Marte Details Reasons Behind Only Vote Against City Hall Plan from a Manhattan Council Member
When the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan formulated by Mayor Eric Adams came before the City Council in December, Christopher Marte (who represents Lower Manhattan in the municipal legislature) became the only member from Manhattan to vote against it. City Hall touted the plan as “the most pro-housing zoning proposal in New York City history.” Mr. Marte sees it differently.
“City of Yes is a plan by the real estate industry for the real estate industry,” he says. “Zoning regulations are removed, and the City Council’s land use powers are weakened. Proposals that would have required public negotiations can now be built as-of-right. Thousands of sites that are currently at their zoning limit will now be able to build bigger. This creates new redevelopment incentives where there were none for buildings that might have rent-stabilized housing, longstanding commercial or manufacturing businesses, or contextual building profiles that would now be at risk of demolition.”
“The Adams administration argues that a greater supply of housing of any kind will naturally lower market rents to affordable levels,” Mr. Marte says. “City of Yes is a plan to put our trust in developers to solve the affordability crisis – the same developers who have systematically evicted, displaced, and destroyed our communities. The plan treats zoning as a barrier to unbridled development of any kind in any neighborhood. Not only does it increase density, but it makes open spaces smaller, apartment sizes smaller, and restricts light and air access. Rent-stabilized apartments and small businesses will be demolished to build bigger condos and luxury rentals.”
Council member Marte was the only ‘no’ vote in the Manhattan delegation, although 19 other representatives from the remaining four boroughs followed his lead. The process began in a way similar to the two previous City of Yes proposals for carbon neutrality and economic opportunity. The City Council submitted recommendations based on community feedback, and the Mayor compromised on the first two proposals. Those packages were enacted in December and June, 2023, respectively, with Mr. Marte voting yes on both.
“For City of Yes/Housing,” he notes, “my main focus was affordability. I believe that our housing crisis is really an affordability crisis, so this was the right time to modify Mandatory Inclusionary Housing [MIH] laws.” This is a zoning tool that requires developers to include affordable housing in areas that are rezoned to allow for more housing development. “I wanted either to increase the percentages of affordable units in every new development, or else keep the percentages the same but require deeper levels of affordability,” meaning that more units would be available to residents with lower incomes. In place of expanded MIH, the Adams plan offers a Universal Affordability Preference, which allows (but does not require) developers to add height and bulk to planned buildings in exchange for affordable units.
“This was probably the only opportunity to get this done,” Council member Marte says, “because City-wide zoning text amendments happen very infrequently. The last time the laws were changed in this way was 60 years ago”
Mr. Marte noted that Community Board 1 compiled a detailed, 4,000-word set of reactions to the City of Yes/Housing Opportunity program that rejected all but one of the Mayor’s 15 housing proposals, and declined to take a position on 15th. Six of the 14 rejected proposals were dismissed on broad grounds that “CB1 does not accept the premise that any material amount of affordable housing will be developed in our district without the incorporation of a meaningful mandated affordable housing component. The voluntary Universal Affordability Preference program, we believe, is wholly inadequate in our high density, high demand, high home-ownership district, to generate sufficient affordable housing.”
“As enacted, this program will definitely increase real estate speculation, which is the biggest single driver of displacement,” Mr. Marte argues. “I think we’re going to see a lot more displacement pressure specifically in Lower Manhattan. Rents keep going up, and our City is becomes less and less affordable each year, but every analysis of rent burden puts Lower Manhattan at or near the top of that list.”
Despite his opposition to the City of Yes/Housing plan, Mr. Marte believes, “there are still roadmaps for moving forward. Our primary focus will be on community-based plans, such as those coming from the Chinatown Working Group and the Community First Development Coalition in Tribeca.” This was a reference to so-called 197-A Plans, which are zoning revisions created at the community level, and later given the force of law. Since 1992, 13 community-initiated 197-A plans have been adopted by the City Planning Commission, in communities like East Midtown and Chelsea in Manhattan, and Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Red Hook, and Sunset Park in Brooklyn.
“Rezoning from the ground up, rather than the top down, takes organizing,” Mr. Marte says. “It has to be done at the community level, and within the City Council, and in negotiations with City Hall. But it can be done.”
In the meantime, Mr. Marte observes, “we have a mayor who doesn’t have a great track record about development and affordability, and is now faced with allegations of corruption. This process gave everything to developers and offered nothing in return. A typical rezoning involves give and take – developers win more height or bulk in exchange for more affordability. It was a red flag for me that City Hall did not want even to have that discussion. This should raise some eyebrows.”
John Low-Beer, an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School and a member of the executive committee of the City Club of New York (which lobbies for sound urban policy and to protect the City’s essential character), said, “I agree with Council member Marte that the increase in construction of luxury and market-rate housing encouraged by City of Yes will do little or nothing to alleviate the lack of housing affordable to those earning below the median income, who are the ones urgently needing relief.”
“In Manhattan,” he continued, “which is already the most densely populated county in the United States, the effects of this up-zoning on urban design will be very negative – including, for example, the gutting of contextual height limits enacted by the Bloomberg administration – and not offset by any benefit. Research on the Bloomberg-era up-zonings shows that while the effects differed from by neighborhood, overall they led to gentrification and displacement. Although much new housing was built, demand increased and prices did not come down. There is no reason to think that the results will be different now.”
A spokesman for the Adams administration countered, “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity is the most pro-housing zoning proposal in New York City history. As the city confronts a generational housing crisis with a 1.4 percent rental vacancy rate, the City of Yes proposal alone exceeds all the housing created from re-zonings during any mayoral administration of the last 50 years, including all 12 years of the Bloomberg administration and all eight years of the de Blasio administration.”
Asked what might have convinced him to vote in favor of the plan, Mr. Marte cites three priorities. “First, in addition to expanding MIH, I wanted to create a working group committed to retooling the program to provide more affordable housing per site. Second, as the City looks at developing vacant land within New York City Housing Authority sites, I wanted a commitment to 100 percent affordability on those publicly owned properties. And third, I was seeking affordability mandates as part of large-scale conversions from commercial to residential use.” That last priority would have been especially relevant for Lower Manhattan, where a recent analysis suggests that between 11 and 25 million square feet of office buildings in the Financial District and Tribeca would lend themselves to conversion for residential use, raising the possibility of between 12,000 and 40,000 new homes coming to the community in the years ahead.
“When the Mayor refused to address any of these priorities,” Mr. Marte says, “I felt I had to vote ‘no.’”