By Michael V. Cusenza
Mayor Eric Adams on Monday rallied on the steps of City Hall to kick off the public review of “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity,” the second such assembly Hizzoner has led regarding the enterprising three-pillar proposal.
The Big Apple faces a generational housing crisis, with just a 1.4 percent rental vacancy rate, the administration noted. Adams has said that his plan would enable the creation of “a little more housing in every neighborhood” through a set of carefully crafted zoning changes to increase overall housing supply. The Department of City Planning’s draft environmental impact statement of the proposal estimates that it could produce as many as 108,850 new homes over the next 15 years.
Public review officially began on Monday when DCP referred the proposal to community boards and borough presidents. At the end of the public review process, City of Yes for Housing Opportunity will be voted on by the City Council.
Prior to the start of public review, officials from DCP and the City Department of Housing Preservation and Development reached out to Gotham residents via 10 public information sessions, two years of meetings with impacted stakeholders, and the release an annotated version of the draft zoning text along with an illustrated guide. The proposal will now be reviewed by community boards, borough presidents, and borough boards before the City Planning Commission holds a hearing and a vote this fall. If approved by the CPC, the council is anticipated to hold a hearing and a vote on the proposal before the end of the year.
Adams has boasted that City of Yes for Housing Opportunity is the most pro-housing set of zoning changes in New York’s history. The proposal includes lifting arbitrary and costly parking mandates for new residential construction; the Universal Affordability Preference, a bonus allowing roughly 20 percent more housing in developments, as long as the additional homes are permanently affordable at an average of 60 percent of the area median income; transit-oriented development and Town Center zoning, which would allow three-to-five story apartment buildings to be built near transit and along commercial corridors, respectively; and allowing homeowners to add accessory homes like backyard cottages.
Additional proposal components include facilitating conversion of non-residential buildings like offices to housing; re-legalizing small and shared housing models with common facilities like kitchens; allowing development on large lots known as campuses that are today limited by outdated rules from using existing development rights; and creating new zoning districts that would allow more housing, including mandatory affordable housing, that had previously been restricted by state law. City agencies are also advancing a slate of related, non-zoning efforts to guide implementation of the proposals, such as rules for HPD administration of the Universal Affordability Preference as well as technical assistance and financing tools to assist homeowners who want to add secondary homes onto their property.
A vocal opposition to the proposal has gradually galvanized support for saying “No” to the City of Yes. Last month, on the same day that Adams held a rally for the Economic Opportunity pillar of the project, City Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Ozone Park) said she is “unequivocally against the plan as it stands” and noted why in remarks before the Council Subcommittee on Zoning & Franchises.
The proposal “would modify both commercial and residential corridors across the city. Existing zoning regulations restrict certain kinds of businesses from opening in commercial or residential districts, something ‘City of Yes for Economic Opportunity’ seeks to change. It would allow commercial and retail stores in largely residential neighborhoods,” Ariola said.
