Updated: Aug. 26, 2024, 12:08 a.m. | Published: Aug. 25, 2024, 5:50 a.m.
By Paul Liotta | pliotta@siadvance.com
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A City Planning Commission vote on a controversial housing plan looms on the horizon, but city officials offered no signs this week that they’re looking back.
Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that he had heard the feedback, including the overwhelming opposition from Staten Island, but his main goal is to get more housing built through the “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” plan.
“You have to find a sweet spot. And no matter what sweet spot you find, there are going to be folks who are going to say, ‘no, we don’t like it.’ That’s the beauty of New York,” Adams said. “Whatever I have to do to build housing, we’re going to do.”
To demonstrate the need for housing, the mayor pointed to the city’s historically-low 1.4% vacancy rate, according to the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, a survey conducted in partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau roughly every three years since 1965.
That low vacancy rate, based on the 2023 survey published earlier this year, has contributed to outrageously expensive homes, skyrocketing rents, and for the poorest New Yorkers, homelessness.
“City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” seeks to address those issues by creating the possibility of 108,000 new units of housing through a series of zoning changes.
New York City’s zoning resolution dates back to 1916, but had its last major rewrite in 1961 leaving many pieces out of date.
The “City of Yes” plan would create less restrictive zoning that would allow for things like accessory dwelling units, shared living and commercial to residential conversions. It would also allow for more transit-oriented development, make minor changes to the city’s special districts, and eliminate off-street parking requirements.
On that last point, Adams last week used it as an example of how everyone in the city cannot be pleased with a massive proposal, like the City of yes for Housing Opportunity. At an earlier press conference last week, the took a series of questions on why his city had yet to meet bus and bike lane milestones.
“Like I always say, 8.3 million New Yorkers, 35, 38 million opinions,” he said. “[For] those who cheer a bike lane, there are those who jeer a bike lane. Those who say we take away parking spaces to do housing, there’s those who applaud that we take away parking spaces to do housing.”
The mayor’s observation of varying interests in the city aside, official representatives across Staten Island have come out against the “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” plan in one form or another.
While there has been some Staten Island public support for more housing, Borough President Vito Fossella, all three community boards, Councilman Joseph Borelli (R-South Shore), Councilman David Carr (R-Mid-Island) and Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks (D-North Shore) have expressed varying degrees of opposition.
Hanks went as far as launching a local task force in late July aimed at finding places to tweak the plan in the best interests of the councilwoman’s district.
City Planning Zone Change Process
Responding to opposition to the plan, City Planning Commission Chair Dan Garodnick said Wednesday that his office would continue to do all it can to relay the importance of “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity.”
The City Charter outlines an official process zoning changes go through that require advisory input from each of the five borough presidents and all 59 local community boards, but Garodnick said the city had done even more to get the message out about “City of Yes.”
For the first time, the Department of City Planning launched a division for community engagement, which helped organized 175 City Planning visits to local community boards, 10 public information sessions, and worked with council members to better inform their districts, Garodnick said.
“I’ve reflected on this question, because I like to do things right and the [City Charter] sets the path for how you do a big, complicated zoning change,” he said. “That’s the official, but we did all these other additional supports as a way to try to meet people where they are. And, of course we continue to do that as we are right in the middle of the process, and we will continue to do that right up to the day the City Council casts its vote.”
That Council vote will come by the end of the year, but first, the City Planning Commission will need to cast its vote.
Both Garodnick and a Department of City Planning spokesman said last week that the vote will be “in the coming weeks.” The Commission’s next bi-weekly public meeting will be held Sept. 11.