Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Getty
In New York City, the increasingly desperate need to build more affordable housing has long run up against an arduous approvals process that hinges on winning community support. Currently it defers to local councilmembers’ preferences, allowing them to negotiate for community benefits when developers propose housing projects but also to nix them for no reason at all. The result is not enough housing overall and an uneven landscape where some development-friendly neighborhoods see a lot of new construction while other areas, like Riverdale or parts of northeast Queens, block pretty much everything to the extent that a lot of developers have simply stopped trying to build there. Earlier this year, Mayor Eric Adams convened a commission to see what could be changed in the Charter, the city’s governing document, to address these issues. They came up with three ballot proposals — Propositions 2, 3, and 4 — to amend the Charter. These will go before New Yorkers starting October 25, the first day of early voting.
The propositions, which are designed to shift some of the power away from local councilmembers and give more of it to the mayor and the borough president, have been controversial to say the least. With the most to lose, pretty much the entire city council is vehemently opposed. They’ve framed the proposals as top down, dictatorial, and pro-developer changes that strip communities of their power to negotiate for things like parks, schools, and other community benefits. Councilmembers even tried (and failed) to kick the propositions off the ballot altogether. But a lot of elected officials across the city, and from different parts of the political spectrum, support the proposals, including Comptroller Brad Lander and the Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens borough presidents (and, of course, Adams).
But what do the proposals actually mean? Will they meaningfully encourage more affordable-housing construction? Or are they simply a mayoral power grab, as opponents claim — one that will allow the mayor and developers to do whatever they like, returning the city to the Robert Moses era of urban planning and shut local communities out of the decision-making?
Here’s everything we know.
There are three housing-related proposals on the November ballot: Propositions 2, 3 and 4.
Proposition 2 would simplify and speed up the review process for two types of affordable-housing projects.The first would apply to projects that are publicly financed and 100 percent affordable, which tend to include a lot of supportive- and senior-housing developments. These can take more than a decade from proposal to completion, like the Phipps Houses in Sunnyside, Queens, especially in unfriendly districts. The amendment proposes that these types of projects could get waivers from the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals to speed up the approvals process — taking them out of the community back-and-forth that often happens even with senior housing (a generally popular project type).
The second change would give the City Planning Commission, a mayor-appointed board that weighs in on projects after the community board’s advisory vote, the ability to approve or deny developments that are at least 25 percent affordable in the 12 community districts that lagged the most in affordable-housing construction. Approved projects could then be built without the city council’s say-so. These districts include Republican strongholds like the southeast shore of Staten Island, southern Brooklyn, and northeast Queens, according to a recent analysis by City Limits, but also blue neighborhoods like Bay Ridge and the Upper West Side.
Proposition 3 would speed up the review process for projects that involve a modest size or density increase — such as replacing a two-story, two-unit building with a three-story, six-unit building — which would otherwise have to go through the city’s strenuous urban land use review procedure (ULURP). Because ULURP involves rounds of community review, City Planning Commission approval, and City Council approval (following the local councilmember’s preference), it’s lengthy and costly, and most developers opt not to go through all that trouble for smaller projects. Developers typically only go through the hassle of ULURP for large-scale projects with enough potential for profit to make it worthwhile.
Proposition 4 would create an affordable-housing appeals board that could reverse City Council land-use decisions. The board would consist of the borough president where the development was being proposed, the mayor, and City Council Speaker. This is the most controversial of all the proposals, as it would wrest the power to make land-use decisions away from the local councilmember.
The City Council, which will lose power to call the shots, particularly if Proposition 4 passes. City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has framed the Charter changes as the death of community involvement: “There will be no more negotiation with our residents, with our neighbors, with our community boards, with our civic associations that we partner with. That will be gone.”
Councilmembers argue that the proposals will rob them of their ability to fight for community benefits —parks, schools, deeper affordability (higher percentages of the most affordable units versus those reserved for upper-income bands, as well as larger apartments versus studios and one-bedrooms) — and that, as a result, unchecked gentrification will flourish throughout the city. “Our current land use process was created in response to Robert Moses’ era of exclusionary planning that promoted segregation, displacement, gentrification, and environmental injustice, disproportionately of Black and Latino communities,” Majority Leader Amanda Farris wrote in a recent statement. “Now that our communities have the power to demand more affordable housing and investments in their neighborhoods, these ballot proposals threaten to take us back.”
Also, they point out, the City Planning Commission, which would be able to green-light projects in 12 community districts if Proposition 2 passed, is composed of mayoral appointees — giving the mayor an outsize influence on land-use decisions.
Councilmembers have also taken issue with the language in the proposals, which they say is misleading: It doesn’t clearly state that the impact of the changes will be a loss of local power. As they wrote in a letter to the Board of Elections, the questions “fail to inform voters that the ballot proposals will completely eliminate the City Council’s existing authority on behalf of the public to approve or modify a wide range of land use proposals—including many projects made up almost entirely of luxury housing.”
Some affordable-housing experts I spoke with also speculated that the council, which passed the pro-housing City of Yes plan earlier this year, may view the proposals as an affront so soon after many members put their necks out for Adams.
Unions like local 32BJ SEIU (which represents building service workers like doormen and porters) are also opposed — union labor is often an add-on to projects negotiated by councilmembers. However, the modest-size buildings of Proposal 3, for example, are unlikely to be built or serviced by union labor.
Comptroller Brad Lander, the former councilmember and progressive mayoral candidate who lost to Zohran Mamdani in the primary, supports the measures. At a July hearing of the Charter review commission, he told the commission that “this is the best Charter revision commission we have had since 1989” with regard to land use and affordability (strong words!).
Three of the five borough presidents — Manhattan’s Mark Levine, Brooklyn’s Antonio Reynoso, and Queens’s Donovan Richards — also support the proposals. As the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, a housing-research nonprofit, has noted, the borough presidents lost most of their authority in the 1989 Charter revisions, but the changes would restore their ability to meaningfully advocate for projects.
Shifting some of the responsibility for land-use decisions away from local councilmembers to borough presidents could also stop NIMBYs from punishing councilmembers who support projects they don’t like, argues Amit Singh Bagga, who is heading up the Yes to Housing PAC that is fighting for the propositions’ passage. Bagga noted that right now, councilmembers who support housing projects against the wishes of their constituents risk being voted out of office, like Marjorie Velázquez, whose support of the Bruckner Rezoning in the South Bronx likely played a role in her losing to a Republican. A borough president isn’t likely to be voted out of office by voters in any one neighborhood, so letting them make the unpopular decisions could help housing get built.
Governor Kathy Hochul, whose own term has been defined by attempts to override local municipalities that thwart housing development and density, also supports the plan. Least surprising of all, Open New York, a pro-housing group, supports it, too.
Supporting the proposal is not all or nothing thing, either: Some organizations, like the housing nonprofit Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD), are championing Proposition 2, which it believes will help to “build affordable housing faster, fairer, and at lower cost.”
Councilmember Lincoln Restler has, like his fellow councilmembers, been a strong opponent of all the proposals until this week, when he wrote in favor of Propositions 2 and 3 in his newsletter, saying they would facilitate affordable-housing construction, particularly in neighborhoods where the least new housing has been built. His district, which includes Downtown Brooklyn, has been a leader in this regard — in the first six months of this year alone, 3,700 new apartments came online in Downtown Brooklyn. He continues to oppose Proposition 4, however, writing that it will allow “developers to ignore our community’s priorities and build whatever they want … without any tangible benefits for their communities.”
Developers would likely be in favor — anything that makes it faster and easier to build will cut down on cost and uncertainties — but they’ve generally stayed quiet about the ballot measures, either because the affordable-housing builders or smaller developers who stand to gain the most from Propositions 2 and 3 aren’t generally all that vocal, or because coming out in full-throated support might hurt the cause, making it seem that developers really do have the most to gain from the proposals’ passage.
Andrew Cuomo is in favor, Curtis Silwa is against, and Mamdani has, in the words of The City, remained “mum” on the proposals. While Mamdani’s focus on affordability helped propel him to victory in the primary, several insiders I spoke with thought he may be wary of alienating City Council, which he’ll need on his side to help him pass his initiatives if he wins. “I’m continuing to have those conversations,” he told the New York Post earlier this month. “What I can say is that I’m appreciative of the fact that it’s on the ballot and that New Yorkers have a chance to weigh in.”
Ballot supporters have argued that an appeals board with the Speaker, borough president, and mayor (per Proposition 4) doesn’t destroy councilmembers’ negotiating power because the board isn’t likely to push through a project that was rejected by City Council or by the local councilmember because the developer was stonewalling on community benefits.
One housing expert I spoke with noted that the City of Yes gives new housing targets to council districts with a shortage of such projects but has no enforcement mechanism if they fail to meet those targets. The ballot proposals would effectively do that by allowing projects that are 25 percent affordable to move forward with less red tape in districts that aren’t doing their share. Overall, Propositions 2 and 3 are more targeted in their scope.
Things could also depend on who is elected mayor this November. It’s not exactly clear how the amendments would play out in practice since Adams is leaving office and the two front-runners in the mayoral race have starkly different priorities, with Cuomo commonly regarded as the developers’ favorite and Mamdani championing affordability above all (in which case, Propositions 2 and 3 might be appealing). Still, one of the goals of the legislation, at least in theory, is for affordable-housing development to rely less on the whims of individual politicians.
Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter
A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice
Related