It's official — the City Council passed Mayor Adams's "City of Yes for Housing" plan by a vote of 31 to 20 on Thursday, capping off a months-long debate and years of organizing over how and whether the city should reform its zoning laws to allow for more residential development.
The modified City of Yes passed by the Council will encourage at least 80,000 new homes to be built — in what advocates dubbed the city's "largest zoning reform" in a half-century. The plan does so in part by eliminating some parking requirements, splitting the city into three parking minimum zones: Zone one eliminates required parking in all new residential developments, zone two reduces the current mandated amounts of parking in new developments and zone three keeps existing parking requirements in place.
City of Yes will also make it easier to build backyard and basement apartments and allow buildings of up to five stories near transit and over retail in some lower density areas. For the most part, Council NIMBY's managed to negotiate one and two family zones out of those changes.
The plan also allows developers to build more units above existing zoning rules in high density areas, so long as those units are affordable, encourages office-to-housing conversions, and makes it easier for churches and other institutions to build housing on their property.
All that compromise flunked at winning over votes, however. As journalist Ben Max pointed out on Twitter, few of the Council members whose districts got exempted from increase density zoning actually voted for the plan in the end.
Gov. Hochul — who's putting $1 billion in state money into the City of Yes — showed up after the plan's passage to celebrate with the mayor, but it wasn't all pomp and circumstance — Speaker Adrienne Adams declined to appear with the mayor and insisted on calling the changes her Council approved "City for All" in her public comments.
The mayor took the win either way — and said he he was unfazed by brewing lawsuits against the plan.
“I don’t care what anyone else wants to call it, I’m gonna call it the City of Yes," Hizzoner told reporters. "The one thing we don’t have a shortage of in New York City are lawyers. Everybody sues in New York."
Stay tuned for more coverage on Streetsblog — and HBO, too, possibly. Filmmaker John Wilson of HBO's "How To With John Wilson" was on the scene on Thursday to film the vote.
— Reporting by Sophia Lebowitz
In other news:
- County of No: Nassau County has failed to put together an official bicycle plan for decades. (DepartmentOfTrash via r/NYCbike)
- Crain's fell into the trap of grouping deaths caused by mopeds, e-bikes and stand-up scooters into one stat in its dive into next week's hearing on the proposal to license e-bikes through the Department of Transportation. Mopeds, which account for most of the deaths, are already required to have state DMV-issued license plates.
- Brian Thompson murder update: Maybe it wasn't an e-bike, after all? (TMZ)
- The Daniel Penny jury remained undecided as of close-of-business Thursday. (Gothamist)
- A police pursuit of a vehicle "with an out-of-state license plate hanging by a screw" ended with cops killing a man while a woman and small child were in the car, (Gothamist)
- The Times followed up reporting from earlier in the week about a beloved high school football coach killed by a driver over the weekend.
- Think about this every time you order food: Delivery workers are being killed out there. (Documented)
- Here's a co-byline for the ages: Lincoln Restler and Bob Holden! (City and State)
- Breaking: CBS New York has admitted there are in fact "pros" to congestion pricing, after speaking to business owners.
- And, finally, this is the part of our daily headlines post where we celebrate yesterday’s donors to our annual December pledge drive. Thanks, Nathan! Thanks, Emily! Thanks, Poul! Please join this esteemed list by clicking the icon below:
