With the legislative session coming to a close in Albany, some members of the legislature and leaders in the real estate industry are making a last-minute push to remove the cap on the maximum allowable size of new residential development in NYC, an effort that has already failed several times in the State budget process. It’s crucial that we tell state legislators not to do so. Read Village Preservation and Landmark West’s letter to key state legislators laying out the reasons why they shouldn’t lift the cap now that the budget process is over HERE.

Removing the cap wouldn’t address affordability issues, and would likely harm them. The push to remove the cap is based upon specious and false arguments about limitations on housing construction and the city’s population, and ignores that the huge upzonings of residential neighborhoods which would accompany lifting the cap would encourage the destruction of existing affordable rent-regulated housing and displace longtime older and less well-off residents. It diverts energy and attention from real efforts to address our city’s affordability crisis, and would result in rampant overdevelopment of neighborhoods.

TO HELP: