New York City’s “City of Yes” project, which aims to provide a large amount of affordable housing by relaxing zoning regulations, passed a New York City Council subcommittee on the 21st with reduced content than originally planned.
The New York City Council’s Zoning and Franchising Committee and Land Use Committee voted today to reduce the project’s original goal of providing 108,000 affordable housing units over the next 15 years by 26%, to 80,000 units.
By excluding areas targeted for the supply of basements, attics, converted garage accessory dwelling units (ADUs), or so-called “backyard homes,” flood-prone areas, landmark areas, and the outskirts of the city such as Queens and Brooklyn, concerns of residents of Bayside, Queens who had opposed the implementation of the “City of Yes” have disappeared.
Last September, Bayside residents and politicians rallied at the LIRR Bayside station, demanding the plan be scrapped, arguing that “if the City of Yes is implemented, Bayside population density will double, creating severe parking problems and devastating impacts to residents’ lives.”
The City of Yes project would have allowed commercial buildings built before 1965 to be converted to residential use, or existing residential buildings to be converted into multi-family housing through additions.
Accordingly, in the target area, multi-family housing or apartment buildings of three to five stories in height would be built on street corners near major transit facilities (such as the LIRR train station), and 800-square-foot ADUs would be built in the backyards of houses, raising strong concerns about a decline in quality of life due to parking problems and other factors caused by the population increase.
Mayor Eric Adams said on the day, “This is a historic moment, as New York City can begin to supply affordable housing in certain areas that have not been touched since the 1960s,” and “If 80,000 affordable housing units are supplied over the next 15 years, it will surpass the total number of affordable housing units supplied through zoning adjustments by the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations.”
Mayor Adams expected that the implementation of the “City of Yes” project would be able to curb the rising rents in New York City. Meanwhile, the “City of Yes” project, which was passed with amendments on the day, will be put to a vote at the City Council plenary session on the 5th of next month.