Neighborhoods, including the Upper East and Upper West Sides, Bay Ridge and Canarsie, will see affordable housing development moving faster starting in 2027, the Mamdani administration announced Thursday as it begins to roll out new housing rules.
The changes, which apply to the 12 districts that the city found to have produced the least affordable housing in recent years, are expected to speed up the typically monthslong public review process as the city grapples with twin housing and affordability crises.
The new rules also cut out the City Council’s role in the process, reducing members’ influence over planning decisions.
Kensington, Canarsie, Maspeth and Staten Island’s South Shore are also among the districts that will be subject to the new regulations, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2027.
“For too long, affordable housing production has been deeply uneven across New York City, leaving too many New Yorkers with too few choices about where they can live,” Sideya Sherman, director of the Department of City Planning, said in a statement. “The Affordable Housing Fast Track gives us a new tool to help change this by making it easier to advance permanently affordable housing in communities that have produced the least. We look forward to using this tool to expand housing opportunities across these 12 districts and bring meaningful housing relief to New Yorkers.”
Council Speaker Julie Menin said in a statement the Council is committed to building more affordable housing, but she emphasized the importance of “working with communities” to identify where to place new housing.
“That is exactly what the Council is seeking to accomplish through our proactive, community-led planning efforts — like in Bay Ridge — to ensure New Yorkers have a meaningful role in shaping their neighborhoods,” she said.
Queens Councilmember Phil Wong, who represents Maspeth, Middle Village and Ridgewood, said he had “serious concerns” about whittling down his say over housing developments and and stripping away “much of the community’s voice.”
“I don’t believe in housing quotas or top-down mandates that ignore the character of our neighborhoods and shut communities out of decisions that directly affect them,” Wong said.
Upper West Side rep Gale Brewer, told the Daily News she was “upset” by the decision to designate her district as one of the fast-track areas.
“I’ve been saying this is a terrible idea for months,” Brewer said.
“I don’t think it’s right to loop us in with other communities that may not want affordable housing and have space for affordable housing — I don’t have space!” she added. She pointed out that the building-dense neighborhood is home to many homeless shelters, plus a lot of single-room occupancy housing and temporary housing solutions.
The “fast track” is a 90-day process that allows community boards and the borough presidents’ offices to concurrently review a proposed housing development before then passing it on to the Department of City Planning for approval — allowing developments to bypass the monthslong Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP, process.
The new rules could also smooth out the process for developers by making the process cheaper and faster, cutting down on the amount of time they have to sit on land to be developed.
Voters approved the rules last year, as part of a slate of ballot questions designed to construct badly needed housing more quickly as the city grapples with a housing shortage and sky-high rents.
The Council opposed these measures, arguing they curtailed its powers on housing, especially in combination with other proposals that shortened the approval process for some developments, and created an affordable housing appeals board, allowing the mayor to override the Council if it denied some developments across the city.
The proposals were advanced by a Charter Revision Commission empaneled by ex-Mayor Adams.
According to City Hall, the districts together have developed only about 1% of the city’s affordable housing stock over the past five years — or just 724 homes — despite making up roughly a fifth of the city’s districts. The districts are scheduled to be re-selected every five years.