New Yorkers would be forgiven if all the recent talk about “City of Yes” has begun blurring together in their minds. After all, the term refers to not one, but three different sets of reforms that Mayor Eric Adams is trying to get passed.
All three of the packages have to do with zoning — the city laws that govern what can be built where. But each one has a different focus: housing, businesses and the environment.
The Adams administration says the city’s zoning code, which has not gotten any major updates since it was adopted in 1961, has grown outdated and is ill-suited to address those issues. The result, he says, has been a city that says “no” to too much — from desperately needed housing to dancing in bars and restaurants.
To update the laws, the administration must shepherd all three rewrites, known as “zoning text amendments,” through the city’s monthslong public review process, starting with community board feedback and culminating in a binding vote by the City Council. His administration released the three packages one by one, starting with the least controversial — the climate-related package, which was approved in December — and ending, the mayor hopes, later this year with a vote on the thorny housing reforms.
Many of the reforms are likely to run into sharp opposition at the local level, even as they enjoy support from business groups and some policy experts. Altogether, they could amount to one of Adams’ most significant legacies — if he’s able to get all three passed.
Here are the most important things to know about each City of Yes proposal — who wants them, who doesn’t want them, and what they will and won’t do.
Business red tape: City of Yes for Economic Opportunity
What’s its status?
This business-oriented plan is near the end of its public review, with the City Council set to hold a vote by late May.
What would it do?
This package has 18 different proposals that would generally loosen the rules about where different kinds of businesses can operate — helping to boost the economy and create jobs, according to backers. Its most notable proposals include:
- Allowing small “clean” manufacturers like 3-D printers, microbrewers, potters and bakeries to operate in regular commercial districts instead of only industrial zones
- Letting life-science labs expand more easily by permitting them outside industrial areas and alongside hospitals and universities
- Limiting the intrusion of commercial businesses in manufacturing areas, in hopes of preserving industrial jobs
- Allowing commercial activity on the upper floors of mixed-use residential buildings
- Ending the role of zoning in regulating dancing, including by allowing dancing in any bar or restaurant where live music is already allowed
- Letting corner stores open in residential areas if they get a special City Planning authorization, and allowing commercial space on residential “campuses” like public housing developments
- Allowing “micro-distribution” delivery centers in storefronts in an effort to get the e-bike-heavy hubs off of sidewalks
“When you are still having rules around typewriters but not rules around smartphones, iPads and other entities, it shows we have outlived the rules that are on the book and we need to look in a new direction,” Mayor Adams said during an April 8 rally for the package.
Who’s for and against it?
The Economic Opportunity plan enjoys support from a slew of business improvement districts, chambers of commerce, and other industry groups like the New York City Hospitality Alliance and the Real Estate Board of New York.
On the other hand, a majority of the city’s 59 community boards voted against it in the public review that began last fall. Opponents have mostly worried about the newfound mixing of commercial and residential uses; Republican Assemblyman Lester Chang of South Brooklyn criticized it for “giving businesses a free hand and driving into our residential neighborhood.”
Adams’ City Planning department tweaked the plan in March in response to that feedback. Changes included banning the conversion of apartments into commercial space to avoid incentivizing any loss of housing, and capping home-based businesses at 1,000 square feet.
What really matters is how the City Council feels. Lawmakers mostly praised the proposals’ goals during a hearing in early April, and Speaker Adrienne Adams thanked the administration for including some pro-manufacturing policies that lawmakers had sought.
Council members did demand some additions, such as regulations on last-mile delivery facilities and promises to increase funding for the Buildings Department to enforce the new regulations. A few Republican council members have harshly criticized the Economic Opportunity plan, but they hold little influence in the overwhelmingly Democratic council.
More apartments everywhere: City of Yes for Housing Opportunity
What’s its status?
A roughly seven-month public review will kick off sometime in April for this housing-focused plan, expected to be the most consequential — and controversial — of the three City of Yes packages. The City Council would vote on it by the end of 2024.
What would it do?
The Housing Opportunity package takes aim at the city’s desperate apartment shortage by allowing “a little more housing in every neighborhood,” the administration says. Mayor Adams says it could produce about 100,000 new homes over 15 years, although a precise estimate will be released in late April.
The proposals include:
- Allowing more density in low-rise neighborhoods across the city, including 3- to 5-story buildings near public transit
- Giving a 20% density bonus to developers if they include affordable apartments in higher-density parts of Manhattan, Western Brooklyn and Queens
- Eliminating requirements for new developments to include parking spaces
- Legalizing accessory dwelling units of up to 800 square feet in backyards, basements or garages
- Allowing housing above shops on outer-borough “main streets” where apartments are currently restricted
- Legalizing shared amenities like kitchens, which could ultimately allow for the return of single-room occupancy-style housing
- Encouraging more office-to-residential conversions by permitting them in more outer-borough neighborhoods and in buildings built before 1991, later than the current cutoff of 1961 in much of the city
The mayor unveiled the housing plan in a speech last September, and City Planning released all 790 pages of text in early April before sending it out to community boards for review.
Who’s for and against it?
The housing plan has early support from some developers and policy experts, including the Regional Plan Association and the New York Housing Conference. More surprisingly, it also won praise from the preservation-oriented Municipal Arts Society, whose president wrote a Crain’s op-ed calling the proposals “a welcome departure” from the more piecemeal rezonings led by previous mayors.
A handful of Manhattan officials, like borough president Mark Levine and City Councilmen Keith Powers and Erik Bottcher, have endorsed parts of the plan. Most importantly, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has come close to outright endorsing the package — although she has also predicted challenges in persuading fellow lawmakers from low-rise neighborhoods to get on board.
“We are homeowners, and we are used to the characteristic of our community,” the speaker said of her own southeast Queens district at a housing policy event in February. But she added, of City of Yes: “We have to be up to meet that challenge.”
Indeed, neighborhood leaders from Bayside, Queens to Riverdale in the Bronx have already railed against the plan publicly. Changes to parking rules in particular may prove controversial in the outer boroughs, even though the plan would not touch any parking spots that already exist.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Housing Opportunity plan may not be especially tantalizing for left-wing lawmakers, who tend to be more interested in tenant protections than supply-oriented policy fixes that encourage development.
“There’s folks who have been outwardly supportive of it, and members who have concerns about individual pieces of it,” one City Council member told Crain’s in March.
Well aware of the fight they have in store, Adams administration officials have downplayed the plan’s potential impact, saying it was crafted to avoid dramatically changing any neighborhood’s appearance.
“It’s really designed to not have the types of impacts people are fearing in terms of changing their neighborhood character,” said Leila Bozorg, executive director for housing at the mayor’s office, at an event in February.
Climate-friendly construction: City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality
What’s its status?
Approved by the City Council in December, in a 38-8 vote.
What will it do?
The Carbon Neutrality package aimed to remove bureaucratic obstacles to climate change projects, including building retrofits, electric vehicle infrastructure and renewable energy. The Adams administration hopes it will help the city reach its goal of an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050.
It contained 17 policy proposals, including:
- Removing limits on the number of solar panels that can be installed on a roof
- Loosening rules on where well-insulated walls can be added to buildings
- Opening up more of the city to electric-vehicle charging infrastructure
Who was for and against it?
Environmental groups supported the Carbon Neutrality rewrite, as did some renewable energy business groups, the Partnership for New York City, and the EV-inclined transportation company Revel.
There was no major push against the package, but the eight lawmakers who voted against it in December were all Republicans or conservative Democrats.
Caroline Spivack contributed reporting.
This article will be updated as the City of Yes proposals move through their public reviews.
Nick Garber , 2024-04-16 11:48:04
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