Village Preservation has issued a new report analyzing the impact so far of the December 2021 SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown rezoning. Why now? We’re one-third of the way through the 10-year study period for which the City analyzed and predicted the impacts the rezoning would have. We took a look to see how closely reality lined up with the City’s promises and predictions about the rezoning, and the picture isn’t pretty.

We found:

• Not a single unit of the promised affordable housing has materialized, compared to the 127 to 191 units that should have been created by now based upon the City’s projections.
• Not a single unit of housing has been built, period, compared to the 610 units that should have been created by now based upon the City’s projections.
• As we predicted, commercial development (i.e., corporate offices) have been built under the rezoning where the City projected housing would be built.
• Developers have used the many loopholes in the rezoning we pointed out to begin creating super-luxury housing (not yet completed) that includes no affordable housing. 
• Developers have eliminated existing affordable rent-regulated housing to clear the way for new luxury development allowed under the rezoning, which the City insisted would never occur and we predicted would result from the rezoning. Consequently, the rezoning has so far destroyed more affordable housing than it has created. 
• A lawsuit by NYU challenging one provision in the rezoning will, if successful, make matters even worse, by opening up even larger loopholes we warned about enabling development in the rezoning area without including any housing or affordable housing.

Unfortunately, this distance between rezoning promises and reality is completely consistent both with what we predicted and with the City’s miserable track record of flawed predictions about the impacts of its rezonings (read other related Village Preservation reports HERE).

Want to help? Tell City and State officials, many of whom continue to push rezonings like this, that you oppose this approach: