Late yesterday by a narrow 4-3 vote, the City Council’s Zoning Subcommittee approved a slightly revised version of Mayor Adams’ “City of Yes” rezoning plan, the centerpiece of which is allowing more and bigger market-rate housing construction throughout NYC. This is typically housing that is too expensive for by far most New Yorkers to afford, and that does nothing to address the affordability crisis our city faces. The plan, which was then approved 8-2-1 in the Council’s Land Use Committee, will go to the full City Council for a final vote. Local City Councilmember Carlina Rivera, who represents all of the East Village, NoHo, and Greenwich Village east of Sixth Avenue, voted for the plan in committee (local Councilmembers Erik Bottcher and Christopher Marte have not yet voted on it).

The approved plan included almost no changes to address objections raised about its impact in neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo (as well as many other neighborhoods across NYC) and would:

• Substantially increase the allowable size and height of new market-rate (i.e., luxury condo) developments in our neighborhoods, especially in areas with contextual zoning, which are meant to keep new developments in scale with their surroundings. 
• Give away zoning bonuses allowing additional bulk and height that had been reserved exclusively for developments that included affordable housing to those that are purely market rate (i.e., luxury condo) 
• Allow the vastly increased transfer of air rights from the scores of individual landmarks in our neighborhoods to surrounding blocks, with very little oversight or public review 
• Allow new development (or expansion of existing developments) to encroach much further into the limited precious open space in backyards and rear yards 
• Allow new development on currently required open space in what the city calls “campus” complexes, which includes NYU superblocks, religious institutions, schools, and other large properties covering larger spaces under common ownership 
• Allow the city to rezone neighborhoods in future actions with new superdense zoning districts that permit new residential developments 25-50% larger than the maximum currently allowable anywhere in NYC 

The City Council did secure a separate side agreement with the city and state to fund a number of housing and infrastructure programs, and acceded to demands from residents of more suburban outer borough neighborhoods to keep in place more of the current parking requirements for new developments the plan would have removed. The plan does include a new entirely voluntary program for developers to choose to include affordable housing in new developments; if, when, or why developers would choose this option remains to be seen.

However, the Council failed to address nearly every concern expressed by the thousands of New Yorkers who objected to bigger, larger developments of exclusively very expensive market-rate housing (i.e., luxury condos) and allowing them on precious green and open space where they are currently restricted. The core premise of this plan is that NYC is not building enough market-rate housing (i.e., generally expensive and unaffordable to most New Yorkers), and that building more of it will have beneficial trickle-down effects for everyone. This in spite of the fact that, as we showed:

• New York City is expected to add 33,000 new units of housing this year, another 150,000 by 2028, and has the capacity to add another two million more under existing zoning rules. 
• Neighborhoods that have experienced the kinds of upzonings and stimulated increased housing development that “City of Yes” will enable citywide have overwhelmingly tended to become less Black and Hispanic, and more white.
• Our city does not suffer from a housing shortage, but a shortage of affordable housing, and our current approach only exacerbates this problem by adding more housing that only the wealthiest New Yorkers (and non-New Yorkers) can afford, and encouraging the demolition of existing affordable housing.
• Other cities that have gone this route of adding tons of new market-rate housing have not found that it brings prices down for everyone; frequently prices go up for everyone, or in a best-case scenario, prices go down for the most expensive housing and up for the least expensive — hurting those who need help most. 
• The city’s predictions about the impact and effect of its rezonings are consistently wildly inaccurate, especially when it comes to claims about housing and affordability. 

The full City Council is expected to vote on this revised plan on December 5.

TO HELP:

For more information on “City of Yes,” see here.