New York’s Housing Crunch Collides With Development Skeptics

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams’ most consequential housing proposal yet is being put to the test — and early pushback signals a challenging path ahead.

New Yorkers whose neighborhoods have maintained a suburban feel in the country’s largest city are already mobilizing against the blueprint, fearing it would irrevocably alter the landscape they’ve grown accustomed to.

“It would absolutely destroy our communities,” City Council Member Joann Ariola, who represents Howard Beach and other parts of Queens, said in an interview. She referenced concerns about strained local infrastructure, crowded schools and a loss of neighborhood appeal in an area dotted with low-slung homes.

Like her 50 legislative colleagues, Ariola will have a say in the mayor’s plan when it comes before the council for a vote later this year. The proposal to overhaul the city’s zoning code to spur residential development from Midtown Manhattan to the far reaches of Queens is now making its way through the city’s 59 community boards.

The wide-ranging blueprint would permit small apartment buildings in suburban-style neighborhoods, scrap parking mandates and allow homeowners to more easily convert basements and garages into living quarters. The measures, intended to combat the city’s historic housing shortage, are running headfirst into the anti-development sentiment woven into the fabric of local politics.

“It’s going to change everything about the way we live,” said Paul DiBenedetto, chair of the Queens Community Board representing portions of the residential neighborhoods of Bayside and Douglaston. The board rejected it in a near-unanimous vote on Monday, and council members Vickie Paladino and Linda Lee — who represent the area — have vowed to the board to oppose the plan, DiBenedetto said.

The Adams administration has a tall task ahead with most community boards slated to vote this month on what the mayor has branded his “City of Yes” plan. The boards are only granted advisory input, but their recommendations have historically influenced decisive council votes.

“The big battle right now is the perception issue and the talking points of some of the antagonists of this plan which is, oh, they’re eliminating single-family zoning everywhere,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said in an interview. “People think they’re going to wake up and next to their one-story home they’re going to have a ten-story building, and that’s just not the case.”

The city’s goal is to permit a “little more housing in every neighborhood” and reduce the burden of growth on areas that have seen the bulk of new construction in recent years, city officials say. The plan is expected to generate up to 58,000 to 109,000 homes over 15 years, according to planning documents — far from the 500,000 new homes Adams has said the city needs over the next decade to address the shortage.

This pillar of Adams’ “City of Yes” plan would be the first citywide zoning amendment focused on housing since the mandatory inclusionary housing policy of 2016 that required affordable housing in rezonings. That measure, and an accompanying proposal to modernize rules governing development, were voted down by the vast majority of community boards and borough presidents.

Those proposals passed, but the fierce local pushback caught then Mayor Bill de Blasio off guard and prompted his administration to overhaul their strategy — including hiring outside consultants and mobilizing labor unions to get it over the finish line.

Those challenges appear top of mind for city officials as they navigate today's political landscape.

“I have been on the receiving end of a couple of citywide text amendments coming out of City Hall and the Department of City Planning, and understand how complicated that process can be for elected officials and community boards,” said City Planning Director Dan Garodnick, who served in the council when de Blasio's plans were approved. “That’s why we have really stepped up our game on community engagement.”

The agency created a new division to lead outreach to community boards, and officials have been briefing legislators and staff on the proposal for more than a year, Garodnick said. The administration also plans to give community boards more time than is typical to submit feedback this summer, and has held 10 public information sessions since the proposal was announced in 2022.

Garodnick is also personally meeting with Council members to help sell the plan.

But several community boards will be hard to persuade and opponents are getting organized.

Board representatives interviewed by POLITICO referenced presentations from Paul Graziano, an activist urban planner who opposes Adams’ proposal and has been traveling across the city to warn of its perceived dangers.

“The city has declared war on the lower-density parts of the city by stating that we are the cause of the housing crisis,” Graziano said in an interview. “This proposal is going to be the extinction of all of these communities.”

A recent presentation he led in Cambria Heights in southeast Queens drew more than 500 residents. He’s spread his message to audiences in Bayside, Queens; Canarsie, Brooklyn; and Morris Park in the Bronx.

Homeowners and neighborhood leaders from Belle Harbor, Queens to South Beach, Staten Island descended on City Hall park last Friday for a rally opposing the plan. They held signs that read “Don’t Ruin the American Dream” and “Say No to City of Cement.” DiBenedetto, who attended the rally, said more are planned.

“We are encouraging every citizen who lives throughout the city to write to the Council, every member of the Council, to write specifically to [Speaker] Adrienne Adams, and to write to the mayor,” he said.

Administration officials have stressed their plan would not invite dramatic changes to any neighborhood, but rather spur modest growth that’s necessary to counter the worsening housing shortage.

Just 1.4 percent of rental apartments were vacant and available in 2023, the lowest level in more than 50 years, according to the latest housing and vacancy survey.

Citywide, politics around development have shifted as the crisis deepens, rendering it less tenable to fight housing — a trend that could work in Adams’ favor.

And there’s more vocal support from housing advocacy groups on the urgent need to add supply. The New York Housing Conference has convened some 130 organizations into a “Yes to Housing” coalition, which came together for its own rally at City Hall park in April.

“Every neighborhood has a responsibility to our fellow New Yorkers and the families who would be a part of our community if given the chance,” the coalition wrote in a recent letter to the city’s community boards.

“I think the world has changed a lot since the [mandatory inclusionary housing] proposal,” said Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who served in the council during that fight. “I think we’re actually going to see more support among community boards because the crisis is even more acute than it was seven years ago — rents are higher, vacancies are lower, homelessness is worse.”

Heather Beers-Dimitriadis, chair of the Queens Community Board covering Forest Hills and Rego Park, referenced widespread concerns about the plan in her community, and said she wishes the board had more time to review it. But she also noted the desperation people feel due the housing shortage — describing calls the board received in support of recent proposals for residential development.

“The people we heard from are young people that grew up here that want to live here, they want their parents to live next to their grandchildren, they want to be here to take care of their families and they begged us because they feel like they’re getting priced out of their communities,” she said.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has voiced support for aspects of the “City of Yes” proposal and appears to share many of its goals. But an increasingly tense relationship with the Council — made worse over a power struggle in recent weeks — could complicate its path to approval.

“We’re starting in an awkward place with respect to some of the very high-profile fights we’ve had with the administration over the past year,” said Council Member Pierina Sanchez, chair of the housing committee.

These dynamics could require the mayor to lean on members who are not his natural allies, including people his administration has antagonized. The Republicans and conservative Democrats he usually finds shelter with “are going to be much more responsive to the NIMBY forces in their districts who don’t want to see anything get built,” said one former city official who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

Complicating matters, council members are up for reelection next year, making them particularly wary of taking action that would upset voters.

“That fraught relationship will make the whole thing more difficult and it will cost the administration a lot more in concessions,” the person added.

"As this proposal goes through public review, a small, vocal minority are spreading fear and falsehoods about it — but New Yorkers should ignore the noise," mayoral spokesperson William Fowler said in a statement. "This housing crisis impacts everyone — from grandmothers who cannot afford to stay in their homes, to young people returning from college feeling priced out of the market, and everyday New Yorkers who see their rents going up. The price we have to pay for decades of ‘no’ is felt in the pockets of everyone."