“City of Yes” Would Put “A Little More Housing In Every Neighborhood”

The City of Yes, a draft zoning text amendment that aims to address New York City’s critical housing shortage by ramping up development, was referred to public review on April 29. Mayor Eric Adams held a rally to herald the text amendment that same day.

”To address this housing crisis, we need to think bigger and act faster, and that’s what our plan does. We are calling on our city council members to listen to New Yorkers in need of more affordable housing and say ‘yes’ to the ‘City of Yes for Housing Opportunity,’” Adams said.

First, however, NYC Planning Commission Chair Dan Garodnick explained exactly what the whole shebang was about during an April 26 media presentation.

Essentially, the goal of “City of Yes” is furthering the ability to build “a little more housing in every [NYC] neighborhood,” Garodnick said. He rolled out a series of statistics that he said justifies the zoning shift, such as the fact that over 50 percent of New York renters are “rent burdened,” not to mention that a stunning 92,879 homeless New Yorkers slept in the city’s shelter system on a “given night” in December 2023. Of these homeless, 33,339 were children. A 1.41 percent apartment vacancy rate–the lowest it’s been since 1968–doesn’t help matters, Garodnick said.

All of this is occurring as New York is building far less homes than it used to a century ago, and that most development is concentrated in a few select neighborhoods. People “take it as a fact of life that rents always go up, that housing is always hard to find,” he added. “We don’t have to live this way. It is a policy choice. We can create a city that people can afford to live in, with housing options in every neighborhood.”

“There is not a New Yorker that is exempt from our housing scarcity problem,” Garodnick said. “There is an imbalance of power between landlords and tenants when tenants have very few practical options.”

What’s more, Garodnick noted, the text amendment intends on creating an economic boom in the construction and residential maintenance industries, which he called “family-sustaining” jobs. Specifically, the city’s estimate is that the “City of Yes” would add 260,000 jobs and add $58.2 billion to NYC’s economy, ostensibly through housing development.

The element of the “City of Yes” that would apply to Manhattan would be its “high-density” measures, Garodnick clarified, after overviewing what the zoning amendment would mean for lower-density outer boroughs (adding accessory dwelling units, pushing transit-oriented development). The high-density element can more or less be boiled down to one standout element: Universal Affordability Preference, or UAP.

UAP would be incremental, Garodnick said, and would allow buildings to add 20 percent more housing if they’re permanently affordable.

Another high-density proposal embedded in the text amendment would be making parking optional, rather than mandated, in new buildings. This does not intend to abolish parking at all, Garodnick said; it would merely “prioritize housing while, of course, allowing parking to exist as needed.” Rather, it hopes to reduce the broader rent increases that accompany parking mandates, as well as provide more space for affordable housing development.

Other “City of Yes” measures that could bolster affordable housing development in Manhattan are the creation of special high-density zoning districts, updating rules to incentivize family-sized apartments, and expanding adaptive reuse regulations to convert under-used buildings–such as some office towers, for example–into apartments.

Garodnick echoed the points he made in the April 26 presentation at the April 29 rally, which he more or less emceed, saying that the zoning amendment would “tackle our housing crisis.”

“The invisible walls that prevent housing in too many of our neighborhoods are driving high rents, displacement pressure, homelessness, and creating an imbalance of power between landlords and tenants, but our housing shortage is a policy choice,” he reiterated in a statement.

The text amendment has other powerful supporters in the city government, such as B.J. Jones, who is driving the “’New’ New York” initiative that has served as a policy roadmap for the Adams administration.

”From business districts to backyards, we must leave no stone unturned when it comes to creating more opportunities for affordable housing in every borough,” Jones said. “The Adams administration is doing just that by advancing comprehensive zoning reforms to foster inclusive growth that will benefit all New Yorkers.”

The public review period of the draft amendment will include Borough President and Community Board review, according to the Planning Commission. City Council modifications and a vote is expected by the end of the year, no earlier than October.