New York City Council Announces “City for All” Housing Plan

The City Council has pitched its own housing plan as the Adams administration asks it to approve the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity.

Its “City for All” plan is more of a complement than a rival to the mayor’s, but also proposes changes to City of Yes and demands more funding for the city’s housing programs.

Speaker Adrienne Adams had indicated that the City Council would propose its own housing plan, noting that the zoning changes in City of Yes would not be enough to address the city’s housing shortage.

In an apparent response to concerns raised during a hearing this month on City of Yes, the Council’s plan calls for affordability requirements to be added to “large” transit-oriented and town center developments.

Those two City of Yes proposals would allow two to four stories of housing above businesses in low-density commercial districts and three- to five-story apartment buildings near transit. Some groups have called for affordability requirements in projects with 10 or more units. The Council’s plan does not specify what constitutes a “large” project.

City Planning Director Dan Garodnick has voiced concern that adding affordability requirements would drive up costs for town center and transit-oriented projects and “impede the ability for those units to be built.” Without subsidies, affordable units erode a project’s profitability.

The Council’s plan also seeks “significant capital funding” for infrastructure to address flooding and sewer issues, citing concerns raised by elected officials and community members that their neighborhoods cannot handle current and new development.

At hearings on City of Yes, council members repeatedly asked about the potential strain of new housing on sewer capacity.

City of Yes is expected to add between 58,000 and 109,000 new housing units by 2039, which works out to a little less than one unit per acre over 15 years. According to City Planning, the increase in density is too minor to have a significant impact on local infrastructure.

City for All also calls for significant capital increases to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s affordable housing programs and resurfaces the speaker’s legislation to increase the proportion of HPD financing that goes toward for-sale homes, rather than rentals.

“In order to ensure everyone in our city has safe and stable housing to continue contributing to the strength of our city and its economy, we must go beyond zoning reforms to address all the unrelenting housing pressures that leave New Yorkers struggling to afford finding or staying in homes,” Speaker Adams said in a statement.

The Council would not specify if its approval of City of Yes hinges on the administration’s agreeing to fund the City for All.

It is not unusual for City Council members to secure capital commitments from City Hall in exchange for signing off on a land-use action. But in this case there are tension points.

City for All’s wish list may be too expensive for the mayor to fund in full. And City Council members may not feel confident that the administration can deliver on such promises, given Mayor Eric Adams’ legal troubles.

For now, City Hall does not appear to view the Council’s plan as a list of demands that must be met to get City of Yes across the finish line.

“As discussions advance, we are encouraged to see that we continue to share many of the same policy goals and that the City Council recognizes this generational opportunity to move the needle on the city’s long-standing housing shortage,” a City Hall spokesperson said.

Notably, the Council’s plan does not mention two highly controversial proposals in City of Yes: The elimination of parking minimums for new housing construction and the legalization of accessory dwelling units.