Lander Plans to Use Emergency Powers to Build 500K Homes If Elected Mayor

Brad Lander is throwing out the biggest number in the race in terms of housing construction if he beats the 10 other candidates for mayor in November.

The New York City comptroller announced a four-part plan Thursday to use emergency powers to build 500,000 housing units in the city — 50,000 of which would be on redeveloped public golf courses — over the next 10 years with a broad blueprint for financing.

“We lay out in the plan a tripling of capital dollars for affordable housing so we can both build more homes and account for the fact that it costs so much more than it has in the past,” Lander said during Thursday’s press conference. “If you look at Gowanus, there are 8,500 units [built through the rezoning of the neighborhood in 2021], 3,000 of them are affordable. And of those 3,000, 2,000 are part of inclusionary developments.”

Lander plans to declare a temporary state of emergency over the housing crisis as one of his first acts in office, during which time he would revise the New York City charter to create a new, shortened Uniform Land Use Review Process that would only take 90 days instead of the current average of seven months.

His administration would also create a “citizens assembly for housing growth” that would evaluate “access to opportunity” and “displacement risk” for specific projects, as well as push for further revisions to the city charter that would make the citizens assembly a permanent feature of government.

Entire neighborhoods can be created out of the 12 existing municipally owned golf courses — such as Clearview Park Golf Course, Douglaston Golf Course and Forest Park Golf Course — something Lander admits may be tricky in terms of convincing neighboring residents to go along with the plan.

“A lot of new housing can be built by developers on privately owned land, on publicly owned land, whether that’s a golf course or other areas,” Lander added. “That’s where [developers] can really maximize the use of the city’s capital subsidies to get permanently affordable housing.”

The already crowded race to unseat Mayor Eric Adams got even more crowded Thursday morning as New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams threw her hat in the mayoral race.

Lander and the two Adamses will face off against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo; former city Comptroller Scott Stringer; state legislators Zohran Mamdani, Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos; attorney Jim Walden; former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson; and former Bronx Assembly member Michael Blake.

On Wednesday, Cuomo released his own housing plan, which also proposed streamlining permitting and regulatory processes while also helping build middle-income housing for residents earning from 120 percent to 130 percent of the area median income. Cuomo also proposes enforcing rules around discrimination against housing voucher recipients by landlords as well as prioritizing revitalization of New York City Housing Authority buildings.

Other candidates have also outlined their own proposals, as Commercial Observer previously reported, with several stating that the goal of building 80,000 units over a period of 10 years — as proposed in Mayor Adams’s City of Yes plan — doesn’t meet the current need.

Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.