One bright spot in Tuesday\u2019s election was the passage of four ballot proposals to speed the creation of affordable housing \u2014 mainly by stripping the City Council of its power to block it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a well-deserved slap to the council, which is infamous for putting parochial concerns and special interests ahead of what\u2019s good for the city as a whole.<\/p>\n
This final gift from Mayor Eric Adams will help greatly in creating<\/a> more lower-cost housing in the city, at a time when it\u2019s desperately needed: Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani should thank him publicly and profusely.<\/p>\n Proposal 2, which passed 58% to 42%, will fast-track the greenlighting of lower-rent housing that receives public financing or is meant for communities that see relatively little of it.<\/p>\n It does this by scrapping council review and shaving months off the review time.<\/p>\n \t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n Voters backed Proposal 3 by a similar 57%-to-43% margin; it streamlines and simplifies the process for changing zoning rules for small areas and small-scale housing \u2014 slicing months off the seven-month slog under the Uniform Land Use Review Process, cutting out the council and leaving final say up to community boards, borough presidents and the City Planning Commission.<\/p>\n Proposal 4, which won 58% to 42%, takes direct aim at the council, particularly its pernicious practice of deferring to Not-In-My-Back-Yard members who block affordable housing.<\/p>\n From now on, a board made up the mayor, City Council speaker and the relevant borough president will be able to reverse City Council decisions on these projects.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Proposal 5 will bring the City Map into the 21st century by requiring it to be online, instead of having 8,000 paper maps managed by local \u201ctopographical bureaus\u201d in each borough, as now.<\/p>\n That, too, will help speed up approvals and give developers and the public better access to vital information needed for projects. No wonder a whopping 73% of voters backed this proposal.<\/p>\n New York\u2019s housing market has suffered for decades, thanks to city and state laws that discourage the construction and upkeep of new units \u2014 most notably, rent regulation.<\/p>\n Mamdani\u2019s rent freezes, which will benefit even rich tenants, will do nothing<\/a> to boost the housing supply \u2014 the one thing that can keep housing costs in check and make more apartments available. Instead, they\u2019ll lead to less livable housing.<\/p>\n