income bands capped at 130 percent AMI.
- Office-to-residential conversions
- Today, office buildings constructed after 1961 generally cannot be converted into residential space, except in Lower Manhattan, where the cut-off date is 1977. City of Yes changes that threshold to 1990 citywide. That will make many buildings between 35 and 64 years old eligible for conversion.
- Sliver law City of Yes spares some parcels from the so-called sliver law, which has long restricted the height of buildings on lots less than 45 feet wide. The law will still apply to narrow lots in high-density districts, when a developer builds according to height factor rules (which can result in very tall and skinny buildings on small lots).