Modified version of Adams’ ‘City of Yes’ zoning plan passes key Council committee vote

A modified version of the mayor’s City of Yes housing proposal passed key City Council committees on Thursday, a major milestone for the plan.
Several aspects of the mayor’s plan were scaled back in the last hours of negotiations with the City Council’s speaker’s office and Department of City Planning, including the number of units to build, the location of accessory dwelling units and parking mandates. It is expected to add 80,000 new units of housing to the five boroughs and includes $5 billion in funds from the administration to fund the council’s housing priorities.
“Nothing has been done with this over half a century,” Mayor Adams said moments after the second vote passed. “This is an amazing benchmark that we are putting down in our commitment to deal with housing in this city.”
The plan, “Zoning for Housing Opportunity,” was pitched as a badly needed overhaul of decades-old zoning rules exacerbating the city’s dire housing shortage. The packages of reforms would help build “a little bit more housing” in every neighborhood by loosening restrictions on what can be built where.
Councilmembers from car-reliant areas in the outer boroughs have raised concerns for months about parking mandates, which would have lifted minimum parking requirements for new developments citywide — but not banned new parking.
The modified plan now includes a three-tiered model where mandates will either stay unchanged, be reduced or be eliminated entirely depending on location. It also includes carve-outs for accessory dwelling units like granny flats, banning basement and ground-level units in areas identified as flood-prone.
“As far as the modifications are concerned, we worked very, very hard to listen to the voices that we heard in a record hearing from our communities across the city,” Speaker Adrienne Adams said at a press conference.
“We believe that we struck the correct balance to make sure that the voices were heard. And we are very, very proud that we remained ambitious through the whole process.”
The measure passed 4-3 in the Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchise and 8-2 in the Committee on Land Use, moving the plan, which would add 80,000 more housing units to the five boroughs over the next 15 years, forward to a full Council vote early next month.
Councilmembers David Carr, Kamillah Hanks and Lynn Schulman voted no on the plan in the subcommittee, and Hanks and Joe Borelli voted no in the Land Use Committee. Selvena Brooks Powers abstained in the committee’s vote.
“This is a major undertaking, and it’s being rushed, really, in a lot of different ways,” Schulman said. “And so I still have major reservations about it.”
Gov. Hochul agreed to put up $1 billion in funding from the state budget at the request of City Hall late Wednesday night, sources told the Daily News. This came after the Council pushed for new funding commitments from the administration. The state money brings the total funding to $5 billion.
Ahead of the vote, mayoral candidates city comptroller Brad Lander, State Sen. Zellnor Myrie and former comptroller Scott Stringer spoke out against weakening the plan.
City of Yes has faced strong resistance since its introduction last September from more development-averse outer-borough neighborhoods, where residents voiced concerns about how the plan would change the fabric of their communities.
The committee vote comes after months of arduous, often heated evaluation from community boards, borough presidents and other stakeholders during the city’s review process.