NYC Gets Historic Push for 80,000 Homes With $5 Billion Pledge

(Bloomberg) — New York Mayor Eric Adams’ landmark deal with lawmakers on an ambitious plan to build 80,000 new homes came together thanks to a last-minute pledge by the city and state to spend $5 billion on affordable housing and infrastructure.

The rezoning plan, known as City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, passed a key City Council subcommittee hurdle Thursday after the vote was delayed more than six hours while council members tweaked controversial aspects of the deal. It aims to address the city’s worst housing crisis in five decades.

Key to securing the council members’ support was the Adams administration’s pledge to allocate $4 billion as well as an 11th-hour promise from Governor Kathy Hochul to secure an additional $1 billion in next year’s budget. The money will be used for affordable housing, sewers, flood protection and other infrastructure improvements.

“Thanks to our shared commitment in building critically needed housing, we have reached an agreement on a historic plan that could open the doors to a little more housing in every neighborhood in our city — with no borough, block, or backyard left behind,” Adams said in a statement. 

The rezoning plan now faces a full vote in December by the City Council, where it is expected to pass. 

“Today is an important step forward to address the city’s housing crisis that is making it unaffordable for working- and middle-class New Yorkers,” City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, no relation to the mayor, said in a statement. Her support was crucial to the plan’s passage.

The plan’s advancement is a significant win for the embattled mayor, who was indicted in September on federal corruption charges. Adams, whose approval ratings have plummeted, had been largely absent in recent months from the public campaign for the rezoning’s passage. Instead, City Planning Department Director Dan Garodnick shepherded the plan through months of meetings and public presentations. 

The amendments the council made Thursday weakened some of the original plan’s most controversial measures. 

The original plan had called for lifting parking-space requirements to ease approval of developments and make them cheaper to build, which developers have said has made housing more expensive or scarce. Many other densely populated US cities, including Austin and San Francisco, have eliminated parking minimums for new developments. 

Instead, the new plan will carve the city into three tiers with differing parking-space requirements. In large swaths of Staten Island and Queens, parking spaces will still be required after lawmakers from those areas said the mandates are necessary.

“It’s gotten so bad in parts of my district, including Maspeth, Middle Village and Ridgewood, that the firehouses are telling me when they go to a fire they can’t find the hydrant because it’s blocked by somebody parking,” said Council Member Robert Holden of Queens. 

The original zoning plan had also called for the removal of restrictions against so-called “accessory dwelling units” —  attic apartments or converted garages that homeowners can build on their property to create more housing supply. It also permitted more housing on top of storefronts and expanded the number of buildings eligible for converting unused offices into apartments. 

Under the amended version of the plan that passed Thursday, accessory dwelling units will be allowed only in certain areas of the city but not in historic or landmarked districts, inland flood zones and certain low-density neighborhoods. 

Although the most controversial elements of the plan were curtailed, and the number of housing units expected to be created fell from 109,000 new units over 15 years to roughly 80,000, housing advocates hailed the plan as historic.

The zoning reform “is a major step toward addressing NYC’s housing shortage,” said Annemarie Gray of Open New York, a nonprofit pro-housing advocacy group. “While the package required small compromises, it is a transformative plan that’s citywide and unlocks more homes.” 

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