What Mayoral Candidates Say About Housing-Law Measures

It was one of the most virulent moments of the second mayoral debate, triggered by, of all things, three ballot measures most New Yorkers are only dimly aware of.

One candidate, Andrew Cuomo, supports the measures. A second, Curtis Sliwa, vehemently denounced them. What did the third candidate think?

“I’m appreciative that those measures will be on the ballot and that New Yorkers will be able to cast their votes,” said the candidate, Zohran Mamdani.

Cuomo and Sliwa pounced on him.

“What is your opinion, Zohran, come on,” pressed Sliwa.

“Yes or no,” snarked Cuomo. “Answer the question, for once.”

The moderator, Errol Louis, had to break in and repeat his question.

“Do you support the three ballot amendments?”

“I have not yet taken a position on those ballot amendments,” Mamdani replied, to a further cascade of derision from Cuomo and Sliwa.

Three days before voting started Saturday, the leading candidate for mayor could not, or would not, express a view on these ballot measures. Is it any wonder that regular New Yorkers are unsure what to do with them?

This uncertainty is even more striking since the measures were offered by the charter revision commission to address, at least in part, the very issue that has so occupied this election campaign and that many New Yorkers say is their biggest concern about living in New York.

That is, the cost of a place to live.

The candidates all agree that part of the solution to the high cost of housing is to build more.

But that consensus disintegrated when the discussion turned to the three ballot measures, which propose to streamline the process for approval of the construction of apartments intended to be affordable to New Yorkers of lower incomes.

On its face that sounds like a good idea. But Mamdani dramatically illustrated what a political minefield this really is as he refused to take a position on measures that touch on issues from gentrification and neighborhood power, to the housing shortage and the influence of the real estate lobby.

The most important change proposed to the city charter by the ballot measures would be to curtail the role of the City Council in the approval of proposed housing, which often runs into neighborhood resistance and is then scuttled by the deference the council gives to local members to decide development issues in their community.

Indeed, Sliwa made clear that he supports this deference and views the effort to eliminate it as a sop to real estate developers.

“Absolutely, local control,” he said. “Community boards should have their say. What happened to zoning, we throw it out?”

But proponents of the measures say this local control has produced an unfair pattern of housing development in which nearly half of all new housing is built in 10 neighborhoods with only 13 percent of the city’s population, according to the Furman Center at NYU.

The neighborhoods that host most development stretch from northwestern Brooklyn through western Queens and on up into the Bronx. They also include Manhattan’s Financial District and Hell’s Kitchen and Midtown.

Conversely, neighborhoods with 58 percent of the city’s population contributed only 22 percent of the new housing. These neighborhoods included the Upper East Side and the entire West Side from 59th Street to Inwood. Also included were Staten Island and most of Southern Brooklyn and Eastern Queens, according to the Furman Center analysis.

Here is the gist of each of the housing measures, Questions 2, 3, and 4 on the ballot:

QUESTION 2 would create two new ways to “fast track” housing construction. For the entire city, developers of publicly funded affordable housing projects could bypass the city’s traditional, and some say tedious, land-use reviews and get quicker answers to any variances required to build housing considered necessary.

More dramatically, in 12 community districts identified as making the least contribution to new housing, developers could use an entirely new land-use review that combines and expedites community board and borough president reviews, shortens the Planning Commission review, and eliminates the City Council.

The 12 districts where this would apply would be chosen based on a study that the Department of City Planning would be tasked to produce ranking each of the 59 community districts on the rate of affordable housing produced relative to the districts’ overall housing stock.

This report would be due next October, but the Furman Center analysis shows that three Manhattan community districts are among the 12 with the lowest rates of completed affordable housing construction. They are the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, and Midtown.

QUESTION 3 would apply the new expedited review process, eliminating the City Council, to development proposals requiring zoning changes deemed “modest.” For example, in neighborhoods zoned for high density, which is most of Manhattan, this new process would apply to requests for projects that increase residential capacity at a location by 30 percent or less.

QUESTION 4 takes an alternative approach to reducing the influence of the Council. It creates an “Affordable Housing Appeals Board” of the mayor, Council speaker, and the relevant borough president, and gives them 20 days to reverse, by a 2-to-1 vote, the rejection of a housing proposal by the Council. This would replace the current system in which the mayor has five days to veto a Council rejection and the Council has 10 days to override.

At the debate, Sliwa noted the irony that he, the Republican candidate, was in league in opposing the ballot questions with the Democratic speaker of the Council, Adrienne Adams, and most of the Council’s members, many left-leaning.

For his part, Sliwa said the housing shortage could largely be addressed by converting older Manhattan office buildings to apartments.

“You’ll get your affordable apartments a lot faster,” Sliwa claimed, “and not be a burden to the outer broughs and the residential communities because you are in the back pockets, Andrew, of the developers who wined, dined and pocket-lined you.”

Mayor Adams’s recent rezoning, dubbed City of Yes, included measures to encourage such office-to-apartment conversions. But most experts believe this will not produce anything near the hundreds of thousands of new units needed.

The question of whether real estate developers will be the primary beneficiaries of City of Yes and the proposed ballot measures is a factor contributing to Mamdani’s refusal to weigh in, according to one of his prominent allies, speaking on background.

“City of Yes is backed by Real Estate and unlike the rest of the dumb left he understands that,” this official said.

But at the same time he needs to keep lines open to the movement of “Abundance Democrats” who support more construction and streamlined zoning. “He’s toeing the line because he needs to build housing” but recognizes the flaws of City of Yes and the ballot initiatives, his ally explained.