(The Center Square) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has rolled out an initiative to tackle what he called “inequitable” growth in the city’s housing market that will include easing zoning requirements in wealthy neighborhoods.
The Mamdani administration’s “block by block” housing plan, announced Tuesday, calls for policy changes to fast-track residential development in neighborhoods with the lowest rates of affordable housing production and citywide zoning updates to permit more housing to be built near public transit, among other reforms.
Mamdani said the plan focuses on building 200,000 new affordable housing units over the next decade, including the construction of modular homes, while rehabilitating in under 200,000 existing units.
“For centuries, New York City built enough housing to keep pace with our population growth, until the 1960s,” the democratic socialist said in remarks Tuesday from Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood. “Over the past 60 years, however, the government helped create the housing crisis we now face through a series of choices.”
To help finance the development of new housing, Mamdani’s plan also calls for creating a new mortgage program for first-time buyers, which he hopes will attract $22 billion in investment over the next five years.
A summary of the plan released by the Mamdani administration said New York City is struggling with the lowest rental vacancy rate in more than a half century — or about 1.4% across the five boroughs — with affordable housing options for low-income residents increasingly scarce. But some neighborhoods haven’t seen new affordable housing developments in years, officials said.
“While some neighborhoods are adding significant amounts of housing, other neighborhoods add virtually none,” the housing plan states. “Some high-cost, resource-rich neighborhoods, like parts of the Upper East Side, the West Village, and Park Slope, are even losing housing as wealthy New Yorkers combine existing apartments faster than new apartments are built.”
The Real Estate Board of New York, which represents landlords, said it is still reviewing the plan but questioned a provision that would authorize so-called project labor agreements to build new housing.
The board said the agreements — collectively bargained pacts that often steer large-scale projects to unionized labor — would drive up the cost of building more housing.
“At a time when we need to build as much housing as possible, we question why the city would choose to make projects more expensive to build and finance through the addition of costly and inflexible Project Labor Agreements,” REBNY said in a statement. “New York won’t solve its housing supply crisis by undercutting its own laudable production goals.”
Mamdani, a former Queens assemblyman, ran for mayor on a pledge to build more affordable housing and reduce costs for New Yorkers by freezing rents in taxpayer subsidized apartment units across the city of nearly 8.5 million.
New York has some of the highest housing costs in the nation and the lack of options was a key issue in the mayoral campaign, with Mamdani campaigning on protecting rent-subsidized apartments. He recently appointed five new members to the city’s Rent Guidelines Board in a move aimed at packing the panel with supporters of his push to freeze rents in taxpayer-subsidized apartments.
But his administration has also announced plans to cut the timeline for projects that require zoning changes and overhaul the city’s housing lottery system.
Mamdani also announced Tuesday that New Yorkers who are considered “extremely low-income” — or $50,880 for a family of four or less for income — will only pay a quarter of their income on rent, down from 30%, on city-subsidized apartments.
