Voters gave Mayor Zohran Mamdani new powers to speed up housing development by approving a series of ballot measures in November.
Now he is showing how he will use them.
The city is set to announce on Friday that an 84-unit affordable housing development on an empty, city-owned lot in the Bronx will become the first to use an expedited process that cuts the length and layers of reviews for projects to be approved, said Dina Levy, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
The new process, created by the ballot measures, could be reduced to just 90 days from about seven months.
The Bronx development, called Powerhouse Apartments, will be 100 percent affordable and include 30 units for formerly homeless New Yorkers.
Under the old process, the proposal would first be reviewed by a community board for 60 days, then by the borough president for 30 days, then by the City Planning Commission for 60 days and finally by the City Council for at least 50 days.
The new fast-track will have a 60-day review by the community board and borough president take place simultaneously, followed by a City Council review for 30 days.
The announcement is another reflection of how Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, is pushing for more development as one solution to the housing crisis.
The head of the pro-development group Open New York, Annemarie Gray, has appeared alongside the mayor at several events, including a recent rally in support of loosening the state’s environmental laws to make it easier to build.
Mr. Mamdani’s deputy mayor for housing and planning, Leila Bozorg, served as secretary on the panel that crafted the ballot proposals last year. On Election Day, Mr. Mamdani said that he voted for the measures.
While City Hall has touted the ballot measures as a success, they upset members of the City Council, who lost some power to control development in their districts.
The goal, according to supporters of the measures, was to lessen the impact of the unofficial veto individual council members had wielded over projects in their districts — a practice known as member deference. Development advocates argued that member deference had helped make housing construction too unpredictable and slow.
City officials said they expected to use the same fast-track process on dozens of additional city-owned lots in the coming months.
Also on Friday, the city will announce that it is using the fast-track process to buy a 3.7-acre lot to expand the Saw Mill Creek Marsh park on Staten Island, said Alec Schierenbeck, the general counsel of the city Planning Department.
Mihir Zaveri covers housing in the New York City region for The Times.
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