City of Yes Hits One-Year Anniversary

One year later, sweeping changes to New York City’s zoning rules are shaping the trajectory of housing projects.

Developers are moving forward with plans for larger residential buildings. Air rights deals are heating up. Homeowners are moving forward with adding so-called granny flats.

Friday is the one-year anniversary of the City Council’s passage of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, a text amendment that eliminated parking mandates from some parts of the city, legalized accessory dwelling units, created new high-density residential districts, expanded what office buildings can be converted to residential and much more.

In recognition of the one-year mark, the Department of City Planning on Friday released a few stats on the progress of the text amendment.

City of Yes created the Universal Affordability Preference program, which replaced the city’s Voluntary Inclusionary Housing program. The program provides a 20 percent density bonus to projects if the extra space is dedicated to permanently affordable housing, which must, on average, be affordable to those earning 60 percent of the area median income.

The city released applications for UAP in April, and has since received applications for more than 100 housing developments, according to City Planning. The agency would not provide details on these properties, but indicated that the projects are expected to net 5,400 new homes, of which 900 would be affordable.

City of Yes also made it easier to transfer air rights from landmarked buildings and freed some of these transactions from the city’s land-use review process (transfers that would increase the height of a project by more than 25 percent still need a special permit, though).

The changes have spurred more of these deals than in previous years. Five buildings have since sought approval for such air rights transfers, which would result in 400,000 square feet of new development, according to City Planning. By comparison, the city received only 15 applications for this kind of transfer over the last 50 years.

Since launching applications for accessory dwelling units in September, 98 homeowners in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island have applied.

City of Yes also created two new residential zoning districts, known as R11 and R12. In such districts (which must be applied through a rezoning), buildings can be 15 or 18 times the size of the lot where they are constructed, referred to as having a floor area ratio of 15 or 18.

These districts have only been mapped once so far, as part of the Midtown South rezoning. The districts have been proposed at two individual sites: 395 Flatbush Avenue Extension in Downtown Brooklyn and a site above the Second Avenue subway extension.

Officials projected that City of Yes would add 80,000 housing units over the next 15 years. Whether that comes to fruition will depend on myriad factors, including to what extent future administrations and City Council members support development.

Some in the industry think the current Council might stifle construction if it passes four bills that would set new rules for affordable housing production in the city. Developers have also argued that construction wage rules attached to the property tax break 485x will lead to less housing, and stunt the impact of City of Yes, as well as the housing ballot measures that voters approved in November.