Let’s Give City of Yes Tough Scrutiny Before We Sign Off, Says One Critic

The City of Yes debate continues: New York’s City Council amended and approved the first two sections of Mayor Adams’ and Big Real Estate’s three-part City of Yes planning and zoning overhaul (COY). Public review of the final section, “The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” (COYHO), is underway. It is the most controversial and consequential City of Yes proposal.

The 1,386 pages of changes proposed for COYHO contain many points good and bad. Big Real Estate says COYHO will create more housing for all. Opposing the plan, according to Big Real Estate and its allies, are anti-progressive New Yorkers called “NIMBYs” who say “no” to new development (NIMBY is an acronym for “Not In My Backyard”). I explain below why I say “no” to the propaganda and “yes” to some of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity (COYHO). I am a New Yorker, an architect, and an urban designer who has been a YIMBY for decades, working around the country with New Urbanists in the Congress for New Urbanism to promote walkable, sustainable development in suburban sprawl.

Many of the changes proposed in COYHO are designed to make it easier for developers to build highly-profitable luxury apartment towers. They are a neoliberal vision in which the rich get richer and the poor get evicted.

New York City & Unaffordable Housing

The three most important factors for evaluating real estate are famously location, location, and location. Market determinants in Manhattan, New York are significantly different than in Manhattan, Kansas. The most profitable buildings in the history of New York are the super-luxury supertall apartment towers in Manhattan marketed to the global rich as a new “asset investment class.” These “safe deposit vaults in the sky” (in the words of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson) are one of the factors at the heart of the City of Yes.

Since the decline of industry in New York and the near bankruptcy of the city half a century ago, New York has increasingly looked to property taxes to fund the city budget. In 2019, property taxes supplied 49 percent of New York City’s tax revenues, more than twice as much of the total as the second-largest source (income taxes). That gives power and influence to the Anti-Industrial Real Estate Complex, or Big Real Estate. Big Real Estate describes the ten to fifteen companies and families that own and build New York’s biggest buildings and developments. They are the most powerful group of political donors in New York State and New York City. They have gained so much money and influence that the planner Sam Stein calls New York the Real Estate State.

You can see what they build on Billionaires’ Row, at Hudson Yards, and in the new supertall towers around Grand Central Terminal. Those unpopular buildings and places are the poster children for COY.

COY began in 2022 as a set of proposals for a “New New York” written by a public-private partnership led by a Who’s Who of the city’s power players in business, finance, real estate, and politics. At the top was one of the most important figures in creating Hudson Yards and Billionaires’ Row, Dan Doctoroff (more on this below). One of the supertall residential towers on Billionaires’ Row was the most profitable building in the history of New York. Making it easier to build more super-luxury supertalls was one of the panel’s top goals.

The Real Estate State

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s Planning Commissioner Joe Rose proposed a thorough zoning revision that would have prevented supertall residential towers. Rose is a third-generation member of one of New York’s richest development families, and he spent years trying to sell the plan to his friends and colleagues in Big Real Estate. In his telling, when he finally put the plan on Mayor Giuliani’s desk, a phone call from some of the biggest developers killed the plan before half an hour passed.

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg came into office, some thought the influence of Big Real Estate might decrease. After all, Mayor Mike was the richest man in New York, able to self-fund his political campaigns. He didn’t need donations from Big Real Estate, but his post-Reagan, Neoliberal politics meant he supported public-private partnerships between the city and the biggest, richest businesses. Bloomberg commissioned a study by McKinsey and Company that recommended that New York become a luxury brand you pay more for.

Bloomberg’s second-in-command, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, reorganized all the city departments involved in planning, housing, development, and economic development into a group that worked together and reported directly to him. The old economic development emphasis on building low-income housing and working in poor neighborhoods changed to supporting and subsidizing large-scale expensive projects by the biggest developers. That was how Atlantic Yards, Hudson Yards, Billionaires’ Row, and all the new luxury towers next to the Highline and new riverfront parks came to be. Doctoroff was later the Co-Chair of the New New York panel.

Mayor Bill de Blasio had high hopes for new affordable housing. Within a short time of taking office, however, he had a lunch with the Real Estate Board of New York (aka REBNY, Big Real Estate’s mouthpiece) at which he announced a deal that the city and Big Real Estate would work together, building apartment towers as tall as necessary to get more housing.

YIMBYs and REBNY frequently argue that more housing of any kind will “trickle down” into more affordable housing for all, but that has not been true in New York. A massive rezoning along the river in Long Island City created over 30,000 expensive new apartments. New apartments are good, and needed. However, the new luxury units displaced residents in low-rent apartments: despite inclusionary housing regulations, the average two-bedroom rent in the neighborhood went from $3,400 a month to $5,300. Median household income almost doubled, going from $52,000 to $97,000. Not surprisingly, diversity in Long Island City decreased. A large upzoning in SoHo and NoHo that benefits a few deep-pocket developers who have been warehousing sites will have a similar effect on SoHo, NoHo, and Chinatown.

Over the years, following Big Real Estate’s plans resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of rent-regulated apartments. The super-profitable 932-foot supertall on Billionaires’ Row replaced a 20-story rental building with roughly the same number of apartments, a third of which were rent-stabilized. One apartment in the new building sold for $238 million as a pied-a-terre for a Chicago hedge fund billionaire. How is that supposed to “trickle down”? Reaganomics promised trickle down income for all, but Reaganomics shrank the middle class and transferred $50 trillion to the one percent, contributing to the ever-growing income inequality in America and New York City.

“Yes, We Deserve Better”

Reading about COYHO in the New York press, you might think every right-thinking city citizen supports it. The first line in a recent New York Times story was typical: “Solutions to the housing crisis often face a small but mighty roadblock. Local residents tend to resist more development in their neighborhoods, and they typically have clout.” But when New York’s City Planning Commission held a hearing where citizens could give their thoughts, so many concerned New Yorkers turned out that the meeting went on for 15 hours. Big Real Estate’s allies took more than half the time, but many citizens’ groups, housing organizations, preservation alliances and the like waited their turn to say what they think about COYHO. You can see their testimony online.

If you watch the recording, you will see that many New Yorkers love their city. They want affordable housing for all but do not accept the idea that COYHO is the way to get it. They have watched Big Real Estate make New York more expensive while simultaneously changing the city in other ways they don’t like. The dissatisfaction ranges from the influence Big Real Estate has on our government to the proliferation of luxury towers around the city at the same time we have an affordability crisis.

Whose City?

No one I know believes the Planning Commission will pay much attention to the many critical comments expressed at the hearing. One of the changes proposed for COYHO eliminates some public hearings that are now part of the process in favor of closed-door negotiations at the City Planning commission. New York economist and urban activist Lynn Ellsworth has documented what she calls the foxes taking over the henhouse: Big Real Estate seeding the City Planning Commission with Commissioners and staff who support their program. Appointments to other city agencies changed them too. A court case brought by a neighborhood coalition in Lower Manhattan revealed that New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission held secret meetings in which the LPC staff coordinated talking points with developers appearing before the Commission. Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who appoints Community Board members, made applicants answer a YIMBY litmus test question. The unsurprising result is that some Community Boards that opposed Big Real Estate’s housing goals last year support them now. Some of the new Community Board members are paid lobbyists who work for a YIMBY group called Open New York (ONY). ONY brags that they don’t take money from developers. They used to, however.

ONY was founded by YIMBYs in the development community and a surprising number of “tech bros.” The City Planning Commission supported ONY member testimony in public hearings, but their public behavior was frequently controversial. At a City Planning hearing to upzone SoHo and NoHo, an ONY activist famously invited an artist in her seventies to “step outside.” Senior citizens worried about losing their artist-certified, rent-regulated lofts were called racists. The following year, a politically astute woman came from City Hall to run ONY, which soon got $3.5 million from a Facebook founder active in the California YIMBY movement. Thus there was no need for money from developers, but ONY endorses politicians who take donations from Big Real Estate.

In my other essays about the effects of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, I discuss why many believe COYHO will make Manhattan neighborhoods more expensive and less livable. There is no shortage of luxury towers in New York—if you can pay $7,000 or more in rent every month or $1 million and up to buy a condominium, you can easily find many to look at today. Nevertheless, COYHO proposes new residential zoning for Manhattan with towers up to 50 percent bigger than previously allowed, eligible for bonuses that can add another 20% in size, with no affordable housing required. Big Real Estate thinks those buildings will bring the highest profits (pun intended).

I will write about solutions, but creating solutions for a better city and affordable housing for everyone requires understanding the problems. The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity will expedite the construction of bigger, more expensive buildings, but it will not produce enough affordable housing for the vast majority of New Yorkers, any more than the policies of the last twenty years have. Look around the country and you will see that every city with a profitable luxury housing market has an affordable housing shortage. New Yorkers deserve a better city, with stronger neighborhoods and affordable housing for all.

John Massengale, an architect and urban planner, is a former board member of the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU), the Institute for Classical Art & Architecture (ICAA), and the founding chair of the local state and city chapters of the CNU (CNU New York and CNU NYC).