New York City’s Review Process for Housing Teeters on the Brink of Major Overhaul

Getting new housing projects approved by New York City in the coming year could get a lot easier — and less stressful — for developers. 

If voters approve changes to the city charter this November, firms looking to go vertical on housing developments will no longer have to run the gauntlet of prolonged public review, an often grueling process involving multiple advisory entities, New York City Council committees and the full chamber.

At best, the current process is time-consuming and can add to the cost per housing unit. At worst, the builders get rejected and publicly ostracized. Some landlords even say, “Why even bother?”

For example, the current land use process in the city can drive up the cost per housing unit by as much as $82,000 in 2025 dollars, and the average application takes between two to three years for approval, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

If the ballot proposals — crafted by the Charter Revision Commission (CRC) established by Mayor Eric Adams in 2024 — are approved in November, it means developers will need to go through only the Department of City Planning (DCP) or the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA) in what will be called the Expedited Land Use Review Procedure (ELURP) for affordable housing proposals requesting more modest zoning changes.

The ballot proposals apply solely to lower-density housing plans no more than 45 feet high, or roughly four floors. The proposals will not replace the 50-year-old Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), which will still be used for large-scale housing and climate resiliency projects.

In medium- to high-density areas, a modest proposal would be defined as a project exceeding the current floor area ratio (FAR) cap by 30 percent or less, according to the CRC.

“This roughly corresponds to a single step up the zoning district ladder, i.e. R6A to R7A,” a CRC spokesperson said.

But despite looking like another housing win for Adams, the proposed adjustments to the City Charter have found opponents in high places, namely City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who pushed for the New York City Board of Elections (BOE) to block the ballot questions from making their way onto the ballot.

The argument from the speaker’s camp has been that the language of the questions that will be presented to voters is not clear enough, and that leaders of the DCP and the BSA are not elected officials accountable to voters.

But proponents of the revision have pushed back on the assertions that the questions are opaque and that those appointed by elected officials would be calling the shots. They also say it would be undemocratic to prevent voters from having a say.

A week after the BOE vote to include the questions on the ballot, the City Council launched its information campaign giving voters their strongly worded views.

“Mayor Adams’s proposal takes away communities’ power to ensure housing is more affordable and meets the needs of local residents by eliminating the vote of their elected representatives on certain proposed development within neighborhoods,” an online flyer said of one question. “It would transfer approval power for these developments within city neighborhoods to unelected appointees, primarily chosen by the mayor.”

The council claims that, if the reforms pass, communities will have less leverage to negotiate for more affordability and neighborhood investment through their local elected officials.

Lingering questions about the City Council’s legal ability to campaign using government resources aside, the lawmakers sought the approval of the city Conflicts of Interest Board before putting out the material, according to Crain’s New York Business. 

The CRC’s description of the proposals may not be rich in detail, but they give the voters a gist.

The first question would be twofold, creating a ​​fast track public process for affordable housing backed by public funds. In this scenario, the BSA would have authority over applications.

“All told, we think that an eligible affordable housing project could be approved, through that fast track, faster than someone even enters public review today,” Adam Schierenbeck, executive director of the CRC, told Commercial Observer. “There will be a community board review followed by a BSA review, and it should typically be a 90-day process of public review.”

Interestingly enough, nothing in the proposals would revise the input process from local community boards or residents. 

The next part of the first question would create a public review procedure for applications in the community districts that have approved the least amount of affordable housing over the last five years. This process would also take 90 days and be available only to projects seeking to build affordable housing rather than other land use motions such as climate resiliency.

“We preserve all the community boards’ time, but we save some time by moving the borough president’s review period into the same 60 days,” Schierenbeck said. “Then that’s followed by 30 days for the City Planning Commission, and then it’s done in 90 days again. That’s about half the amount of time that a typical project spends in public review today.”

The second question creates the ELURP process, which would offer rezonings to more modest projects. It would also apply to where affordable housing could be built and to climate resiliency projects.

The third ballot question only removes the mayoral veto and the City Council’s override of that veto. If the City Council rejects a project, it could then go to a newly created ​​Affordable Housing Appeals Board made up of the mayor, the relevant borough president and the council speaker. They would need two out of three votes to overturn a decision.

“One of the biggest problems with the land use process we have today is all the applications it deters from ever starting in the first place, right?” Schierenbeck said. “So there are whole parts of the city where there hasn’t been a single proposal to add housing in the last 10 years — not one. We also found that modest projects are particularly unlikely to go through ULURP. We found that, in the last 10 years, there hasn’t been a single proposal to increase residential density by 30 percent or less. Not one proposal for a small bump like that.”

The revision to the city’s governing document could also do away with “member deference” in the City Council, an unwritten rule that says if a local council member votes against a project in his or her district, the rest of the council votes against it, too.

One classic example of the City Council failing to deliver housing took place in 2022 regarding the One45 development in Harlem. In that instance, developer Bruce Teitelbaum actually withdrew his application to build 1,000 apartment units due to the strong objections of then-Councilmember Kristin Richardson Jordan. It seemed as if the parcel would remain a shuttered gas station.

The project is once again on the table, however, with a new council member representing the district more in favor of allowing the development on the basis that it will provide housing for middle-class Harlem residents.

In 2021, the current City Council cohort seemed to sour on the practice of member deference due not to a housing proposal but to the approval of a new facility for the New York Blood Center on the Upper East Side. 

The City Council voted overwhelmingly in favor of the blood center even though the local representative at the time, Ben Kallos, strongly opposed the project. He and others contended it was too large for the low-rise area and would cast shadows over a nearby park. 

As to how many applications could be processed across any given time period under the new measures, it’s anybody’s guess. There’s no data to inform the CRC, according to Schierenbeck.

“For New York City to address its affordability crisis, we need an approach that encourages housing production in every district,” the Real Estate Board of New York’s executive vice president of policy Basha Gerhards said in a statement. “This means zoning reform, usable tax incentives, and structural change to the land use process to give greater weight to citywide considerations to address our housing crisis.”

The City Council speaker’s office declined further comment, referring CO instead to statements made the previous week in which Adrienne Adams said its attention would turn toward educating New Yorkers on the nature of the proposals before they go to the ballot box.

Despite the negative attention surrounding the council speaker’s position on the ballot proposals, those who pushed back against her effort to block revisions say it’s nothing personal. Speaker Adams helped propel the approval of housing-friendly rezonings such as the City Of Yes, the city’s biggest rezoning overhaul since the early 1960s.

“Even though this iteration of the council in the last just couple of years has done more than previous iterations of the council, we need to be able to reform the system itself,” Amit Singh Bagga, director for the Yes on Affordable Housing campaign, a political action committee created to raise money to support the ballot measures, told CO. “We can’t just rely on future iterations of the council to hopefully adopt a similar approach. 

“We need to enact and implement structural change that will ensure that housing production can actually not only meet current demand, but also really meet future demand.”

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