Kathy Clown's Housing Compact is kaput but Mayor Swagger's City Of Yes housing plan stumbles on

 

THE CITY

With Gov. Kathy Hochul abandoning her proposal to force New York’s suburbs to build more housing, Mayor Eric Adams’ administration and its allies are redoubling their efforts to ensure the city gains the power to spur more housing construction by converting office buildings, extending tax credits for developers and allowing greater density.

To help push those through, the governor for the first time has indicated she is willing to accept a statewide rent voucher program, a key objective of tenant advocates. The program would provide money to the city’s public housing authority to cover unpaid rent, say sources who have been briefed by those in the negotiations. As THE CITY has previously reported, more than 70,000 NYCHA tenants owe a total of $466 million in back rent.

The sudden rush of developments from Albany on Tuesday may serve as a break in the impasse that has held up the state budget, now 19 days late — but they also mean a significant defeat for Hochul.

Tuesday’s concession by the governor comes after she made housing the centerpiece of her policy goals once she won the governor’s race in November. Hochul called on the state to build 800,000 new housing units over the next decade, a number that includes the 500,000 new units that Adams promised to create over the next 10 years.

The governor’s original Housing Compact proposal established goals for new housing in every community and set up a statewide board that could greenlight projects that had been rejected in towns and villages that failed to meet their housing goals. Lawmakers in the state’s suburban districts — especially in Long Island and Westchester — had staunchly opposed the plan, saying it ripped control away from locals.

As word circulated in the capital on Tuesday that Hochul was giving up on her previous housing requirements, the governor essentially conceded defeat.

“After weeks of negotiation, the legislature continues to oppose core elements of the Housing Compact, including the requirement that communities across the state meet growth targets,” Hochul said in a statement. “I will continue to discuss other elements of the plan and policy changes that will increase supply and make housing more affordable.”

Instead of specific requirements for new housing creation, the budget is now likely to include some version of a proposal the legislature has made to create a $500 million fund for infrastructure upgrades, such as improving roads and sewers, to communities that meet goals for new housing.

Groups that have spent the last year arguing that the state’s housing shortage is a result of too little housing development, and that local community resistance preserves segregation in the suburbs, wasted little time in blasting state lawmakers.

“We are extremely disappointed that the legislature failed to address segregation and the housing shortage by rejecting the visionary Housing Compact and instead capitulated to powerful NIMBYs who prefer the status quo,” said Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference. “By doing so, New York’s elected officials have once again let their constituents down and signaled that the ongoing housing emergency is acceptable.”

The housing goals would have applied to every community district in the city as well.

Still alive are proposals advanced by the Adams administration. They include legislation to ease the conversion of obsolete office buildings into residential housing — possibly including a tax break to encourage some of the units to be designated as below-market-rate housing; changes to state law to allow thousands of basement apartments to be legalized, and extending a deadline for completion of residential buildings that poured their foundations before the valuable 421-a tax break expired last spring. 

In a statement on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Adams promised to keep pushing the administration’s plan.

“Our administration has been on the ground daily in Albany in recent months advancing critical tools like flexible regulations for office conversations, lifting the floor area ratio cap, creating a pathway to make basement and cellar apartments safe and legal, and creating tax incentives to develop new housing while maintaining housing quality,” said Charles Lutvak, a spokesperson for the mayor.

 

Southeast Queens Communities open letter to YIMBY Hochul

Save1FamilyNY

 For decades, Southeast Queens has been held up as a model of the American Dream for those striving for a better life. Our communities in Southeast Queens have more than 220,000 residents claiming African American and Caribbean American heritage, many of whom themselves (or their parents and grandparents) left other denser parts of the city – often at greater cost and expense than most other ethnic groups in the city – to have some breathing room, own their own home, a backyard, grass and trees and to give their children a better life.

From Hillside Avenue to JFK Airport, Lefferts Blvd. to the Nassau County line, our mostly suburban neighborhoods have survived and thrived despite systemic racism and redlining. We cherish our low-density communities in Southeast Queens, and we have consistently defended our detached one-family zoning in places like Addisleigh Park, Cambria Heights, Hollis, Jamaica, Laurelton, Queens Village, Rosedale, St. Albans, South Ozone Park, and Springfield Gardens. Additionally, over 60% of our residents own their own homes, more than double the citywide average.

We want to be clear: we are united with all of our neighbors in Queens, Staten Island, the rest of New York City, the suburbs in Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and beyond regardless of race, ethnicity or economic background who oppose the “Housing Compact” which, in our estimation, will be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off in our communities.

Having the Governor mandate more development in southeast Queens, increasing density by 500% within ½ mile of our LIRR stations, forcing increases in housing if we don’t do it ourselves by overriding local zoning, giving blanket amnesty to dangerous and deadly basement and cellar apartments – these are extinction level policies that will wipe out our neighborhoods, plain and simple. Most of our elected officials from southeast Queens understand this.

Some supporters of Gov. Hochul’s plan, such as Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher of Brooklyn have equated single-family zones with Jim Crow practices, and have deemed the governor's plan as necessary to achieve "racial justice." While historically that is true, it does not apply to our communities in Southeast Queens in 2023.

What we’ve achieved over the years is the ability to live the life we want, where we want and how we want.

The governor's plan, far from bringing "racial justice" to our black and brown communities in Southeast Queens and other areas, would bring devastation throughout our neighborhoods if implemented.

The financial and political gains that African Americans have made in our city, our suburbs and across the State – our top elected officials except for the Governor herself are African American in both the State and the City – all of this will be lost if the “Housing Compact” becomes law.

We are the civic leadership of Southeast Queens. We are Black and we are 100% opposed to Governor Hochul’s “Housing Compact” and the attempts to increase density exponentially in our communities. We hope that the Governor and Legislature are listening very carefully.

Signed,

Addisleigh Park Civic Association
Alpha Street Civic Association
Brinkerhoff Action Association
Eastern Queens Alliance
Greater Triangle Civic Association
Queens Village Civic Association
St. Albans Civic Improvement Association
149th Street South Ozone Park Civic Association
221/222 Street Block Association
South Ozone Park Civic Association West
Sojourner Truth Democratic Club
United Coalition for Veterans & Community Rights (UCVCR)
United Neighbors Civic Association (UNCA)
Wayanda Civic Association

I'm going to leave this here too. This is a malignant thread from Manhattan Twitter, I mean Borough President Mark Levine that wants to destroy community boards as well so this housing compact can get rubber stamped and approved. Even though it still doesn't provide enough affordable housing for lower income working people.

 

Manhattan Borough "president" has no idea how democracy works but he sure thinks he knows how it should be run

By a caliphate of lobbyists he feels should influence laws and make all the decisions for communities.

Levine is a fascist https://t.co/2yUMhOYIiO pic.twitter.com/92Gj2RdVLJ

— WE❤️NYC LLC (@ImpunityCity) March 29, 2023

Hochul and Adams State and City Of Yes housing plans focus on basements, suburb towers and office buildings

<

 NY Daily News

Suburbs would have to step up their development game under Gov. Hochul’s plan to build 800,000 new units of housing across the state in the coming years.

To confront the state’s housing crisis, Hochul proposed in her State of the State address Tuesday a plan dubbed the “New York Housing Compact,” which will require every town, city and village in the state to set a target number of new homes to create over a three-year period.

 The governor specifically called out suburban communities surrounding New York City for limiting building in recent decades and said in her address that the state is ready to step in.

“Local governments can meet these targets any way they want,” she said. “They can shape building capacity. They can redevelop old malls or buildings, office parks, incentivize new housing production or just update the zoning rules to reduce the barriers.”

However, she added, if communities “have not made good-faith efforts to grow when proposed housing projects are languishing for no legitimate reason, the state will implement a fast-track approval process.”

That “fast-track” course would allow housing proposals that are denied locally to go to a “state housing approval board” or the courts.

The downstate area, including Westchester, Putnam and both Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island, would be required to grow their housing stocks by 3% every three years.

Upstate towns would have to meet a target of 1% growth every three years. Hochul noted that New York in recent years has trailed other states, including New Jersey and Connecticut, when it comes building housing.

The governor also wants to see more multi-residence projects near MTA subway and train stations. The plan requires municipalities with MTA rail stations to rezone areas within half a mile of a station to allow for at least 25 homes per acre.

The proposal includes $250 million for infrastructure to accommodate the increased density including sewers, schools and road work. It also calls for an expedited environmental review process for rezonings.

“Today, we say no more delay. No more waiting for someone else to fix this problem. Housing is a human right,” Hochul said. “Ensuring enough housing is built is how we protect that right.”

Suburban legislators were largely quiet about Hochul’s proposals on Tuesday.

History shows they might be a heavy political lift — suburban politicians have traditionally complained about state laws that would require them to allow more housing.

Griping by suburban politicians forced Hochul to drop two such ideas from the state budget in 2022, including a plan to encourage housing near train stations similar to her current proposal. The other would have required towns to allow apartments to be built within single-family homes.

In the city, Hochul is seeking a new version of the lapsed property tax abatement plan known as 421-a, which would incentivize the building of affordable housing units. A revamped version of the program failed to make it into the budget last year.

Real estate groups and organizations like Homeowners for An Affordable New York, a landlord-backed group, applauded the governor’s proposals.

“The Governor outlined an ambitious agenda for addressing longstanding inequities in the housing market,” spokesman Andrew Mangini said in a statement. “Housing developers and property owners, both big and small, look forward to engaging in conversations with state lawmakers to ensure fair and equitable solutions to practical issues in housing and real estate.”

Tenant advocates and progressive lawmakers, meanwhile, panned the plan. They said it falls far short of what is needed to address the housing and affordability crisis already facing many New Yorkers.

 NY Daily News

Mayor Adams and top city planning officials released new details around their push to convert underused office space into apartments in the city’s bustling business districts, including a plan that would allow for the rezoning of millions of square feet of space in office buildings.

The blueprint, which Adams and city planners put out through a City Planning Department study, would in part require zoning changes to permit conversions in buildings built prior to 1991.

Currently, such office-to-residential conversions are only allowed in Financial District buildings built in 1977 or before, and buildings in other city