City of Yes-ish

Photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office

City of Yes, Mayor Eric Adams’s plan to create tens of thousands of new housing units through sweeping zoning reforms, passed through the City Council’s land use and zoning committees on Thursday, clearing the way for the largest changes to the city’s zoning code since 1961 — with some large carve-outs. Negotiations were extensive, lasting well into Wednesday night and delaying the vote by a good five hours, as councilmembers hashed out compromises on parking mandates, accessory dwelling units, and transit-oriented density. So where’d we end up?

The mayor’s original plan was projected to create more than 100,000 new units of housing over the next 15 years through changes to the zoning code — with the new plan that number has been reduced to 80,000 — including lifting minimum parking requirements, which was particularly contentious in car-centric neighborhoods of eastern Queens like College Point and Fresh Meadows. (“This is a calculated effort to destroy the character of our districts,” Councilmember Vickie Paladino, who represents Bayside and Whitestone, told the Queens Daily Eagle this fall.)

The deal reached on Thursday offers a diluted version of that proposal: It will create three zones for minimum parking mandates, eliminating them entirely in all of Manhattan (except for District 12) and much of western Queens and Brooklyn, and lowering them in others. “New York City is a very large city and some areas of the city are not well serviced by public transportation,” said Councilmember Kevin Riley, the chair of the zoning committee. Less than half of all New York households own a car, and developers say that the current requirements can add $50,000 to $100,000 per spot to building costs.

The new deal will also water down the transit-oriented development-density provisions (reducing them from a half to a quarter mile off some Long Island Railroad and Metro North stops), town-center zoning (putting residential housing above shops), and, significantly, the ADU provisions, which were expected to account for half of the new units in the plan, according to Crain’s. Per the new deal, such units in some outer-borough districts, historic districts, and flood zones will be restricted to the existing structure, i.e., attics and basements, instead of being allowed in backyards. Along with parking mandate minimums, ADUs were also unpopular in the outer-borough neighborhoods where they’d be most likely to be created. (This, despite the fact that some opponents of the plan, like Queens councilmember Paladino, already have them.)

Funding was another question: Should the city direct more money to affordable housing subsidies and tenant protections or pour it into infrastructure improvements to meet the needs of more densely populated neighborhoods? As part of the last-minute deal, the city also committed funding for sewers, streets, open spaces, and affordable-housing construction and preservation, as part of a complementary housing package. And Governor Kathy Hochul has committed $1 billion to help fund the $5 billion the city has committed to cover affordable housing and infrastructure improvements over the next few years, according to Gothamist.

Other aspects of the plan were essentially unchanged, including office to residential conversions and allowing developers who include affordable housing to build bigger. The plan will also facilitate landmarked buildings’ ability to transfer development rights, “weakening community input,” according to Riley.

Everyone left a little unhappy, it seems. The compromises reached on Thursday will likely lower the number of units built by about 30,000, according to City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. And that still wasn’t enough for some councilmembers — Councilmember David Carr, who represents neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Staten Island including Bay Bridge and Todt Hill, made a motion to disapprove the agreement and “replace the 1,300-plus pages with one word: no.” While the zoning-committee vote was being taken, an attendee started chanting “we say no to the city of yes” and was removed.

The plan’s supporters — particularly those who wanted to see more done — were equally dismayed. “City of Yes was never going to fix everything,” said Brooklyn Borough president Antonio Reynoso in a statement after the deal’s carve-outs were announced. “But it was at least a modest opportunity to begin addressing the discriminatory zoning practices that force low-income, Black, and brown neighborhoods to do all the work of building new housing while low-density neighborhoods get away with contributing nothing.”

Adams has said that the city needs to add 50,000 units per year, nearly double the 27,980 that were added in 2023, according to the Department of City Planning. The City of Yes, with qualifications.