Jess Coleman to Challenge Council member Chris Marte

Developers are now puzzling out how City of Yes will change their current projects or shape future ones, but a City Council hopeful is wasting no time in centering his campaign on the housing plan.

Attorney Jess Coleman announced on the social media platform X that he is challenging City Council member Chris Marte for his seat representing Lower Manhattan. The timing, one day after Marte voted against the City of Yes for Housing text amendment, which passed 31-20, was not a coincidence.

“It’s so fitting that, just yesterday, my opponent became the only representative in Manhattan to vote against City of Yes, an essential reform of our outdated zoning laws,” Coleman said on social media, referencing a City Limits map illustrating how members voted. “This is why I’m running – b/c of leaders who preach progressive values but stand in the way of solutions.”

The text amendment includes several zoning changes aimed at ramping up housing construction, including eliminating parking requirements in some parts of the city, and was accompanied by a $5 billion funding package for housing and infrastructure investments.

Before his vote, Marte characterized the proposal as a windfall for developers and a mayor that is “embedded with corruption scandals.”

“The City of Yes is a yes only to the real estate developers. It’s a plan to put our trust in developers, the same ones that evict us, destroy us and displace our communities,” he said.

Marte opposed the rezoning of Soho and Noho, which was approved under his predecessor Margaret Chin. He has also supported the Elizabeth Street Garden fight against eviction to make way for 123 affordable apartments for seniors.

Coleman serves on Community Board 1 and is an attorney at Leader Berkon Colao & Silverstein, where he focuses on business and commercial litigation, including real estate disputes, according to the firm’s website.

His campaign website includes a brief housing platform, which calls for building more market-rate and affordable housing, zoning reforms for “smarter and more flexible urban development,” stronger tenant protections and encouraging the construction of social housing.

In an op-ed published by City & State on Friday, he also voiced support for the City Council bill that barred forcing tenants to pay commissions to rental brokers they didn’t hire.

During a long City Council hearing in October, he spoke in favor of City of Yes.

“City of Yes is a modest proposal relative to the scale of the problem and it is the very least that we can do for the millions of New Yorkers for whom this housing crisis is literally an existential one,” he testified.

The city’s Campaign Finance Board website also indicates that Elizabeth Lewinsohn has opened a campaign committee for the District 1 race. As of Friday evening, she did not appear to have a campaign website but had a freshly created account on X. She chairs a nonprofit advocating for a park to be built at the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge.

It is unclear how much City of Yes will weigh on the June City Council primaries. Mayor Eric Adams will certainly tout its passage in his bid for re-election, and even referred to the work that lays ahead of his administration over the next five years during a celebratory press conference after the City of Yes vote on Thursday.

Pro-housing group Open New York launched a super PAC this year to support pro-housing candidates across the state. The group hasn’t announced City Council endorsements yet.

“What we saw in the 2024 primary was that pro-housing positions are not only good policy, but good politics,” Annemarie Gray, executive director of Open New York, said in response to a question about Coleman’s announcement. “Where there are incumbent opponents of City of Yes and potentially viable challengers, we are paying attention.”