It was more than two years ago, Mayor Eric Adams looked into a camera and announced an ambitious plan to fix New York City\u2019s long-standing housing crisis.<\/p>\n
His goal: create half a million new home units in ten years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is our mission,\u201d he said. \u201cOur moonshot.\u201d<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n One of the major keys to launching that number higher included action taken at the city level and state level \u2014 aiming to incentivize more development.<\/p>\n City of Yes was the comprehensive zoning package passed by the City Council. It made it easier to convert office buildings into apartments by changing the latest date for the process to be streamlined from 1961 to 1990.<\/p>\n \u201cJust by simply doing that, all these buildings suddenly became eligible for conversion when previously they weren\u2019t previously,\u201d said Robert Fuller, a principal with the architecture firm, Gensler. \u00a0<\/p>\n Fuller showed NY1 a diagram of a nearly mile long stretch along 3rd Avenue in Midtown East. It demonstrated that the number of buildings eligible for the streamlined conversion process more than doubled.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have eight active conversion projects going on right now in Manhattan north of 5,000 units collectively,\u201d he said. \u00a0<\/p>\n And in the 2024 state budget, there was a new tax incentive program for office to residential conversions called 467-m.<\/p>\n Conversion projects that begin construction by the middle of 2031 would be eligible for massive real estate tax break for up to 35 years, in exchange for 25% of units being affordable apartments. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt creates a tremendous value for developers,\u201d said Daniel Berman, the vice president at the firm Metro Loft NYC, which has completed more than a dozen conversions in the Financial District alone. \u00a0<\/p>\n Berman said the tax benefits could save them hundreds of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have another six projects but we are looking \u2014 we have a very healthy appetite,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He said he has optimism for what\u2019s to come. It comes on the heels of New York City creating the most new housing units in a single year since at least 2010, according to city data.<\/p>\n However, the need for more housing remains high.<\/p>\n Vacancy rates in Manhattan are just over 2% as of June, and in Brooklyn, about a third of units are going over-asking price, according to data from Miller Samuel, a real estate appraisal and consulting firm. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe general take is the market is tight,\u201d Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel, said.<\/p>\n Miller pointed out that in his June monthly housing report, it shows Manhattan median rents at an all-time high.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it is the fourth record set for median rent in the last five months,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Miller says the 500,000 new apartment benchmark in a decade, while optimistic is what the city needs.<\/p>\n But the new apartments can\u2019t just be office conversions.<\/p>\n \u201cI think ground up construction is part of the equation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n To try to incentivize new construction, the City Council reduced parking requirements for buildings, which can be costly. In the 2024 state budget, it included a new tax incentive program called 485-x.<\/p>\n It gives up to 40 years of tax breaks for buildings are under construction through June 2034. All in exchange for meeting affordable housing unit thresholds.<\/p>\n However, developers NY1 spoke with for this story expressed less enthusiasm for the new construction tax incentives compared to the conversion ones.<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t been looking at any ground-up opportunities,\u201d Joey Chilelli, principal at Vanbarton Group, said.<\/p>\n Chilelli said there\u2019s a reason they\u2019re not looking at new construction: the state\u2019s prevailing wage requirement.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes it more expensive to build in the ground-up development, anywhere from 20% to 30% on the labor component,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n While he wasn\u2019t alone in his concern, at least one city leader wasn\u2019t panicked.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s a little bit too early to tell, but some of the data is promising,\u201d Ahmed Tigani, acting commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said.<\/p>\n Tigani said developers go through his agency to apply for the tax exemptions.<\/p>\n HPD data shows since last year, developers have expressed plans to use the new construction tax incentives on 118 buildings, which would yield about 2,600 new home units.<\/p>\n Remember, the eight projects Robert Fuller\u2019s firm is actively involved in would yield 5,000 units from conversions alone.<\/p>\n However, Tigani, when asked, said he believes 485-x does do enough to encourage new construction.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that 485x is something that will build up over time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He added that he believes developers are still trying to find projects well-suited for 485-x, and that this program is just one tool to boost housing.<\/p>\n The city, he said, is eyeing several other neighborhood zoning proposals to unlock more housing opportunity.<\/p>\n He also said the state\u2019s extension of 485-x\u2019s predecessor \u2014 421-a \u2014 could allow for 70,000 units to be preserved.<\/p>\n The concern, he said, was that 421-a required construction to be completed for eligible projects by June 2026. The new rules extend the deadline to 2031.<\/p>\n But like how Tigani says it will take time to see if 485-x is successful, it takes time for buildings to go up.<\/p>\n It will also take time to see if the city portion of the initiative to increase housing will survive a court challenge.<\/p>\n In lower Manhattan this week, arguments were heard in a lawsuit brought by a bevy of plaintiffs \u2014 mainly republican city leaders and civic groups in Queens and on Staten Island \u2014 that argue City of Yes is illegal.<\/p>\n In court filings, the plaintiffs said the city skirted local and state environmental review processes in the passage of the zoning overhaul, and it calls for the law to be \u201cannulled and vacated.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe rezoning represented a wholesale departure from longstanding public policy In an amicus brief filed recently in support of City of Yes by more than two dozen local and state lawmakers, it argued the legislation \u201cis a data-based approach that was lawfully enacted after extensive community engagement, years of research, and interagency collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was more than two years ago, Mayor Eric Adams looked into a camera and announced an ambitious…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":73159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,23600,7448,51164,7065,5249,405,403,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,52,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-73158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-app-housing","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-eric-feldman","12":"tag-housing","13":"tag-manhattan","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-newyork","18":"tag-newyorkcity","19":"tag-ny","20":"tag-nyc","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114875321745183775","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
that respects open space, air and light, stress on infrastructure and the neighborhood character of vast areas of New York City\u2019s low-density communities,\u201d reads part of the more than 60-page lawsuit filed this spring.<\/p>\n