The unofficial veto City Council members hold over big new developments in their districts has long been blamed by many critics for making New York City’s housing shortage even harder to solve.
Now, a special city panel is trying to curb that power.
The panel, known as the Charter Revision Commission, is moving forward with a plan to place several measures on the November ballot that, if approved by voters, would rewrite the rules of development and diminish the sway Council members hold over new housing, giving more power to the mayor and the five borough presidents. Mayor Eric Adams created the commission in December.
The details of the proposals, many of which are likely to be contentious because of the way they aim to disrupt traditional hierarchies of political power, are set to be released by the commission in a report on Tuesday.
The City Council created its own, separate commission a month before the mayor announced his, but it cannot put anything on the ballot if the mayor’s does. The Council speaker, Adrienne Adams, has been publicly critical of the mayor’s commission.
The proposals the mayor’s commission is seeking to advance include the creation of a simpler process to approve housing projects subsidized by the city or those that seek only modest increases in density. The proposals would let development move forward without City Council approval in the districts that haven’t been approving much housing. And they would create a way for developers to appeal when the Council rejects housing plans.
The 13-member commission will still have to approve the specific ballot language at a meeting next month before the proposals are sent to the city clerk. The package of proposals is expected to also include some that could significantly change how elections are run in New York City.
But, city officials said, the details in Tuesday’s report already reflect a consensus among commissioners on the mayor’s panel on how to attack the housing crisis through an election already shaping up to be a referendum on development and affordability.
Leading mayoral candidates like Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, and Mayor Eric Adams, who is seeking re-election as an independent, have already made affordability a major talking point in the race.
Richard Buery, the chair of the commission and chief executive of the Robin Hood Foundation, an anti-poverty group, characterized the commission’s proposals as “ambitious” responses to the city’s problems.
“I don’t have to be a political expert to understand that affordability is a question that is driving this election and probably every election in the near term,” he said. “These proposals go directly at the heart of affordability. They are trying to make it easier for more people to build affordable housing in New York.”
New York City’s housing shortage is at its worst point in more than 50 years, while rents continue to rise. When Mr. Adams created the commission in December, he asked it to tackle the worsening situation. The group is independent and able to put forward proposals related to any matters in the charter.
Over the past few months, the commission has been gathering testimony from housing experts, politicians, labor unions, advocates for renters and landlords, and everyday New Yorkers.
Mr. Buery said Tuesday’s report is a reflection of that testimony. He said the proposals seek to balance the desire for neighborhood input with the overall need for more housing.
The ballot proposal for an expedited 60-day approvals process for modest developments would, for example, apply to those that increase residential capacity by 30 percent on lots in high-density neighborhoods. The current process takes six months or more. After input from community boards and borough presidents, the final approval would come from the City Planning Commission, whose members are appointed by the mayor, not the City Council.
Another ballot proposal creates a new “appeals board” that could overrule Council decisions on new development with two of three votes from the mayor, the speaker of the City Council and the president of the borough where the development was proposed.
These types of changes are likely to be opposed by members of the City Council who have used the threat of their unofficial veto, known as “member deference,” to negotiate better amenities and cheaper rents from developers and the administration while also opposing developments they fear will fuel gentrification. Labor unions and community boards that rely on the practice to push for neighborhood interests are also likely to resist this change.
The suggestion that the City Council is the main obstacle to housing has also, in particular, irked Ms. Adams, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for mayor.
She has said the mayor’s commission was only created to block the Council’s commission from pursuing ways to give lawmakers better oversight over the administration. She is supporting a bill the State Legislature passed this year to allow both commissions to put measures on the same ballot, though it is unclear whether Gov. Kathy Hochul will sign it.
Ms. Adams has pointed to how the mayor recently walked away from a contentious development in Lower Manhattan that the Council had approved.
“This shows the Mayor’s Charter Revision Commission to be the height of hypocrisy and a sham for ignoring the role mayoral administrations play in obstructing new housing for New Yorkers,” she said last month.
Mihir Zaveri covers housing in the New York City region for The Times.
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