By Jack Delaney

New York City’s most sweeping housing plan in decades cleared a crucial hurdle this week, as the City Council pushed forward changes to zoning laws and other regulations so that 80,000 new units can be built across the city. 

Last Thursday, the Council’s Land Use Committee voted 8 to 2 in favor of a revised version of  ‘City of Yes,’ a slate of modifications to citywide rules that has been a key part of Mayor Eric Adams’ agenda and that is intended to alleviate the city’s acute housing shortage. The original plan aimed to create 109,000 units in the next 15 years, but it was amended after backlash among some electeds over hot-button issues such as the abolition of parking mandates. 

There haven’t been major changes to the city’s zoning laws since 1961, and pressure for reforms has mounted in recent years as the housing crisis has worsened. A particularly dire indicator is that as of 2024, the rental vacancy rate had dropped to an abysmal 1.4%, the lowest on record since 1968 and a marked decrease from a pandemic-era level of 4.5% in 2021. “The data is clear,” said Mayor Adams in February. “The demand to live in our city is far outpacing our ability to build housing.”

Down to the wire

As of the morning of the vote, it remained unclear whether a deal would be struck. If the council had declined to vote, the plan would have passed without amendments. The vote itself was delayed by over five hours, as council members hashed out a workable compromise. In the end, it took an unexpected injection of $1 billion from Governor Kathy Hochul to ensure that the amended proposal would be approved. 

Since City of Yes was first announced in June 2022, Mayor Adams and his allies have characterized it as “a little more housing in every neighborhood.” Though the Council’s amendments still pave the way for a substantial amount of housing, they represent a more Balkanized tack, in which some neighborhoods will bear a greater share of development thanks to regulations that vary based on borough and distance from transit hubs.

The two most contentious facets of the original plan — parking mandates and ADUs, or accessory dwelling units — were accordingly the focal points for the compromise deal. 

Rather than discarding the minimums completely, the deal creates a three-tiered system based on geography. In almost all of Manhattan, and much of western Queens and Brooklyn — dubbed Tier 1 — Parking mandates would be eliminated entirely. For Tier 2, which covers swaths of Brooklyn and the Bronx, mandates would be lowered substantially, cutting the number of required parking units by three-quarters across the zone. And in Tier 3, largely contained to Queens, minimums for standard projects would remain in place, but would be lifted for ADUs), transit-oriented districts, and town centers as long as new construction contains fewer than 75 units.

The agreement also ratcheted up regulations on ADUs, a key component of the City of Yes plan, as well as small apartments in backyards, garages, and other spaces on existing properties. The compromise would prohibit ground-floor and basement ADUs in coastal and inland flood-prone areas, while disallowing backyard ADUs in historic districts and certain areas designated for single-family homes.

Too Much, Not Enough

Council Member Bob Holden, who has been part of a vocal opposition, called the deal “a terrible plan” and said that his constituents “reject the idea of giving real estate developers a blank check to overdevelop our city.” He and other Republican lawmakers had expressed concerns about potential overcrowding, strain on infrastructure, and the impact of large-scale developments on ‘neighborhood character.’

For their part, progressives like State Senator Zellnor Myrie criticized the proposal for not going far enough. “With today’s carveouts, an already modest step forward has slowed to an even more hesitant pace,” Myrie said. “Every housing unit cut from this proposal represents another family that will have to leave New York City.” He added that he hoped the full Council would approve the changes without further amendments during its stated meeting next month.

Even so, many housing advocates have reacted positively to the amended plan. Some argued that critics who initially focused on concessions were losing the forest for the trees, and praised what they saw as a paradigm shift. “Essentially, this is fantastic,” said one representative, who asked to remain anonymous. “City of Yes was never going to be the fix to our housing crisis. But what this does, which has never been done before in New York City, is to recognize that a zoning change is essential to providing affordable housing.”

The plan will now return to the City Planning Commission for review before proceeding to a final vote by the full City Council in December.