Mayor Eric Adams on Monday doubled down on a proposal that will make it easier for property owners to build accessory dwelling units, pushing back against backlash from community boards and elected officials in the outer boroughs.
The mayor announced additional funding for a pilot program aimed at helping a handful of property owners add backyard cottages or convert their attic or garage into an apartment. The funding itself, a $4 million grant, is a drop in the bucket in terms of the city’s broader housing goals, but Monday’s press conference escalated the mayor’s efforts to get his City of Yes for Housing Opportunity text amendment — including its most controversial provisions — across the finish line.
“This is not going to change the neighborhood, you are not going to see a 14-story building in someone’s backyard. We’re not trying to change the character of the neighborhood I grew up in, in St. Albans, in South Jamaica Queens,” he said, responding to the types of criticism of ADUs repeated during a marathon City Planning hearing last month. “It’s about using the spaces to accommodate families in so many different ways.”
The text amendment would allow ADUs on lots with single- and two-family buildings. Such apartments, often called granny flats, could only span 800 square feet, and properties could only add one such unit. If detached, the units must be at least 10 feet away from other buildings on the lot, can only take up 50 percent of the backyards and can’t be located in the front or side yards.
Some opponents of the proposal have painted the text amendment as a threat to longtime homeowners who chose to live on quiet, tree-lined streets with the hope zoning in these neighborhoods would protect those qualities. The text amendment, however, aims to ensure neighborhoods across the city are adding housing, rather than certain areas bearing the bulk of production.
Only 15 percent of the city’s land is zoned for single-family use, and less than 10 percent for two-family. Still, the Adams administration estimates these changes would create between 26,000 and 40,000 ADUs over the next 15 years. That is a significant chunk of the more than 100,000 homes the administration hopes to add during that time through the text amendment, which would also eliminate parking mandates in new construction and ease office conversion rules.
The Department of Housing Preservation and Development launched the Plus One ADU pilot program in November, and received more than 2,800 applications within the first five weeks, according to HPD Commissioner Adolfo Carrión Jr.
The program had an initial $2.8 million in initial state funds to help 15 homeowners with construction and technical support to convert or add ADUs to their properties. The latest grant money will allow the agency to help another 20 homeowners whose properties are located in areas where zoning already allows more than one unit on a site.
The administration is also launching a “one-stop shop” online portal to help owners navigate “the labyrinth” of regulations, high costs and other challenges associated with adding these units.
These units are restricted by city zoning and the state’s Multiple Dwelling Law. The state budget this year included a pilot program to allow basement and cellar apartments in 15 of the city’s 59 community districts to be converted into legal units. An expansion of this program or further changes to the state law would be needed to legalize such units citywide.
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The City Planning Commission is expected to vote on the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity in the fall, after which the text amendment heads to the City Council. Nearly half of the city’s community boards have found the text amendment to be “unfavorable,” though these decisions are not binding.
Borough presidents in Manhattan, Bronx and Brooklyn have thrown their support behind the proposal, while Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella came out against the text amendment. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards is holding a hearing on the proposal on Thursday. At a Crain’s event in June, Richards indicated that he probably would not support the ADU proposal in its current form.