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.

SROs should be legal again. That’s basically what these companies are offering. SROs were an important form of affordable housing for decades.

And it’s not just bed capacity. Someone who works in this field commented on the first NYTimes article saying basically that the whims of the mayor won’t change established legal guidelines for committing people or the decades of court case rulings that got us to this point.

Adams can’t snap his fingers and make the state hold more people in facilities. There might be an increase in 72 hour holds but that’s about it.

It's just a bit silly to complain about the mode of transport that is definitely not killing hundreds a year and call them a menace. Bikes are just new... people are accustomed to cars killing tons of people and breaking all kinds of rules.

Lol. How many people have drivers killed in NYC? How many have cyclists killed?

Do any of the buses that go through the Holland/Lincoln tunnels have them? That would be such an improvement for getting to/from Hoboken/JC by bike.

I’m still surprised that we don’t have bike racks on the front of our buses like countless other cities.

The city is building lots of bike lanes but somehow still doesn’t have this basic transit feature for cyclists.

I’ll drink to that

Edit: Wow this beer is strong.

I basically stopped driving in the city around the start of the pandemic. I had to do it again recently to move some furniture and I was really shocked at how much worse driving norms have gotten.

People driving on the shoulder of the BQE way more, obscured plates, casually running red lights, flashing brights at me for not running a red, etc. Truly feels lawless to a new degree.

Time to start dumping them in the East River.

Some guy in Park Slope called 311 on a cop who was parking his personal pickup truck in a bus stop every single day.

The cop actually got the guy's number from 311 and sent him harassing/threatening voicemails.

I don’t understand why they give such wide painted sidewalks on just one side. Why not add 5.5 feet on both sides?

Yeah it’s so ridiculous that sidewalks are completely overflowing while cars have as many lanes as a suburban highway.

Yeah it just feels like this massive tease that they gave Times Square such a nice, permanent, pedestrian-focused redesign more than a decade ago and really haven’t done anything like it since in other places. Just plastic bollards and paint for the most part.

I understand it’s complicated and costly. But they did it in Times Square and they could at least announce plans or intentions to do it other places.

It’s fine if their current approach is meant to be some temporary test. But once they’re done testing these things and haven’t found any big issues they should move on to planning something more permanent like an actual widening of the sidewalk.

Otherwise we end up with situations like the Willoughby Open Street where some powerful city insider got all the barriers removed one day with no input from anyone and it took a big public outcry to bring them back. Real physical changes are much harder to undo on a whim.

Yeah all of the recent changes to NY’s streets that take space back from cars have been done in temporary ways (paint, plastic bollards, temp barriers, plastic planters). It’s like they want the next mayor to undo it.

Manhattan’s sidewalks used to be wider. They were made narrower to fit more cars. Time to undo that stupid decision.