Eric Adams’ chance for a lasting legacy hinges on his ambitious zoning and housing proposal dubbed “City of Yes” — poised to come before the City Council next week.
But as some community groups seek to derail the plan, the hard-left council looks ready to undermine it — and convert it to the “City of Yes, But.”
The key to Adams’ “City of Yes” concept is zoning.
Changes to the city’s zoning rules would make it possible for builders to launch new housing construction without having to jump through multiple hoops of City Hall permissions.
In the outer boroughs, it would encourage some tried-and true formulas for naturally affordable housing, such as small apartment buildings and housing units atop new storefront blocks.
It would add some new breakthroughs as well — such as allowing homeowners to build “accessory dwelling units” (also known as granny flats) that would let them either collect rent, helping pay their bills, or provide separate apartments or tiny houses for family members.
And, in an age when more and more city dwellers are relying on Uber rather than owning cars, “City of Yes” would relax onerous and expensive parking-space requirements that jack up new housing costs.
None of that impresses Council Speaker Adrienne Adams.
For her, zoning changes are just not enough: New York needs a “thorough housing action plan,” she insists, including more housing subsidized to make it “affordable.”
Channeling Kamala Harris, the city’s plan must be “holistic,” Speaker Adams says.
Let’s hope the full council demurs from such demands.
It’s time for the city’s elected officials to acknowledge that our perennial “housing crisis” is actually the result of generations of such action plans — from NYCHA to rent stabilization to Bill de Blasio’s 200,000 affordable units “created or preserved.”
As it stands, New York City has more — far more — of its housing protected from market forces than any other US city.
Of the city’s 3 million-plus housing units, some 64% of rentals and 42% of all housing is price-regulated in one way or another.
It’s the knee-jerk insistence on yet more such housing — as per Speaker Adams — that constipates the city’s housing market and distorts it.
In practice, the city’s many restrictions mean that all those lucky enough to benefit from “affordable” below-market rents have a strong incentive to cling to their good deals — even as their life situations change.
Incredibly, New York, known as the city to which the ambitious flock to make their mark, has a sharply lower housing-turnover rate than booming sunbelt cities like Charlotte, N.C., or Atlanta, Ga.
That’s why public and rent-regulated housing is replete with empty bedrooms that empty-nesters no longer need, while young families go begging.
So it is that new “affordable” units — required under current zoning rules as part of new construction — reward a favored few with costly-to-provide apartments, while others dream on waiting lists and double- or triple-up in converted closets.
A top-down “thorough housing plan” like Speaker Adams demands would add to the problem, not provide a solution.
Mayor Adams has it right: New construction per se, at any price level, will help ease housing costs at all price levels.
His “City of Yes” concept harkens back to the city’s dynamic pre-public-housing era, when brownstones sprouted across Brooklyn and split-levels and duplexes went up across Queens.
Those units have stood the test of time, while public housing has crumbled.
Here’s something Speaker Adams and the entire City Council should ponder: Under Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei, that country’s largest city, Buenos Aires, precipitously “scrapped” its rent control system, reports The Wall Street Journal — and rents didn’t skyrocket, but the opposite.
The city’s seen a 40% decline in the real price of rental properties, with “many renters . . . getting better deals than ever.”
One key reason: Properties that had been held off the market because legal rents couldn’t cover landlords’ costs flooded back in.
Easing up on rent control could bring the same effect to Gotham, where the noose of state rent regulation has limited not only what owners can charge, but also how much they can recoup for renovations.
We have no idea how many NYC units are standing empty — but wouldn’t it be great, as in Buenos Aires, to find out?
Memo to Speaker Adams: There aren’t enough finance bros to buy or rent all the new housing that the mayor’s “City of Yes” will unleash.
More housing will lead to lower prices, not the supposed evils of gentrification.
Even Kamala Harris — who has backed the idea of millions of new starter homes — seems to get that.
Forget the buts that the council will try to add to “City of Yes.”
New York doesn’t need another housing program — it needs to be deprogrammed.
Howard Husock is an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow and the author of “The Poor Side of Town — And Why We Need It.”
