New Yorkers Voted Yes On All Three Housing Ballot Proposals

On Tuesday, New Yorkers voted to pass three housing ballot proposals to amend the city’s charter, streamlining the approvals process for several types of developments. The ballot measures, which passed by about 20 percent (nearly 60 percent in favor, and a little over 40 percent against), with about 91 percent of the vote counted, were perhaps not as closely scrutinized as the mayoral polls, but they represent a major change in how the city builds housing, and were highly controversial — one of the main ways they fast-tracked the approvals process was by shifting power from local councilmembers to the mayor and borough presidents.

The city council portrayed the proposals as a power grab that would return the city to a Robert Moses-era of top-down decision making that would give developers a blank check and weaken the ability of local representatives to negotiate for more and deeper affordable housing, schools, parks, and other public benefits with them. But on election day, several councilmembers, including Erik Bottcher (representing Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen) and Shaun Abreu (Morningside Heights, West Harlem), came out in support of all the measures. Lincoln Restler, whose district includes Downtown Brooklyn, had previously said he backed propositions 2 and 3. Zohran Mamdani, the only mayoral candidate to demur when asked to weigh in on the proposals in the lead-up to the election (Andrew Cuomo was for; Curtis Sliwa against), said on election day that he voted for all three of them. As he told Brian Lehrer on WNYC, the city’s urgent need for new housing had guided his decision. In the end, voters also decided that the need for affordable housing outweighed concerns about diminishing community power. With their passage, Mamdani as mayor gets a boost towards his goal of building 200,000 more units of permanently affordable housing over the next 10 years.

What’s next now that the proposals have passed? We talked to Vicki Been, faculty director at NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy who also served for three years as the Commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development under Bill de Blasio, housing developer Rick Gropper of Camber Property Group, and Layla Law-Gisiko, president of the City Club of New York, a civic organization that opposed the proposals, to share what they expect to happen.

Faculty director at NYU Furman Center, former HPD commissioner

I think the variance procedure in Proposition 3 [which allows developers to build projects that involve a modest size or a density increase] is underappreciated and will make a huge difference. We started a clinic where students represented faith-based organizations that want to build projects that require variances from the board of standards and appeals, and it’s amazing how hard it is to build anything larger on so much New York City land: the 40 percent of NYC land zoned for low-density development. HPD doesn’t have the resources to work on a 10-unit building, but we need a lot of 10-unit buildings. Proposition 3 will allow for a lot more of that.

The other thing I think the proposals will do is provide an enforcement mechanism for the fair housing requirement in the City of Yes. I think it’s the right idea that every community should step up and allow housing to be built and this substantiates that notion. Some neighborhoods have not built more than seven units in the last few years. This reduces the threat that many councilmembers make: Don’t come into my district, I will vote against you and the city council will go along with me. Developers won’t propose projects in certain neighborhoods because it’s not worth it. This tempers that. The charter revisions will lead to more housing and more types of housing in low-density neighborhoods, which is housing the city needs. And changing three units to five or six units won’t change the nature of the neighborhoods.

President of the City Club of New York (and former land use committee chair on Community Board 5, in Midtown Manhattan)

The propositions really re-regulate the way new developments and buildings are approved. It changes who gets to say yes and takes away the checks and balances that are an important part of the process.

Now mayoral appointees have the only seat at the table. For two out of three proposals, the city council will not play any role at all. The City Club took the position to oppose these ballot proposals and we’re really concerned about the shifting of power.

I don’t think they will increase affordable housing. The reality is that housing production is a very complex issue. The lack of it cannot be summed up by ‘zoning is the bottleneck.’ The most important factor that determines whether a residential building will be built is the ability to access capital. The zoning is only a marginal factor. It’s simplifying to say changing the approvals process will change what gets built. There aren’t other policy proposals or subsidies that go with these proposals. The market will generate whatever generates a profit. If it’s a quadruplex for billionaires, that’s what developers will build.

Zoning is not meant to be some sort of punishing thing meant to make a city miserable. Zoning is a way to manage growth, so we don’t just rely on the market. If we create something that’s not allowed by the current zoning, let’s think about the externalities: do we need more school seats, more green space? Zoning has been described like it’s this evil tool. Zoning is great. Rezonings are approved all the time. We just approved a massive rezoning — City of Yes. If we need to tweak the zoning, let’s tweak the zoning. Deregulating is working against what a city planner should be doing. Are we now advocating for bad quality developments?

What I think we’re going to get now is all the land use attorneys getting busy in granularly understanding the new rules, then they will work with architects and planners to design buildings that fall under that rule.

I don’t trust the mayor to negotiate greater affordability. I’ve been working with developers for 20 years. I know that they will try to do something that is incredibly egregious the first time they bring a proposal. And now, if it doesn’t get approved by the city council, they will get the panel to approve it.

Affordable housing developer, Camber Property Group, which has built 1,800 new residential units

The ballot measures will have a dramatic impact on the way developers think about buying and developing land. You’ll have more certainty when buying land, which will allow you to build more affordable housing. You don’t have to take on the risk of a rezoning where even when you’re turning an empty parking lot into affordable housing, it might get rejected.

We rezoned a site in Bushwick in 2018, 1601 Dekalb, where we turned a parking lot into 127 units of affordable housing. It was 100 percent affordable, but we were met with significant community resistance. People were saying that it wasn’t affordable enough. There’s such a shortage of housing in that neighborhood and yet it took us three years to get this passed. We went through ULURP; it’s nine months after you certify into ULURP, but certifying into ULURP is the deterrent. It can be $3 million to get through a rezoning. If we had to go back, I don’t think we would rezone it again.

I think three years is about average, but it can be longer. Or it can just not happen at all. Like the rezoning on 145th Street that was 50 percent affordable. [In 2022 developer Bruce Teitelbaum withdrew an application for a project in Harlem that would have had 915 units, half of which would have been income-resistricted, after the local councilmember said she would not support the project unless 57 percent of the units were affordable to households earning no more than 30 percent of the area median income. Later, another plan for the site was approved after a new councilmember was elected, with less units overall and less affordable housing.]

The charter revision cuts out some of those deterrents. If we did this project today, it could be fast tracked as 100 percent affordable under ballot question 2. And it might also qualify for the expedited land use review process. A lot of affordable housing developers have started looking to build more projects outside New York because of the capital outlay [the costs associated with acquiring and getting approvals], the risk and the time it takes to build in the city. I think this will hopefully get some of them back. We should make it easier for people building affordable to do the right thing. The developer at the 145th Street project was providing real and meaningful housing and the deal just did not go through. The charter reform and ballot proposals could help another developer in a similar position.

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