Brad Lander is running for mayor. Here’s his track record with the real estate industry

Lander refuses donations from industry, focuses on affordable housing in campaign

Brad Lander (Getty; Illustration by The Real Deal)

Kathryn Brenzel

Jul 31, 2024, 4:40 PM

Another progressive candidate, who has clashed with the real estate industry but also helped deliver the largest rezoning under the de Blasio administration, will try to take on Mayor Eric Adams next year.

Comptroller Brad Lander announced Tuesday that he will run for mayor in 2025. He joins an increasingly crowded Democratic primary: Former Comptroller Scott Stringer and Sen. Zellnor Myrie are also exploring the possibility of running. The three will likely need to figure out how to differentiate their own brand of progressiveness from the other, or figure out a winning ranked choice voting strategy to topple Adams rather than divide the vote in his favor.

Lander’s announcement did not include much on real estate, aside from the need for a “more affordable city.”

“Why does a city that means so much to so many, have leadership that delivers so little for so few?” Lander asks in a campaign video. “We travel too long to work too many hours to pay too much rent to worry so much and feel so unsafe.”

But during his time in office, Lander has pushed for pro-development policies, as well as measures that rankled the industry.

As a council member, Lander fought for the rezoning of Gowanus in Brooklyn, in face of litigation and community opposition. The rezoning paved the way for more than 8,500 new housing units, 3,000 of which will go to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. The rezoning agreement also included a $200 million investment for public housing upgrades at Gowanus Houses and Wyckoff Gardens, as well as $174 million in sewer upgrades. Lander and Council member Stephen Levin made clear at the time that their support was contingent on the public housing investment.

“In many ways, that is the model I believe in,” Lander said in an interview. “We need a lot more housing, and it needs to be done in a way that New Yorkers believe will make their lives better.”

Though Lander pushed to have the rezoning approved before the 421a tax break expired — and before his term ended — he has been critical of the exemption. In fact, he urged the state to allow 421a to expire, and instead of replacing it, set a deadline for an overhaul of the city’s property tax system. The state ultimately replaced the property tax break with 485x, but no reform on the property tax system has moved forward.

When 421a expired in 2022, developers warned that the construction deadline for projects that vested under the old program would imperil Gowanus projects. Gov. Kathy Hochul acknowledged that concern by instituting an alternative to the tax break in the Brooklyn neighborhood, which was ultimately superseded by the state budget this year.

Lander also proposed his own version of a tax break last year, a kind of discretionary program in which the Department of Housing Preservation and Development would award benefits based on the cost and affordability levels of projects.

As a council member, he pushed for a measure that would bar for-profit developers from acquiring city-owned land intended for affordable housing. At the time, developers criticized the bill, saying it wrongly operated on the assumption that nonprofit developers inherently provide a better experience for tenants of their buildings. Some warned that the measure would hurt for-profit companies run by minority developers.

At the time, Kirk Goodrich, president of Monadnock Development, which had projects that relied on the Gowanus rezoning, was critical of the bill. On Tuesday, Goodrich said that while he and Lander have not always agreed, he’s found Lander receptive to concerns on issues where they’ve clashed.

“He is a very experienced affordable housing professional and policy maker whose commitment to and passion for changing lives and communities is evident to me,” he said in an email.

He added that affordable housing developers regard him as “one of their own,” due to his time heading two housing nonprofits, the Fifth Avenue Committee and the Pratt Center for Community Development.

Not everyone welcomed Lander’s announcement.

Real estate attorney Sherwin Belkin called the possibility of him becoming mayor a “disaster,” pointing to a social housing platform Lander promoted when running for comptroller.

“As mayor, he would be no friend to the real estate industry at all,” Belkin said in an interview.

Lander’s social housing plan called for, among other things, requiring that all housing built on city-owned land be social housing, a term used to describe various types including public housing and limited-equity co-ops. When asked about the platform on Wednesday, Lander said “there is a role for expanding social housing,” including a revamped Mitchell Lama program, but he doesn’t view it as the sole solution to addressing the housing crisis.

He has not yet unveiled his housing platform, but pointed to a proposal he introduced with Assembly member Micah Lasher to help city workers buy homes using city pension funds and another initiative to provide permanent housing to homeless New Yorkers.

He noted that he thinks a clearer pathway for teardowns of older office buildings needs to be created in addition to changes that will allow more office-to-residential conversions and expects to support more neighborhood wide rezonings.

The fate of rezonings largely falls to the local council member. In 2016, Fortis Property Group announced that it would move forward with luxury condos and townhouses at the former Long Island College Hospital site, jettisoning a potential rezoning that could have included affordable housing. Lander was the local Council member at the time, and opposed the rezoning. He and Bill de Blasio, when he was running for mayor, had opposed the hospital’s closure, but the De Blasio administration later supported the rezoning.

When asked about LICH, where the development saga is still playing out, Lander said his opposition to the rezoning was not over demands for deeper affordability, but over how Fortis negotiated.

“I believed at the time that Fortis was not a trustworthy partner, and unfortunately they proved me right,” he said, noting that the developer walked away from talks and then announced their decision to the media.

Real estate has found an ally in Adams, whose tough-on-crime stance and emphasis on streamlining development appealed to many in the industry.

During a press conference on Monday announcing housing production stats for fiscal year 2024, Deputy Mayor Maria Torres Springer called Adams “the most pro-housing mayor of all time.”

His housing priorities in Albany have largely aligned with the industry, as he pushed for a new 421a program and for the state to lift the city’s floor area ratio cap. Real estate groups have thrown their support behind the mayor’s City of Yes for Housing Opportunity text amendment, which the administration estimates could lead to the creation of up to 108,850 new homes over the next 15 years.

Lander said he is broadly supportive of the text amendment, and would potentially back “modest affordability tweaks” to the proposal. He hopes, however, the proposal is not “whittled down” at the behest of communities that do not want to see more housing in their communities. Much of the opposition to the mayor’s plan has come from neighborhoods that have been supportive of Adams’ moderate politics, as reported by Politico New York.

When he was running for comptroller, Lander vowed to reject donations from the real estate and corporate PACs, principals of for-profit development companies and their spouses and landlords with more than six units in their portfolio. As part of his mayoral campaign, Lander will not accept contributions from real estate PACs or principals of “development firms that do business with the city.”

“The purpose of the restrictions is to avoid conflict,” Lander said. “Trustworthiness and integrity in government is very important to me.”

(Federal authorities are investigating Mayor Adams’ campaign activities. The mayor has not been accused of wrongdoing,)

When asked about Lander’s announcement during a press conference on Tuesday, Adams said Lander should be focused on getting Vice President Kamala Harris elected in November.

“I thought his announcement was to go to assist the first woman of color to be the president of the United States, not take the second man of color from being the mayor of the City of New York,” he said, though he almost certainly knew Lander’s announcement was going to be about his running for mayor. “I think we need to be focused on one mission.”