Council speaker’s plan attacks housing crisis from every angle

Adrienne Adams targets rich areas, staff shortage, vacant units, NYCHA, ownership

City Council, affordable housing,
Adrienne Adams (Getty)

The gig may be up for Nimbys in rich neighborhoods.

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams on Thursday announced a sweeping housing and land use agenda, including specific affordable housing goals for each community district.

Her “Fair Housing Framework” will require each community district to set specific targets for housing production and preservation, and consider other community investments and voucher use.

It’s a response to wealthy areas’ paltry production of affordable housing — or in some cases, any kind of housing — in the face of a supply shortage.

During a press conference Thursday, the Council speaker emphasized the need to ensure that each community is fairly contributing to the city’s housing goals. The mayor has set a target of adding 500,000 homes over the next decade, or 50,000 per year.

The city averaged only 13,000 annually in the past five fiscal years, according to Department of City Planning data cited by the city comptroller’s office.

The speaker also noted that the Council would “explore” ways to increase affordability levels beyond the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program, by subsidizing 100 percent affordable projects and funding tax abatements and vouchers. State lawmakers let the 421a property tax break expire in June, but other programs such as Article 11 and 420c are available in some circumstances.

She pointed to Innovation QNS, which used vouchers to boost the number of units set aside as affordable, as a model for future projects. It is unclear how the city would replicate that on a grand scale without diverting funding from lower-income neighborhoods, where public subsidies are concentrated because land there costs less.

The speaker’s plan considers displacement risk, local infrastructure and other factors that have been raised by opponents of development to stop or shrink projects.

Adams said she would push the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to increase the number of homes for households making 30 percent or 50 percent of the area median income or less, and push federal officials to update AMI calculations to account for rising costs.

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She said she would pursue city and state legislation to address vacant apartments, especially rent-stabilized ones.

Adams also voiced support for lifting the cap on the city’s residential floor-area ratio. Once the state legislature removes the cap, the city can enact zoning changes that would permit a residential FAR larger than 12 in specific areas.

And she vowed to “shape and enact” the mayor’s citywide zoning text amendment to remove regulations that slow housing production in high-opportunity neighborhoods. That would prevent individual Council members from blocking local rezonings.

When asked why she did not sign onto her predecessor Corey Johnson’s land use plan in 2020, Adams indicated that her plan was different, emphasizing preserving homes and assigning each district housing responsibilities.

Johnson’s plan, however, did include district-level targets and similarly prioritized creating affordable housing in “high-opportunity” neighborhoods. But he introduced it late in his tenure, when he was a lame-duck speaker, and it went nowhere.

Some communities have already taken this mission upon themselves. Community Board 5 in Manhattan, for example, this week announced a plan to create 37,581 apartments, of which 14,686 would be affordable. It is backed by West Side Council member Erik Bottcher, who has had an epiphany about housing development.

Adams’ announcement signaled that, while being mindful of displacement and racial inequities, housing creation will be a priority for her Council. Traditionally, that has not been an easy balance to strike.

The speaker has already shown that she will intervene in cases where a local Council member opposes a housing project, as was the case for Innovation QNS and a Bruckner Boulevard development in the Bronx.

Details on the legislation Adams would support and put forward as part of her agenda were limited, though a representative for her office indicated that additional information would be available later Thursday.

Adams also said that oversight at HPD to address understaffing and other factors delaying projects would be a priority. The Council approves the city’s annual budget, which is largely controlled by the mayor. Her plan calls for improvements to the city’s home ownership programs, which take forever and move very few New Yorkers out of rentals.

The speaker’s housing announcement follows others Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul, which similarly focused on creating more housing in New York. The officials have laid out goals that can fairly be described as ambitious, given past resistance to policies aimed at increasing the housing stock.