Your vote: What you need to know about the affordable housing questions on the November ballot
The chair of Herrick's Land Use & Zoning Practice, Mitch Korbey, was quoted in Brick Underground discussing ballot measures for the upcoming NYC mayoral election.
The first ballot question proposes creating a "fast track" to speed up two things: zoning changes to allow for publicly funded affordable projects and affordable developments in neighborhoods that see few new, rent-restricted apartments.
"The idea is to provide an opportunity for those projects that are special—in that they are either publicly-funded affordable housing initiatives, which tend to be 100 percent affordable, or projects in communities that don’t have affordable housing—and it will provide an opportunity for those to move forward in a different process," said Mitch.
The proposal would allow the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA) to rezone areas for affordable projects funded with city, state, or federal dollars, so long as those developments fit with a neighborhood’s character, according to the Charter Revision Commission’s final report. The BSA—a group of five mayoral appointees including an architect, engineer, and city planner—is already charged with resolving disputes over zoning and land use issues, said Mitch, a former BSA member under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
The second ballot question proposes creating the Expedited Land Use Review Procedure (ELURP), which would "cut in half" the amount of time it takes to review certain projects looking to construct bigger buildings.
Lastly, the commission proposed creating an appeals board that can override the City Council, if the council votes against a new affordable housing development or modifies it. That appeals board would be made up of the mayor, the president of the borough where the project lies and the speaker of the City Council.
The move would shift power away from the City Council, where members have an unofficial veto power over projects in their districts. This hypothetical board could give developers more certainty that their projects would be approved, though an appeal would likely not be a developer’s first choice, Mitch said.
"It might provide some level of assurance that this is not the final say, for certain important projects," Mitch said. "But it would be unfortunate if it would have to come to an appeal, particularly for a project that has affordable housing."