Mamdani admin seeks 700K new units, aims at low growth areas
The city has set new ambitious housing goal for the coming decade, but balancing the distribution of new units may pose hurdles to hitting fair growth targets.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is eyeing even more ambitious targets on top of the figures laid out in his administration’s housing plan, a draft of the city’s first-ever fair housing growth strategy report shows.
Some 700,000 new homes will need to be built over the next decade to address the city’s housing shortage, the draft report states. That figure more than triples the affordable housing production targets for that same timeframe, set at 200,000 new units in the mayor’s Block by Block plan.
The new draft report’s grand total figure combines a current need for 290,000 units with a baseline growth estimate of 240,000 units and a future need for 170,000 units. A target of 350,000 new homes constructed and 100,000 homes preserved in the next five years aims to increase low-growth areas production by 6.5 percentage points, while accelerating construction in medium-growth areas and sustaining high-growth patterns in other neighborhoods.
Low growth areas are defined as having a 0.07 to 0.33 percent recent annual growth rate, while middle growth areas represent a 0.34 to 1.07 percent rate. High growth falls between 1.09 and 3.27 percent growth, according to the report.
The report, mandated by Local Law 167, requires the Departments of City Planning and Housing Preservation and Development to assess the city’s long-term housing needs and to set five-year production targets that it hopes to deliver. The next step is for the agencies to gather public feedback on the draft to inform its final report, holding public briefings on Aug. 26 and Sept. 2 during a comment period ending Sept. 13, before publishing revisions in early October.
Neighborhoods the city has highlighted as low growth, limited affordability areas where it aims to build new housing in the next five years, include the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island, which together would comprise 12,725 new units. Brooklyn would bring 6,195 new units to Canarsie & Flatlands, also considered low growth and limited affordability under the report’s definition.
Plenty of high growth neighborhoods like Long Island City, Williamsburg and Greenpoint are also targeted for high housing production goals, but the draft report seeks to prioritize a “balanced approach” that would provide New Yorkers the choice to stay put in their communities or move to different neighborhoods by increasing housing in areas that have historically added few units or offer limited affordable options.
Adding tens of thousands of new units across neighborhoods that have historically been unaffordable and slow to build may prove difficult when it comes to getting residents and lawmakers to buy in, particularly in areas zoned for lower density with high homeownership.
“To overcome our housing crisis, we need every neighborhood in every borough to do its part,” HPD Commissioner Dina Levy said in a statement.
What we’re thinking about: Do you think residents and lawmakers of areas like the Upper East Side and Canarsie, both with high proportions of homeowners relative to citywide averages, are likely to succeed as testing grounds for these lofty housing production targets? Let me know what you think at ben.miller@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: You too can own a MetroCard vending machine, if the price is right. Two months after the MTA stopped accepting MetroCards as part of its OMNY phase-in, the agency is now auctioning off the devices. Bids closed today at 8 p.m. for the machines passengers used since 1999 to pay for subway rides.
— Spencer Davis
Elsewhere…
— Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration plans to sue the City Council after its bill to give school paraprofessionals a $10,000 bonus became law on Wednesday, Chalkbeat reports. Mamdani, who supported the bill as a candidate, claims that the payments will violate the state’s Taylor Law, which restricts wage increases to collective bargaining. The City Council passed the bill in July and it automatically passed into law after 30 days without Mamdani’s signature or veto. A Mamdani spokesperson told the publication that it sets a “dangerous precedent” in which the City Council can “bypass workers and their unions and dictate the terms of employment themselves.” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew, however, said the bill was written to avoid conflict with state labor law.
— Our Time NYC, a nonprofit founded by allies of Mayor Zohran Mamdani to push his agenda, is shutting down after losing all of its staffers just nine months since it launched, Gothamist reports. The group wanted to take advantage of the grassroots momentum built by Mamdani’s campaign, but it had to compete with the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and Mamdani’s Office of Mass Engagement.
— The Teamsters filed a complaint with the state Labor Department on Tuesday alleging Amazon and 13 subcontractors violated state law by giving delivery drivers less than 90 days’ notice before getting fired, The City Reporter writes. The complaints were filed on behalf of over 1,300 workers whose places of work were shut down with no warning between September 2023 and October 2025.
— Spencer Davis
Closing time
Residential: The most expensive residential sale recorded Wednesday was $6.95 million for a 2,771-square-foot condominium at 53 Greene Street in Soho. Todd Lewin and Michael Rubin of the Lewin Rubin Team with Compass had the listing. The unit last traded for $5.6 million in April 2019.
Commercial: The most expensive commercial transaction was $26.3 million for a 36,600-square-foot industrial building at 659 Court Street in Red Hook. LBA Properties sold to Terreno Realty Corporation.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $3.9 million for a 1,436-square-foot condominium at 25 Broad Street in the Financial District. Carl Gambino with Compass has the listing. The unit last traded for $2.6 million in 2023.
— Matthew Elo
