Housing Advocates Target City Council’s Power to Kill Development

 

Voters will soon decide whether to create a new, fast-tracked process for approving some housing projects, bypassing a frequently naysaying Council and its tradition of deferring to local members on proposals. 

This article originally appeared in The City. 

By Greg David 

Bronx Voice 

September 25, 2025

NEW YORK - When someone approaches Brooklyn developer Kirk Goodrich about participating in a new project that will go through the city’s land use review procedure, the first thing he does is check which City Council member represents the area.

If he doesn’t think that member will be supportive, he won’t get involved because under the doctrine of member deference, every Council member can effectively decide where a project is approved, pared back substantially or even is killed in their district — each year costing the city thousands of potential new homes.

“And I am not the only one,” he says.

Now, the commission to revise the city charter empaneled by Mayor Eric Adams is giving voters in November a chance to weaken member deference by boosting the role of borough presidents and allowing certain smaller projects to sidestep Council approval. The Council has launched an effort to convince voters to reject the changes, but they are up against a tough climate, with polls showing that voters ranking the city’s housing crisis among their top concerns.

And even if passed, it’s not entirely clear that the reforms will increase supply enough to make a dent in a lack of housing that has pushed the city’s rental apartment vacancy rate below 2%. While supporters of the changes think they will be significant, in some ways the larger point is just doing something at all.

“The depth of our affordable housing crisis in New York is such that we need every tool in the toolbox and need to be tackling this problem for decades to come,” said Annemarie Gray, executive director of the pro-housing group Open New York. The organization has created a PAC called Yes on Affordable Housing that is expected to spend $3 million to support the proposals.

The first set of charter amendments turn ULURP — uniform land use review procedure — into what the city’s planners are calling ELURP, with the E standing for “expedited.”

Many publicly financed all-affordable projects would go to the Board of Standards and Appeals for approvals, rather than the City Planning Commission or the Council. Proposals that seek an increase of up to 30% in existing development rights would be reviewed by the City Planning Commission and not need the Council’s okay.

And affordable housing projects in the 12 Council districts that have built the least affordable housing would also be approved by the planning commission and not the Council.

That proposal would align with the housing fairness agenda Speaker Adrienne Adams pushed through the Council in 2023. 

“This gives teeth to the fair housing framework the speaker proposed,” said Howard Slatkin, a longtime official in the city’s planning department and now executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council. “Since that legislative package has been adopted there hasn’t been any implementation.”

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams holds a mayoral campaign event outside City Hall, May 13, 2025.

But Mandela Jones, a spokesperson for the speaker, said the fair housing law is on track since it calls for city agencies to submit a fair housing plan to the mayor by Oct. 1 with an implementation plan to follow a year later.

None of these measures are likely to help the most ambitious real estate projects that require a rezoning to proceed. But the final proposal, which creates a board of appeals composed of the mayor, speaker and borough president, could sharply reduce the power of individual Council members, particularly if their district is in a borough with a pro-development president.

When the city’s current charter created a much stronger City Council, Mayor Ed Koch and others warned that member deference could cripple the land use process. But at first, powerful Council speaker Peter Vallone consistently overrode member objections to zoning changes he thought were in the city’s interests.

Member deference only became important when term limits took effect in the mid 1990s, leading to a churn in leadership and making the Council speaker more dependent on the support of members. Current speaker Adrianne Adams has tried to push back against member deference but with limited success.

The Charter Commission report notes that proposals that were withdrawn, rejected or modified in 2023 and early 2024 cost the city 3,547 apartments — almost 1,000 of which would have been at below-market rents.

But the cost is probably far greater. A study released in 2022 by the Citizens Budget Commission found that of the 171 projects that initiated discussions with the Department of City Planning between 2014 and 2017, only 65% actually started the ULURP process and 60% got through the Council.

“Relatively few projects actually come forward,” said CBC land use expert Sean Campion. “And that doesn’t get to how many developers didn’t even make it to the start of the process.”

Three current borough presidents — Manhattan’s Mark Levine, Queens’ Donovan Richards and Brooklyn’s Antonio Reynoso have supported most development and have come out strongly for the reforms.

But that might not always be the case, notes Ken Fisher, a prominent land use attorney and a former City Council person.

“And there might be a political price that borough presidents might not be willing to pay,” he added.

Housing advocates say that some Council members have told them that they would be happy to not have the power of member deference, which makes them wide-open political targets. Reynoso, speaking last year at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, notes that in low-turnout primary elections as few as 2,500 anti-development votes could defeat an incumbent Council member.

The City Council attempted to get the Board of Elections to exclude the reforms from the ballot on the grounds that they were misleadingly worded, a move the board rejected. Since then, the Council has created a website saying the reforms would take away voters’ power.

Councilmember Sandy Nurse, speaking for the Council, said the fast-track proposals are likely to result in the wrong kind of housing for her districts like hers. When a city agency teams up with a non-profit they frequently want small units with income requirements that won’t help families or the people who live in her North Brooklyn district.

The appeals board could eliminate one of the most important roles the Council plays in land use decisions when it forces the city to provide infrastructure and other investments to win approval for additional housing.

“You can’t put 4,000 more people on a block that is surrounded by potholes,” she told THE CITY.

But Fisher notes that last year voters approved four of five proposals put forward by a previous Eric Adams charter commission that was regarded as overly politicized and had no support from civic organizations.

This time, in addition to three of five borough presidents, civic organizations like the Citizens Budget Commission and Citizens Union have endorsed the changes.

Pro-housing activists are ramping up their campaigns to get the proposals approved and are sure the impact will be substantial — beginning with curbs on member deference.

“Limiting member deference is a powerful idea that orients the process a better balancing between local and citywide perspectives,” said Slatkin.

Added Rachel Fee of the New York Housing Conference, “The proposals on the ballot could make a big difference for affordable housing.”