In Yards, Offices and Basements, New York Hopes to Build 100,000 Homes

Mayor Eric Adams is proposing a major overhaul of New York City’s approach to development that his administration says could make way for as many as 100,000 additional homes in the coming years and ease the city’s severe housing crisis.

The proposed reforms, which Mr. Adams is announcing on Thursday in remarks at Borough of Manhattan Community College, amount to his administration’s broadest and most ambitious attempt to tackle New York City’s housing shortage, which has been worsening for decades.

Rules limiting growth have long made it difficult for enough homes to be built to accommodate everyone who wants to live here, driving up the cost of living. That, in turn, has raised a threat to the city’s economy as businesses struggle to keep workers and families have poured out of the city.

The proposals could bring new housing development to nearly every corner of New York City and reflect a growing political consensus that the city must do everything it can to build.

“We are proposing the most pro-housing changes in the history of New York City’s modern zoning code,” Mr. Adams said.

In particular, the extreme shortage of lower-cost housing has come into sharp relief in the past year as more than 110,000 migrants have arrived in New York City since spring 2022, and more than half of them have landed in homeless shelters.

One proposal would allow the construction of apartment buildings up to five stories tall on top of laundromats, bodegas and other single-story commercial buildings — a type of development prevented by zoning rules in some neighborhoods outside Manhattan. Another would undo rules that prevent similar types of development around some transit stations.

Mr. Adams is proposing making it easier for owners of one- and two- family homes to turn basements, attics or backyard garages into apartments.

He also wants to eliminate mandates that certain new residential buildings include space for parking — a requirement that has made some housing construction impossible for developers.

Yet another proposal would let developers build larger buildings if they include affordable homes in their projects. The plan would also ease conversions of offices to apartments by making more buildings eligible and allow for smaller apartment sizes than are currently legal.

Many housing advocates and experts had called on Mr. Adams to make good on a campaign promise to push more development across the city — particularly in wealthy neighborhoods, like the Upper East Side of Manhattan, that have been effective at resisting change but may have better access to transit, jobs and schools.

City officials said the proposals were designed to be broad but also not so aggressive that they provoked backlash: They must be approved by the City Council, and a vote could come as early as next fall.

Past attempts to make way for more housing have been contentious, and the administration will likely face hurdles. At the neighborhood level, local politicians and activists have regularly opposed proposals like a recent 231-unit project in Midwood and a more than 900-unit building in Harlem.

At the same time, the proposals will likely be welcomed by developers, because they address longstanding complaints about how frustrating it can be to navigate city rules and politics. But they could bring scrutiny to the mayor’s ties to the real estate industry, which have been a talking point of Mr. Adams’s critics in the past.

The effects would also take years to materialize, meaning they will not immediately help residents struggling with housing now, particularly lower-income New Yorkers and the thousands of migrants who need homes.

In some cases, the state legislature would also likely need to pass bills to support the city’s goals, through programs like new tax incentives. That may not be easy. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s own ambitious housing proposals died in the state legislature this year amid pushback from suburban officials who resisted mandates to allow more housing to be built.

Still, if they succeed, city officials said they believed the changes to the rules governing development would be the most significant in half a century, and could make New York City a model for other cities nationwide.

The proposals come at a critical juncture for Mr. Adams, who has been criticized for not doing enough to tackle the city’s housing crisis as rents rose sharply in recent months and homelessness increased.

The median rent on new leases in Manhattan in August, according to the brokerage Douglas Elliman, was $4,400 — almost 26 percent above prepandemic levels.

The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit watchdog organization, found the rate of new housing construction had remained stagnant in recent decades, despite job and population growth. New York City has issued fewer building permits per resident over most of the past decade than Boston, Austin and San Francisco, according to the group.

Eviction filings are on the rise, particularly in affordable housing, as landlords seek to recoup unpaid rent as people continue to struggle with the economic challenges of the pandemic. Mr. Adams’s housing chief resigned earlier this year.