{"id":361754,"date":"2026-10-01T10:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T10:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/361754\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T10:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T10:48:09","slug":"upper-east-side-bay-ridge-among-areas-slated-for-fast-tracked-affordable-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/361754\/","title":{"rendered":"Upper East Side, Bay Ridge among areas slated for fast-tracked affordable housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neighborhoods, including the Upper East and Upper West Sides, Bay Ridge and Canarsie, will see affordable housing development<\/a> moving faster starting in 2027, the Mamdani administration announced Thursday as it begins to roll out new housing rules.<\/p>\n

The changes, which apply to the 12 districts that the city found to have produced the least affordable housing in recent years, are expected to speed up the typically monthslong public review process<\/a> as the city grapples with twin housing and affordability crises.<\/p>\n

The new rules also cut out the City Council\u2019s role in the process, reducing members\u2019 influence over planning decisions.<\/p>\n

Kensington, Canarsie, Maspeth and Staten Island\u2019s South Shore are also among the districts that will be subject to the new regulations, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2027.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor too long, affordable housing production has been deeply uneven across New York City, leaving too many New Yorkers with too few choices about where they can live,\u201d Sideya Sherman, director of the Department of City Planning, said in a statement. \u201cThe Affordable Housing Fast Track gives us a new tool to help change this by making it easier to advance permanently affordable housing in communities that have produced the least. We look forward to using this tool to expand housing opportunities across these 12 districts and bring meaningful housing relief to New Yorkers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA map of the New York City districts identified as the lowest producers of affordable housing, which will be on an affordable housing \u201cfast track\u201d starting next year. (Department of City Planning)<\/p>\n

Council Speaker Julie Menin said in a statement the Council is committed to building more affordable housing, but she emphasized the importance of \u201cworking with communities\u201d to identify where to place new housing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is exactly what the Council is seeking to accomplish through our proactive, community-led planning efforts \u2014 like in Bay Ridge \u2014 to ensure New Yorkers have a meaningful role in shaping their neighborhoods,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Queens Councilmember Phil Wong, who represents Maspeth, Middle Village and Ridgewood, said he had \u201cserious concerns\u201d about whittling down his say over housing developments and and stripping away \u201cmuch of the community\u2019s voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe in housing quotas or top-down mandates that ignore the character of our neighborhoods and shut communities out of decisions that directly affect them,\u201d Wong said.<\/p>\n

Upper West Side rep Gale Brewer, told the Daily News she was \u201cupset\u201d by the decision to designate her district as one of the fast-track areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been saying this is a terrible idea for months,\u201d Brewer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s right to loop us in with other communities that may not want affordable housing and have space for affordable housing \u2014 I don\u2019t have space!\u201d she added. She pointed out that the building-dense neighborhood is home to many homeless shelters, plus a lot of single-room occupancy housing and temporary housing solutions.<\/p>\n

The \u201cfast track\u201d is a 90-day process that allows community boards and the borough presidents\u2019 offices to concurrently review a proposed housing development before then passing it on to the Department of City Planning for approval \u2014 allowing developments to bypass the monthslong Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP, process.<\/p>\n

The new rules could also smooth out the process for developers by making the process cheaper and faster, cutting down on the amount of time they have to sit on land to be developed.<\/p>\n

Voters approved the rules last year, as part of a slate of ballot questions designed to construct badly needed housing more quickly as the city grapples with a housing shortage and sky-high rents.<\/p>\n

The Council opposed these measures, arguing they curtailed its powers on housing, especially in combination with other proposals that shortened the approval process for some developments, and created an affordable housing appeals board, allowing the mayor to override the Council if it denied some developments across the city.<\/p>\n

The proposals were advanced by a\u00a0Charter Revision Commission<\/a> empaneled by ex-Mayor Adams.<\/p>\n

According to City Hall, the districts together have developed only about 1% of the city\u2019s affordable housing stock over the past five years \u2014 or just 724 homes \u2014 despite making up roughly a fifth of the city\u2019s districts. The districts are scheduled to be re-selected every five years.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neighborhoods, including the Upper East and Upper West Sides, Bay Ridge and Canarsie, will see affordable housing development…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[267,9,24,55,54,10,692,12,56,87],"class_list":["post-361754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-politics","tag-news","tag-ny","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}