NYC Council approves $5 billion housing plan backed by Mayor Adams

In the end, the City Council said “Yes” to Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to permit tens of thousands of new homes across the five boroughs.

Councilmembers voted 31-20 on Thursday to approve changes to a thicket of zoning restrictions that limit the size of new development in every neighborhood in the city. Adams dubbed the proposal “City of Yes” — as in “Yes In My Backyard” — and said the changes will allow for the construction of more than 80,000 new homes over the next 15 years.

The revisions will affect every section of the city, from suburban Staten Island to the office canyons of Midtown. The plan will allow some property owners to add an extra apartment or small home on their lots, ease the conversion of empty offices into condos and permit developers to construct bigger buildings near subway stations.

The plan could put a dent in New York City’s deep housing shortage. A survey conducted last year by the city’s housing agency found just 1.4% of the city’s roughly 2.3 million apartments were vacant and available to rent. For apartments priced under $2,400, the vacancy rate was less than 1%.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said allowing more housing will help the city address a major shortage that contributes to historically high rents and sale prices, fuels record homelessness and drives many New Yorkers out of the city altogether.

“We recognize the severity of the decades-in-the-making housing crisis, the impact it is having on working- and middle-class New Yorkers, and the urgency that is required of us,” Speaker Adams said Thursday. “This is a major step forward.”

At the end of 2022, Mayor Adams announced a “moonshot” goal of creating 500,000 new homes over the next decade. His original “City of Yes” plan aimed to build up to 109,000 new homes over 15 years, and though the modified zoning plan came in with a smaller estimate of homes to be built, he hailed it as a signature policy achievement to move the city toward his more ambitious goal.

“City of Yes will forever change the course of our city’s history,” he said in a statement following the vote.

Nearly every New York lawmaker agrees the city is facing a housing crisis, but the final fate of the mayor’s rezoning plan appeared uncertain in the weeks leading up to the vote.

Councilmembers representing lower-density sections of the city, like northeastern Queens and south Brooklyn, bristled at proposed changes that would allow slightly larger buildings near those neighborhoods' homes. Members in districts without access to the subway system decried a proposal to eliminate minimum parking requirements in new developments. And several members, including Speaker Adams, pointed out that merely changing zoning rules doesn’t automatically mean that most low- and middle-income New Yorkers will be able to afford the homes that get built.

Last month, the Council negotiated with the administration to address those concerns. The final package approved on Thursday excludes several low-density areas from most new development, creates a tiered system for parking requirements and includes explicit affordability rules for larger projects near transit hubs and along commercial streets. Those changes reduced the number of potential homes that could be built, but made the package more politically feasible.

Councilmembers also secured $5 billion in future city spending to build more affordable housing, improve streets and sewer systems, offer down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers and staff city housing agencies. Gov. Kathy Hochul pledged to chip in $1 billion of that total.

“Our only shot at solving New York’s affordability crisis is by building more housing,” Hochul said in a statement following the vote.

Other cities and states have revised their zoning codes in recent years to allow for more new development as a housing crisis racks much of the country. California has enacted laws allowing property owners to add an extra unit on their lots. Minneapolis, Minnesota; Austin, Texas and Columbus, Ohio have all eased restrictions on new development in an effort to bring more housing to market.

The plan the City Council approved on Thursday could generate momentum for new state-level housing policies ahead of Albany’s upcoming legislative session, which starts in January.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates New York state needs more than 666,000 new units to meet the housing needs of roughly 1 million extremely low-income people, such as families of three earning less than around $40,000 annually.

The zoning changes are an important step to “making sure every single neighborhood and every single corner of the city is responsible for being a part of the affordable housing solution,” said Barika Williams, executive director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development.