Isn’t it just tennis lite?

Yes but my understanding is that that project only went before the council because it involved rezoning.

It probably seems like I’m splitting hairs here but just wanted to explain that you can build without council approval if it meets existing zoning.

The reason so many of these projects involve the council is because they’re in former industrial/commercial areas and the developers are asking for permission to change that zoning to residential.

It worked great in suburban NJ when they passed a similar law. Now most train stations there are surrounded by big new apartment buildings.

What does anything you said have to do with increasing density?

When people talk about zoning and the housing crisis, they’re primarily talking about arbitrary limits on density, not rules that prevent factories in residential areas. Or they’re talking about converting former industrial areas to residential like what happened on the Williamsburg waterfront.

There are not lots of empty housing units. This is a widely propagated myth. The city’s vacancy rate is extremely low.

So what? That can and should change. The state is likely going to pursue a law in the near future that would force increased density near transit anyway. So all those areas (including Long Island) would have to allow apartments within walking distance of trains.

Agreed. Cities like Minneapolis and Portland managed to end single-family zoning. Yet NYC still has it in places like Staten Island and East Queens.

Luxury apartments still take pressure off the market. Those rich people will just outbid you for your next apartment if they don't get built.

And vacant apartments are a vastly overstated problem. The city's vacancy rate is extremely low.

The state tracks housing vacancy rates. I don’t know the exact criteria but they’ve tracked it for decades.

The rent stabilization law has a stipulation that stabilization ends automatically when vacancies reach a certain percentage that’s considered healthy for a housing market. That has never happened, obviously. They came close during 2020 but still short.

And we saw what happens to rents when vacancies actually increase significantly.

You’re conflating two different things.

Jacob Riis inspired basic rules around safety and crowding in apartments and light/air.

Zoning in the US absolutely started as a way to keep poor and black people out of certain areas.

> Zoning determines what can be built where, and is ubiquitous in the United States. Low-density residential zoning predominates in US cities far more than in other countries, limiting housing opportunities for those who cannot afford large homes. These zoning regulations have racist and classist origins, make housing more expensive, and reinforce segregation patterns.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-soc-030420-122027

And NYC’s first zoning law was not inspired by Riis. It was inspired by the massive Equitable Building which was just a giant cube that blocked light on the street below. The first zoning law was primarily focused on requiring setbacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916_Zoning_Resolution

The vacancy rate is at historic lows and decreases every year.

What you’re describing only happens in noteworthy numbers on Billionaires Row.

Everywhere else, landlords are renting out as many units as they possibly can to take advantage of high prices.

Also, people who repeat this never seem to be able to explain why rents went down substantially in 2020. Did landlords withholding things not work then? Surely that would’ve been the ideal time to do it, right?

Which safety rules are being removed?

Most of what I've read so far has said it's about removing environmental impact studies for smaller developments, removing/reducing parking minimums, and consolidating existing rule enforcement under the DOB.

That's because developers know the rich neighborhoods have a much higher chance of stopping projects. So they don't even try there.

Developers go for poorer neighborhoods because a) property is cheaper and b) the locals are far less likely to have the time/money to organize opposition to projects.

Rich neighborhoods will often pool their resources to hire lawyers, lobbyists, and preservationists to fight changes around them.

Hell, the UES has successfully blocked an accessibility elevator at an existing subway station for 10 years now... because of "neighborhood character."

The Seaport area has kept a parking lot from becoming housing through similar efforts.

That's already how it works. The community boards mostly get involved when the developer wants to rezone something.

Zoning is the issue where local politicians get to play NIMBY.

You mean redesigning the same bike lane 3 times in 5 years isn’t a sign of efficiency?!

Amazing. The idea that anything with “environmental” in the name could be used to mandate parking for cars is the height of irony.

Many cities in Europe have the opposite system… parking maximums. And the few spots that are allowed typically have to be reserved for people with mobility issues.

Yep. Zoning was first invented to keep apartments from being built near rich people’s homes. Before that, the rich actually had to buy up property around them to prevent development.

And then zoning replaced de facto segregation in the suburbs when that was banned. “Poor people aren’t banned here… we just ban any housing they could actually afford.”

NYC does have a "right to build" system that basically says you can build whatever you want as long as it adheres to current zoning.

The big fights over development that you read about are almost always because the developer wants to change the zoning... often from industrial (think former waterfront factories) or light commercial (the single-story retail in Harlem that nearly became a big development) to higher-density residential.

Zoning is essentially about maintaining the status quo in an area. So if you want to increase density at all or build residential where it previously didn't exist, you typically have to go through these painful rezoning processes where every local leader gets a veto and it takes years.

I think a more serious solution would be to just loosen zoning citywide.

I thought I read elsewhere that he was just proposing to reduce parking minimums?

Yeah another article said that one of the biggest roadblocks is simply staffing shortages in City Hall... caused partly by his requirement of 5 days a week in the office.

You're not going to get super accurate population numbers after 2020 because that's when the last census was done. So it's just estimates after 2020.

But that census showed a growth of 629,000 people between 2010 and 2020.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/us/new-york-city-population-growth.html

And housing supply grew by 193,000 in that same period.

Source: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/1c9138dc24064b2e8142ff156345a719

Sure. Here's a good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_housing_shortage

> Between 2009 and 2018, according to the New York City Comptroller, New York gained 500,000 new residents, but built only 100,000 new housing units.

And for vacant stabilized units: https://citylimits.org/2022/11/17/empty-rent-stabilized-units-in-nyc-decreased-this-year-as-warehousing-debate-rages/

> Property owners have registered 38,621 of the city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized units as vacant, according to the 2022 records provided by New York State Homes and Community Renewal (HCR).

This is just inaccurate, sorry.

NYC's population has grown by hundreds of thousands while housing supply has grown far more slowly.

We need 400,000 new housing units just to make up for the deficit we got ourselves into over the last decade.

There aren't half a million vacant apartments lying around. Supply is absolutely the problem. And there are only 38,000 rent-stabilized units being held vacant... mostly because the rent doesn't justify the renovations required.

> He noted that the creation of new housing has lagged far behind population growth.

> “There is nowhere for people to go,” he said. “It’s not complicated. We have more people than homes.”

TL;DR the proposal would basically remove a lot of roadblocks for smaller residential developments like exempting them from environmental impact requirements. It would also bring more of the process under one roof… the DOB would take over some fire safety stuff from FDNY.

I just want to know about parking minimums. Those have got to go. More and more cities (all with worse transit than NY) are eliminating them entirely. But we still have minimums everywhere except Lower Manhattan.