The Daily Dirt: Adams tackles NYC’s zoning code

Mayor Eric Adams says his text amendment includes “the most pro-housing changes in the history of New York City’s modern zoning code.”

Big if true, and probably news to former Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose administration pushed through a series of significant zoning changes in 2016. Some of the more controversial aspects of those changes, dubbed the Zoning for Quality and Affordability, were eliminated before it was passed by the City Council. Adams’ proposal will need to go through the same approval process.

Anyway, it is difficult to verify the mayor’s claims without the text amendment’s details in hand: Scoping documents are expected to be released next week. If you are planning to go through them, please call me and we can nerd out together. 

What is clear is that these changes are wide-ranging, and by the administration’s estimates, could create upwards of 100,000 housing units over the next 15 years. The changes are not a silver bullet, but the goal of creating “a little more housing in every neighborhood” would represent a major step for the city if realized. 

“For far too long, many of the most well-resourced parts of the city have been de facto off-limits to new residents, and the Mayor and City Council can finally change that by implementing the reforms included in today’s proposal,” Annemarie Gray, Open New York’s executive director, said in a statement.  

One of the most noteworthy changes is the repeal of parking mandates in new housing construction. It may also prove the most controversial with local Council members. Some people picture purgatory to be circling the curb ad infinitum, crawling dead-eyed past double-parked delivery trucks and empty spots that are a hair too small or reserved for some unspecified event. Some people, not me. 

The proposal does not bar parking from being included in new development but, as the mayor put it, lets the market decide what additional parking is needed. Kramer Levin’s James Power told me that he’s had developer clients in the outerboroughs who would have preferred to exclude parking from their housing projects but were required by zoning rules to include it. 

Another proposal would basically replace the city’s voluntary inclusionary housing program, where a project can be 20 percent bigger if that 20 percent is affordable housing. The difference would be that more residential districts would be eligible (mid- to high density) and the income thresholds would be calculated differently (averaging incomes to equal 80 percent of the area median income, rather than 80 percent or less).

The fact remains, and the mayor acknowledged this in his announcement on Thursday, that these changes do not make up for the lack of action at the state level. While the city can make changes to allow for more accessory dwelling units, the state controls the multiple dwelling law, which still complicates many basement apartment conversions. 

The city can create more flexible rules for office-to-residential conversions, but it would be up to the state to create a tax incentive for such projects. The city’s cap on residential density, controlled by the state, also stands in the way of certain office conversions. 

The mayor also said the lack of 421a will result in fewer housing units. Without it, his “moonshot” goal of creating 500,000 apartments in a decade likely remains out of reach.

The Adams administration has been vocal about seeing housing creation as the solution to the affordable housing crisis. On Thursday the mayor and members of his administration framed the issue as a way to give tenants more negotiating power with their landlords (more housing supply=more housing options).

“When we add housing, the power shifts,” Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer said during a press conference on Thursday.

Tenant advocates would argue that taming rent increases through good cause eviction and giving tenants authority over what happens to their buildings through the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act are better courses for leveling the playing field. 

Those issues will almost certainly factor into discussions over the future of 421a in Albany next session. On Thursday, the mayor reiterated that he is confident there is “a deal to be made.” It remains to be seen what that deal looks like. 

What we’re thinking about: Are you using AI-powered real estate tools? What have you found to be the most helpful? Send a note to kathryn@therealdeal.com. 

A thing we’ve learned: London stock refers to the yellow-hued brick used extensively in the 19th and early 20th Century in London and southeast England. The bricks were handmade, using clay dug from soils bordering the Thames River, as well as chalk, according to the Royal Institute of British Architects Journal. 

Elsewhere in New York…

— The Adams administration is planning to ask a judge to exempt newly arrived migrants from the city’s right-to-shelter mandate, Gothamist reports. “We’re back in court next week to really say, ‘I don’t think that the right to shelter as it was originally written should be applied to this humanitarian crisis in its present form,’” Anne Williams-Isom, the deputy mayor for health and human services, told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer. 

— The state Attorney General’s Office says a delay in former President Trump’s civil fraud trial could “create a cascade of delays in not only this case but also other litigations involving petitioner Donald J. Trump,” Politico reports. Trump filed a lawsuit against the judge in that case, which threatens to delay the trial, which is slated to begin Oct. 2.

— A bus carrying high school students from Long Island crashed on I-84 in Wawayanda, in Orange County, killing one and injuring dozens of others, the New York Times reports. The bus was one of six transporting students from Farmingdale High School to a marching band camp in Pennsylvania.

Closing Time 

Residential: The priciest residential closing Thursday was $11.2 million for a condo at 737 Park Avenue in Lenox Hill.

Commercial: The most expensive commercial closings of the day were $17 M for the site of a planned homeless shelter at 1298 Inwood Avenue, the Bronx and $17M for a pair of four-story buildings with a total of 12-units at 133-135 West 13th Street in Greenwich Village.

New to the Market: The priciest residence to hit the market Thursday was a co-op at 2 East 67th Street in Lenox Hill asking $44.5 million. Sothebys International has the listing.

Breaking Ground: The largest new building filing of the day was for a 24,500 square-foot, eight-story, two-unit townhouse at 481 Dekalb Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Leandro Nils Dickson Architect filed the permit application. — Jay Young