The New York City Council is expected to approve one of Mayor Eric Adams’s signature policy proposals on Thursday — part of a three-part plan to update the city’s zoning rules known as “City of Yes.”
The latest measure aims to boost the economy by creating new manufacturing districts and encouraging businesses to fill vacant storefronts. The Council already approved the first piece of the mayor’s plan, which focused on climate change, in a vote last year.
A third proposal could be more contentious. It is meant to spur development of affordable housing, but it has prompted outrage in neighborhoods outside Manhattan and comes at a time when there is growing tension between Mr. Adams and the City Council. It could be voted on later this year.
Here is what you need to know about the mayor’s “City of Yes” proposals:
What’s the goal?
Mr. Adams, a Democrat, has argued that the city’s zoning rules are outdated and are hampering efforts to address a housing crisis and to help the economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic. The changes would be the first major updates to the commercial zoning code since the 1960s.
Mr. Adams has argued that the goal of the three-part plan is to make the city “more equitable and sustainable.” Updates to rules around housing are especially needed, he said, as the rental vacancy rate hovers at close to 1 percent — the lowest it has been in more than 50 years. The new rules, he said, would allow the city to build “a little more housing in every neighborhood.”
“We have to build more inventory,” Mr. Adams said at a recent town hall in Queens. He also pointed to the city’s stark racial segregation: “Our zoning laws were racist on many levels. It prevented people from living in communities.”
What changes are being approved?
The first measure, to address climate change, makes it easier to install rooftop solar panels and to retrofit buildings for greater efficiency. It also expands the places where electric vehicle charging facilities can be built.
The second, which the Council is voting on this week, would expand manufacturing areas. It would also allow more businesses to operate out of homes and on upper floors of mixed-use buildings. And it would permit dancing and comedy shows at venues where music is allowed.
The City Council made several changes to the second proposal, including removing a provision that would have allowed for corner stores in residential areas and increasing oversight over plans to add commercial spaces to public housing developments. The city also agreed to new regulations for warehouses run by companies like Amazon, known as last-mile hubs.
Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University, praised the proposal, noting that the pandemic had changed how people live and work.
“We need zoning that combines work and residence rather than separate them as done by the zoning of the 20th century,” he said, adding that the changes would remove “needless rules that stifle innovation.”
What changes are still under consideration?
The third proposal, focused on housing, would make it easier to build affordable housing and to convert office buildings to housing. The city has estimated that the plan could produce more than 100,000 new homes over the next 15 years.
It has many striking proposals: ending parking mandates for new housing; allowing “accessory dwelling units” such as backyard cottages and basement apartments; adding housing above businesses on commercial streets in low-density areas; and approving new housing near transit stops.
Why is it contentious?
Daniel Garodnick, the director of the Department of City Planning, has called the plan “one of the most important housing proposals in our lifetimes.”
“This housing crisis has been going on for so long that some take it as a fact of life that New York City is a place where rents always go up and where housing is always hard to find, but that is a policy choice,” he said at a rally in April. “We don’t have to live this way.”
But the housing proposal has also faced the most opposition, including criticism from conservative lawmakers who have said they do not want more density in their districts. Some members of the City Council and community members have already vowed to stop the plan.
Robert Holden, a council member from Queens who is a co-chairman of the conservative Common Sense caucus, said that it would be a disaster.
“I never thought I’d live to see this,” he said on social media. “It’s kind of hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic that they’re trying to destroy our neighborhood.”
The Asian Wave Alliance, a conservative political group, has also opposed the housing plan, arguing that the “resulting development free-for-all will cannibalize all of our communities, lowering our quality of life and affecting property values, and exacerbating the strain on neighborhoods without any increase in infrastructure.”
Mr. Adams might have to rely on left-leaning elected officials, whom he has often quarreled with but who have been generally supportive of his housing plan.
