Mayor Adams and City Council Strike a Deal on 'City of Yes'

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Last week, New York City Council and the Adams administration struck a deal on the mayor's ambitious City of Yes housing plan. Maybe you missed this if your news tastes tend toward the national and you're focusing on all the Trump nominees and everything. City of Yes, it's a big, big deal. The city and the state have injected a surprise $5 billion of funding and the City Council's key Land Use Committee voted to approve it. The plan is now headed to a full council vote on December 5 next Thursday. With us now to talk more about what exactly is in this plan and how it may impact your neighborhood and housing across the city, I'm joined by David Brand, housing reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. Hi, David.

David Brand: Hey, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: A $5 billion deal was struck between the city and the state. What's in the deal? What can New Yorkers expect in their neighborhoods?

David Brand: That's a great question. I like how you framed that as people might be paying more attention to national news and national politics. This is pretty much as local as it gets. I think zoning, we talk about that, it can seem so technical and so wonky, but really it has a huge impact on all of our lives. I was just thinking about this.

If you walked around a more suburban style neighborhood like Whitestone and you wonder how in the concrete jungle of New York City we can have these leafy streets with large lots and single family homes, or you travel by bike along Metropolitan Avenue between Ridgewood and Williamsburg and it's so industrial and there's big trucks everywhere, and yet these are areas that are so hot that people want to live in. Why don't we build housing there instead of factories?

You're in downtown Brooklyn and you're wondering, "How are these huge skyscrapers here? It looks more like what we think of Manhattan." That's all a result of zoning and how the city is carved into districts at even the block level, the lot level of what can be built there. These changes that Adams administration, the Department of City Planning, are pursuing are to make it easier to build more housing in the residential districts that currently exist, and they need council approval to do that.

The Council took this opportunity to say, "We think this is a good idea. We like the idea of building more housing, but we want additional commitments, too." They're breaking these commitments down into a few separate areas, more affordable housing, more support for people who want to buy homes and need down payment assistance, more staff at city housing and buildings agencies to enforce the rules and ensure housing is safe, and then also some commitments to further planning for some neighborhood level rezonings.

Brian Lehrer: There were some concessions made to get this passed, and I wonder if you'd run down a few of those. I see from the political reaction that opponents of City of Yes rezoning, generally people who don't want more housing in their neighborhoods basically, think this went too far, but housing advocates think it didn't go far enough. What were some of the concessions that were made to get this passed? I guess the concessions would be roiling the more housing advocates.

David Brand: It's funny because it depends who you talk to. Like you said, some people think that the initial plan was just modest changes everywhere in the city that taken as a whole, could lead to 109,000 new units being built over the next 15 years. You're right, the more nimby reactionary, especially in low density areas, said, "Whoa, this is going to totally reshape where we live," so they ended up landing somewhere in the middle after these negotiations.

We could probably start with what I think were the two most controversial pieces of the proposal put forth by the Adams administration. The first has to do with parking. The proposal would have eliminated mandatory parking requirements in all new development everywhere in the city. That got a visceral response, especially in areas that aren't close to subway stations. People said, "No, we depend on cars. If you build a new 50-unit apartment building that could be tenants in 50 units with cars fighting us for street parking." They negotiated it down.

Now certain parts of the city, Manhattan, western Queens, western Brooklyn, don't have the parking requirements. You move further east or further north into the Bronx or south in Staten Island, there's modified parking requirements. You move further east into those more suburban areas, they still have the parking requirements. People who are concerned about more circling the block looking for parking spots could probably rest a little easier.

The second controversial one was what they call accessory dwelling units and you know probably know these better as basement apartments or backyard cottages or sometimes they call them granny flats. Adding another apartment upstairs if you have a two story home. They made carve-outs so that the more suburban style areas won't be allowed to create as many of these accessory dwelling units. Same goes for areas in flood zones. The concern there is basement apartments and places prone to flooding.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few questions about the City of Yes housing deal for our housing reporter David Brand. 212-433-WNYC. Are you curious about how this may impact your neighborhood in particular? 212-433-9692. Are you worried your neighborhood will change too much with so much new housing? Are you afraid it might become too dense with the problems that density brings? Are you afraid of changing demographics if there's more affordable housing in your neighborhood?

Conversely, are you afraid that more housing, though it's touted as bringing more affordability, will really just wind up bringing gentrification to your neighborhood? That certainly happened in places around the city. 212-433-WNYC for David Brand. 212-433-9692.

You wrote, David, that the investments are part of a complimentary housing package proposed by Council Speaker Adrian Adams, not exactly the same package that Mayor Adams proposed. She said zoning reforms alone aren't enough to create housing that's affordable to most New Yorkers or address many neighborhoods needs. What did Speaker Adams want and what of that wound up in the plan?

Brian Lehrer: That was the big impetus behind her package here and that had a lot of support in the council to say, "Okay, we update the zoning rules to allow for a three-story apartment building on what's now a single story store on a commercial strip somewhere in the city." Who's to say that the rents in those new apartments are going to be affordable to the vast majority of New Yorkers, same with five-story apartment buildings near transit stations? They call it Transit Oriented Development. Okay, great. We add all these new units, we need more housing, but the people who really need housing the most are low and middle income New Yorkers.

They wanted commitments that a percentage of new apartments in some of these projects would be priced with rents priced for low and middle income New Yorkers. They wanted more investments, for example, in NYCHA.

New York City Housing Authority has thousands of vacant apartments that need to be renovated so that they can rent them out to more people on the NYCHA waiting list. They secured $200 million commitment from the city to fund those investments to bring even more public housing onto the market. Similarly, with deeper investments in housing vouchers, rental assistance programs for low income New Yorkers, especially people currently living in shelters, to be able to get apartments that they might qualify for but are out of reach.

Brian Lehrer: Rebecca in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi Rebecca.

Rebecca: Hi, thanks for having me. I'm calling because I'm the parent of a 19-year-old with a disability who uses motorized equipment and I can tell you that it is already incredibly difficult for people with disabilities to find housing in New York. A 2022 report suggested or stated that there were 32% units that could be considered accessible for people with disabilities, but most of those are incredibly expensive brand new buildings. As I think we all know, people with disabilities are overwhelmingly the poorest and lowest income of any tracked minority.

In addition to that, this city only has about 30% accessible subway stations. We only have about 30% accessible schools. What City of Yes has done in the name of increased housing, which yes, we all need, is they've let the overwhelming majority of residential neighborhoods not get elevators in the buildings that they're going to be allowed to build. You're allowed to build to five stories but you're not required to put an elevator. Putting the requirement aside, there's no [unintelligible 00:09:39] to build elevators. There's no incentive to do that in those neighborhoods. I don't understand why that wasn't done.

For people to find housing in those smaller buildings that are probably more affordable than the high rise buildings that are going to go up in the high density neighborhoods is going to be really difficult. If we have 1.4% housing available, if you Venn diagram that for a disabled person with where they can get on the subway, where they can get their kids to school or get themselves-

Brian Lehrer: It's even so much less than that.

Rebecca: -to work--

Brian Lehrer: Rebecca, let me get an answer for you. David, are we really looking at the prospect of a new city not only of yes, but of five-story walkups?

David Brand: That's a great point because they don't require an elevator in buildings of that height. That would be a challenge for anyone with mobility accessibility needs. To her point, I guess nothing that I know of in there would incentivize the creation of elevators in those types of buildings.

Brian Lehrer: Do you know if disability accessibility is mentioned in City of Yes at all contained in any provision as far as you know?

David Brand: I don't know. In terms of the newer buildings that will have elevators, the larger buildings that you mentioned, to the extent that that's accessibility having elevators to the higher floors, that would be in there, but I don't know of anything specifically mentioning accessibility.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Paul in Washington Heights who has a question about City of Yes and his neighborhood. Paul, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Paul: Oh, thank you, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. Yes, I do. There are three buildings along Broadway. One is a high rise near Broadway and Sherman, and we get to look at the ugly roof while they get to look at the beautiful Fort Tryon Park. Then there's a beautiful new building at Nagle and Broadway, which fits into its lot perfectly. It fits into the neighborhood perfectly. Then at the 191st Street stop of the 1 Train on Broadway, there's an empty high rise that's been sitting there for years. Is there any money in this bill that would unstick these stalled projects?

Brian Lehrer: Paul, thank you. Thank you for that question. Are there a bunch like that, as far as you know, David?

David Brand: Stalled construction projects?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

David Brand: Yes. I think, coming out of the pandemic still, that is a problem when it comes to financing, labor costs, cost of development. That was a problem when developers weren't sure if they'd be able to qualify for a property tax abatement from the state known as 421a. The state extended the amount of time that the developers had to complete their projects to still qualify for that, so that may have been a reason that the project stalled, but that is definitely a problem.

Brian Lehrer: I want to ask you about the scale of this. For all the debate over City of Yes, and they've certainly got a great, sticky, catchy name for it, people at least have probably heard of City of Yes, even though as we go through some of the details in this plan, they become wonky. The number that I'm seeing is that it's supposed to create 80,000 new apartments over the next 15 years.

I think, "Really? That's all for all this, 80,000 new apartments over the next 15 years given the need with-- as our first caller, Rebecca cited, a 1.4%, I think that's an accurate number, vacancy rate in New York City?" I'm thinking back the last few administrations, and I think Bloomberg came in with hundreds of thousands of units affordable housing plan, and he undertook this big rezoning. I once asked Bloomberg when he was running for reelection, because we've been doing this for that long, "What's your proudest accomplishment?" He said, "It's the rezoning of New York City."

Here we are again, as if New York's never been rezoned since the 1960s, and de Blasio came in trying to do hundreds of thousands or 100,000 units. Now we're in the next administration and this big deal City of Yes proposal, and it's only 80,000 units over 15 years. Am I missing something?

David Brand: No. The difference here is that this is a change to the zoning rules citywide just right off the bat to, as of right, allow more development, but you're right, it's not that much.

Brian Lehrer: Has a right, meaning they won't have to get waivers to build higher in those neighborhoods, particular waivers in exchange for say 20%, 30% affordable in a particular building, right?

David Brand: Right. They can just, right off the bat, without any additional approval, build slightly higher. To your point, it's really not that much. It's like 5,000 new apartments a year over the next 15 years, and that's not even guaranteed. This isn't a housing plan. They're not saying, "Okay, there's going to be 30 units on this block and 100 on this block." It's the possibility to create all of these apartments. It's not enough to solve New York City's housing shortage.

I would contrast this to what Bloomberg and de Blasio did, which Bloomberg did rezone more than half of the city, but he did it neighborhood by neighborhood. The Waterfront in Long Island City, in Williamsburg, where there's a lot larger buildings allowed, that's because of Bloomberg era rezonings. He also downzoned areas.

I mentioned Whitestone neighborhoods in Northeast Queens that now have strict rules preventing buildings larger than one or two family units. That's a result of Bloomberg downzonings, which this new plan is trying to address. The supporters would say, "Correct," to allow for slightly more development. You're right. It's not that many new homes that are going to get built.

Brian Lehrer: Just one quick follow-up to what you said. If these are as-of-right rezonings, meaning, I think, that developers can build without any particular requirement for affordable housing, they can build all market rate housing. That's my understanding of the phrase, "as of right," generally. Is that what's in here, and the gambit is that just more housing will change the ratio of supply and demand and that'll bring down prices, or are there particular affordability requirements?

David Brand: That was the original proposal before it went through these council negotiations, the idea of supply and demand. You add these thousands of more apartments and prices are going to come down. People would challenge that. There was something in that original proposal that a developer of a new project would be allowed to build 20% larger if those 20% additional apartments were affordable, so priced specifically for low and middle income renters.

The proposal now that is going to a full council vote after these negotiations actually includes some more specific affordability requirements. They have something called Transit Oriented Development that would allow for buildings up to five stories tall, a half mile from subway and train stations. If those buildings had more than 50 apartments, then 20% of them would have to be affordable, so have those rents capped for low and middle income renters.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to see a lot of 49-unit buildings going on?

David Brand: Well, that would be the concern.

Brian Lehrer: David Brand, WNYC and Gothamist housing reporter on the City of Yimby, City of Yes, yes as in yes, in my backyard. David, thanks.

David Brand: Thanks a lot, Brian.

 

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