The City Council passed “City of Yes” Thursday, an ambitious housing proposal from Mayor Eric Adams to help alleviate the city’s affordability crisis.

“I’m very excited that the Council, together with the mayor’s office, has taken very important and meaningful steps to make sure that every neighborhood in New York City shoulders the burden to build just a little more housing,” Councilmember Shaun Abreu said.

What You Need To Know

  • On Thursday, two key committees passed an updated proposal to Mayor Adams' "City of Yes" plan

  • The changes include easing some parking requirements for new buildings, deepening permanent affordable housing to a family making $62,000, limiting new basement units in flood zones and exempting low-density neighborhoods from building higher
  • Opponents to the plan say it has the potential to change the character of neighborhoods, while others believe the final proposal fell short of the housing needs in the city

The version Adams proposed earlier this year was updated to what is likely the final plan that passed Thursday. The changes include a significant reduction in the number of potential new housing units, from 108,000 to around 80,000, and a $5 billion injection toward affordable housing and infrastructure projects.

“I’m always disappointed when I can’t build as much housing as possible, but I’m also not surprised because councilmembers in different districts, they fight for different things. And at the end of the day, this process required negotiation, and it was very democratic,” Abreu said.

Other changes to the plan ease some parking requirements for new buildings, deepen permanent affordable housing to a family making $62,000, limit new basement units in flood zones and exempt low-density neighborhoods from building higher.

“The package was right before the Council touched it and they should’ve not touched it,” Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso said. “The victories in the ‘City of Yes’ are not contributions of the City Council; they are the brainchild of the mayor and the Department of City Planning. The additional touches to the plan are going to make it so that the people that have already been building housing, which is mostly poor Black and Brown communities, are going to continue to build housing.” 

Reynoso said the carve outs made for basement apartments and garage conversions, as well as exempting mostly 1-and-2-family neighborhoods from some development, are going to be costly. 

“Those little things add up and make a difference but now we’re going to exclude a significant amount of those — 20,000 units potentially here are going to be removed from the plan — because what I think is councilmembers succumbing to local voices and not being a part of finding long-term solutions for New Yorkers,” Reynoso said.

Opponents said a more localized approach could have been a better solution. Councilman David Carr of Staten Island and South Brooklyn said he took a borough-based offer to the mayor.

“Unfortunately, that offer was not taken up on and it’s unfortunate because there are places in my borough, in my district, where I could say ‘hey, maybe there is an opportunity for redevelopments that would involve low-rise residential developments, maybe there’s other places where it could be concentrated and makes sense,’” Carr said.

Carr said the plan has the potential to make a large impact.

“You’re talking about transforming a significant portion of Staten Island — basically from Grasmere to Tottenville — into a place that looks like it could be Brooklyn with all the low-rise development that could take place,” he said.

The plan now goes back to the Department of City Planning for approval and then will head back to the Council for final approval, which could come as early as December.