City to rezone 15 neighborhoods for affordable housing plan

Carl Weisbrod, chair of the Department of City Planning, said yesterday that the city will target 15 neighborhoods for rezoning, the first of which will be East New York in Brooklyn. The zoning plan is part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $40 billion goal to build 8,000 affordable apartments per year over the next 10 years.

The 15 neighborhoods will be selected over the next three months, Weisbrod said in a meeting with City Council members.

“This mandatory inclusionary zoning is based upon land-use considerations and will be a common theme running through every neighborhood,” Weisbrod said, according to Capital New York. “But we do anticipate that mandatory inclusionary housing will be tailored to the rezonings … in particular neighborhoods. So it’s not going to be one size fits all, but I do hope that we will be able, in each one of these, to provide a degree of predictability—a degree of reliability, based on sound land-use principles.”

The zoning changes would be appropriate for each neighborhood given its present conditions and respective size, Weisbrod said. [Capital New York] — Mark Maurer