City of Yes Proposal Offers Increased Housing Development Opportunities

For over a year now, the City of Yes (“CoY”) zoning update, which aims to bring back more flexibility and density in development across the City, has been a hot topic of conversation in the New York City development sphere. The City Planning Commission recently approved the plan, bringing CoY one step closer to taking New York City’s zoning requirements into the future. The CoY plan will next go the City Counsel, where a decision is expected in the near future.

The CoY program is built on three chief components: housing opportunity, economic opportunity, and carbon neutrality. The CoY program posits that, when leveraged together, these three tenets create affordable housing, support small businesses, and promote sustainability. Though each is identified separately, they are intricately linked and tied together through much of the same solutions – primarily promoting density and intelligent development with better zoning.

There are many entryways into the conversation on CoY due to its multi-faceted nature. This piece will provide an overview on the stated goals of the CoY through the physical changes permitted to structures to promote the CoY program’s goals. New York City has, over the last 40 years, created far more jobs than homes, so from a functional and physical standpoint, the housing opportunity portion of CoY is not only the main driver of change and development, but also a solution to a critical need within the city.

Overview of Program Components:

Universal Affordability Preference. Allowing for added density when paired with an affordable housing component is a common approach to promoting the development of affordable units. In order to provide for more affordable housing throughout the city, CoY proposes to permit developers to add at least 20% more space to a project than would otherwise be permitted by zoning, so long as that space is reserved for additional units dedicated to households earning 60% or less of the Area Median Income. With this, the program hopes to promote both an increase in the housing supply and the economic diversity within neighborhoods and even buildings.

Residential Conversions. Conversion of office buildings to residential units has been a hot topic in city planning and development over the last few years, though one that has proven to be difficult to effectively perform. CoY hopes to resolve the zoning aspect of this by permitting the conversions of buildings constructed up through 1990 in any zoning area where residential units are permitted. Additionally, CoY would permit such converted buildings to offer a wider range of housing models, such as housing with shared kitchens and other amenities.

Town Center Zoning. In contrast to the much more rigid zoning found across the country, New York is universally understood as a city based around its neighborhoods and a mix of uses in a single building. Apartments over businesses concentrated in relatively low-density, local neighborhood centers is a staple of how New York functions, but those buildings were constructed primarily in the first half of the 20^th Century; current zoning prohibits new development in that mold in many neighborhoods – even where that mode is common. The CoY program seeks to bring this model of development and housing back so that the retail spaces have a built-in customer base with the residents above and added convenience for those residents. While intended to create vibrant neighborhoods on the larger scale, the effect is also to make those individual buildings more vibrant, attractive, valuable, and, ultimately, cost-effective and desirable to build.

Removal of Parking Mandates. Off-street parking minimums are a bane of development in urban areas across the country, and New York is no different, mandating parking for new housing, even in dense areas with little to no car ownership. CoY seeks to end parking mandates for new housing, freeing up space, making housing more affordable, reducing the need for excavation and deeper foundations, and ultimately resulting in more affordable housing. CoY is clear that it does not prohibit parking in new residential developments, so where a developer believes parking is advantageous, it can still be constructed.

Accessory Dwelling Units. Accessory dwelling units are smaller residential units, such as backyard cottages or garage conversions, which can be occupied by extended families or young renters. Permitting accessory dwelling units would serve to make existing properties where garages and/or backyards are present more viable for long-term occupancy by multi-generation families and added flexibility for homeowners.

Transit-Oriented Development. Transit-Oriented Development is a solution which has seen significant success in many different applications, resulting in more convenient lifestyles, reduced need for car ownership, and reduced traffic congestion. CoY would re-legalize apartment buildings of 3- to 5-stories on larger lots located within a half-mile of public transit stops. New York, more than any other city in the country, is built around and reliant on public transit, and permitting greater development and density near that transit would serve to open more space across the city properly and valuably develop and increase the housing stock.

Campus-Organized Housing. Organizations of all types, from faith-based to educational and residential, have existing buildings in need of repair and maintenance on lots which have sufficient underutilized space that could become new housing. CoY would work to reduce the friction for development of these campuses by adding housing in appropriate contexts so that the revenue from such housing could support those existing structures. This would not only permit those institutions to support themselves with housing on-site but would allow for greater partnerships between these institutions and private developers.

Small and Shared Housing. CoY would permit the development of new shared housing with smaller units, projects which would include shared kitchens or other common facilities, as well as those where 1-bedroom and studio units are the sole or primary makeup of the project. In addition to permitting more development of smaller units to house those who do not need as much space, it facilitates the other aspects of the CoY housing program.

Business Friendly Streetscapes. In addition to promoting development and affordability through increased opportunity for housing, the housing aspects of CoY promote a major goal of the economic opportunity prong of CoY – enabling more “business-friendly” streetscapes. More housing, and in particular more housing that encourages sidewalks and pedestrians over streets and cars, facilitates an environment that is more conducive to street-level businesses that will rely on foot traffic and local customers. This, in turn, makes those spaces more valuable for businesses and more likely to be quickly and fully rented out when built.

Energy Efficiency. Remaining in its nature as a zoning change, CoY seeks to promote energy efficiency primarily through amendments to the zoning ordinance, seeking to eliminate restrictions in the ordinance on physical aspects of building development that the program’s authors believe would hinder updates and electrification. Provided that these changes, as they may be finally implemented, are consistent with the Building Code, it is likely that this will further incentivize updates to existing buildings, which would additionally ease the process for compliance with Local Law 97 energy efficiency requirements.

City of Yes remains controversial, however, as many critics argue that it will lead to overbuilding in areas where the existing neighborhood is not consistent with the masses of structures potentially permitted by CoY. Others are critical that the program does not do enough to address affordable housing, particularly as CoY does not mandate new housing construction. Even if it does become law, the NIMBYism of many of its detractors is unlikely to go away.

The prospect of expanded development under the framework provided by CoY is potentially enormous. If the CoY program does what it promises to do, it would open up significant opportunities for major development of affordable and market-rate housing, bring back widespread development of mixed-use projects across the city, and promote neighborhood-oriented businesses.