NYC Housing Development Is on the Ballot This Fall
Urban Matters: Rick, just a few months ago, Mayor Eric Adams and the New York City Council were celebrating they’re getting to yes on the “City of Yes,” a historic package of zoning changes designed to accelerate new housing construction citywide.
But that was then. Now, they’re at loggerheads over a set of housing-related amendments to the City Charter that are on the ballot this fall. Why is that, and what’s riding on the outcome?
Richard McGahey: The proposed Charter amendments aim to limit the City Council’s role in land use decisions, so many Council members (Democrat and Republican) are fighting them. (There’s also an amendment to move primary and general elections for city offices to the even-numbered years when state and national elections are also held, but let’s just stick with housing.)
Currently, the City Council can approve or deny proposed land use changes and housing developments as part of the City’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP). A Charter Commission appointed by Mayor Adams concluded that the Council uses informal “member deference” – effectively giving a local Council member veto power – that in aggregate is blocking the citywide supply of affordable housing. The goal of the contentious Charter amendments (and not all of them are controversial) is constraining the Council’s power over land use and housing.
UM: Sounds like some pretty fundamental disagreements. Are these amendments an end-run around democratic decision-making about housing? Or are they necessary correctives to a dysfunctional system? You’ve been upfront in identifying problems with liberal NIMBY (“Not in My Back Yard”)-ism. But on the other hand, should we be weakening checks on what in New York is already a pretty strong mayoralty?
McGahey: I actually think the amendments are modest. They don’t fundamentally change ULURP. Community boards would still review projects, and the amendments leave many land use controls, including landmarking, the Council’s role in approving zoning changes (like the City of Yes package), and environmental review requirements largely intact. They don’t create new “as-of-right” construction permissions, although modestly sized 100 percent affordable projects would get a somewhat faster approval track, while still being subject to many city regulations.
The real conflict lies in a key amendment that replaces the current mayoral veto over Council land-use decisions – rarely used in practice – with a final, dispositive vote by a new appeals board. It would be composed of the Council speaker, the mayor and the relevant borough president.
The underlying issue is member deference, an informal but entrenched practice where a Council member effectively controls land use decisions in their district, and reciprocates by supporting that power for other Council members. While such logrolling is common legislative practice, the Charter amendments seek to elevate land use decisions beyond the concerns of a single district. To me, that’s good: housing and land use are citywide issues, not the exclusive province of a single neighborhood or council district.
UM: Variations on this New York City debate are also playing out in other cities and states, right? The costs of housing seem to be rising almost everywhere, and there’s an emerging consensus that over-regulation is a major culprit. Where are we headed on these questions?
McGahey: There’s growing recognition that restrictions on housing – through zoning, lengthy and undemocratic review processes, and other barriers – have choked off adequate housing supply, a principal reason for our affordability crisis.
In New York City, all of the Democratic mayoral primary candidates this spring to some extent endorsed more housing construction by reducing barriers, a stance rarely seen even a few years ago. While politicians and the public still view for-profit developers with suspicion, the debate is shifting toward the pro-supply YIMBYs and against the development-blocking NIMBYs.
UM: Well, speaking of the mayoral election: Concerns about affordability – especially for housing – powered Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in the Democratic primary. Some of his progressive allies, including City Comptroller Brad Lander, are on board with the proposed City Charter amendments. But Mamdani has so far remained silent on them. Do his record or past statements provide clues about where he might stand on these issues?
McGahey: It depends on which statements you focus on. His more recent statements sound pro-housing. He’s set a goal of an additional 200,000 new affordable units, although that’s a lower target than some of his primary opponents endorsed. When asked by The New York Times about where he’s changed his mind, he said “the role of the private market in housing construction…I clearly recognize now that there is a very important role” for it. But his housing plan doesn’t feature any pro-market rate targets, and it would require an additional $70 billion in city borrowing.
In 2022, he opposed the Innovation QNS project proposed to go up in the State Assembly district in Astoria, Queens that he represents. It would have built over 3,000 new units, 25 percent of them affordable. His position then was that the affordability share was inadequate and the project would cause displacement and gentrification. (A standard left-NIMBY argument against development is that affordability targets aren’t high enough, but in practice that can mean advocating targets so high that developers give up on the project.) And his goal of freezing rents in rent-stabilized apartments, while not tied to the Charter, raises concerns that it could deter private housing investment.
He may avoid taking a position on the Charter amendments, since part of his base opposes them, and maybe he’ll just defer to “the voters” as he has done with the casino proposals now under consideration in the city. The real test will come when Mamdani takes office (assuming he will win) and what specific policies and actions he puts into place.
Richard McGahey is an economist and a senior fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, and also at the Institute on Race, Power, and the Economy, both at The New School. He is the author of Unequal Cities: Overcoming Anti-Urban Bias to Reduce Inequality in the United States.
Photo credits: Steven Pisano.