The City is proposing new rules to carry out measures to expedite zoning changes approved by voters at the ballot box last November. These measures — proposed by Mayor Adams but endorsed by Mayor Mamdani — would eliminate many layers of public review from a broad range of rezoning changes that would enable vastly increased size of new development, including for luxury housing and corporate offices, as well as what the city calls “affordable” housing. By law, they are required to subject these proposed rules to public comment, and the deadline for submitting those is April 1.

The proposed rules are rife with problems, including:

• They are designed to promote policies that may result in the destruction of existing affordable housing, and accelerate gentrification.
• Their definition of affordable includes housing which is unaffordable to the majority of New Yorkers and especially renters, and may well replace housing that is more affordable.
• They fail to account for existing affordable housing, and only count housing built in the last five years.
• They do not consider rent regulated or other forms of affordable housing as “affordable” unless there are income restrictions and regulatory agreements attached.
• They make it easier to pass the kind of rezonings that have often failed to deliver promised affordable housing they are supposedly intended to help create. 
• They measure affordable housing based upon units rather than square footage, thus counting three studios housing three people as three times as much housing as a three-bedroom apartment housing five people, even when they are the same square footage.

Read all our comments HERE. 

These rules will substantially change the way development is regulated and reviewed in neighborhoods throughout New York City. 

TO HELP: