Flip the Script, and the Ballot, for Housing

At the final mayoral debate, the three leading candidates described different positions on the affordable housing ballot measures before voters this fall. Curtis Sliwa opposed them, Andrew Cuomo supported them and Zohran Mamdani said he’s still considering them. Meanwhile, the City Council has drawn attention by actively campaigning against them. 

Ballot questions two through four have become a flashpoint among New York City politicians. How can voters make sense of these proposals? By looking past the political jockeying and focusing on what New Yorkers need most. 

The main characters in this story are not elected officials. They are the people of New York City whose housing is too expensive, who struggle to stay where they want to be or can’t find housing near family and friends when they need to move because they’re getting married or divorced or having a kid or lost a job or are struggling with personal circumstances. They are the people sleeping in shelters or on couches or are uncertain where they are going to sleep tonight. The vacancy rate for rental housing in New York City has fallen to about 1.4% — the lowest it’s been in decades. Half of NYC renters pay more than 30% of their income toward rent, and nearly 30% of renters pay at least half their income in rent. Meanwhile, on any given night, there are over 100,000 people sleeping in the city’s shelter system, with thousands more living doubled-up or unsheltered. 

This conversation involves politics, but it’s not for the sake of politics; it’s for the sake of housing. We have dug ourselves an enormous hole by failing to allow the construction of enough housing for the people who need it, particularly those who can least afford it. These ballot proposals are part of the long-term effort needed to get us out of this hole. 

Well before these proposed changes were created, my organization — Citizens Housing and Planning Council, a New York City-based nonprofit research and education organization focused on housing policy — researched how the current land-use process has been working. We found incentives embedded in it that make it far easier to prevent housing than to allow it to be built. We have had some elected officials make heroic efforts to help get affordable housing built. But as long as it takes a hero to do this, we’ll never get all the housing we need. To make our way out of this affordability crisis, we need to make building housing an ordinary event, not an exceptional achievement.

The original concept of ULURP — the City’s land use review process, created in 1975 — was to begin with the airing of local priorities and perspectives, then to move to decisions from officials who represented borough-wide or citywide constituencies. This was intended to achieve a proper balancing of local and citywide perspectives — to value local views without empowering NIMBYism. 

In 1989, however, with the creation of the modern, 51-member City Council, the last vote in this process was assigned to the Council — a citywide governing body, but one with a natural tendency toward “member deference.” This practice allows the local member effective authority over decisions in their district. It’s worth noting that the only strictly neighborhood-specific laws the Council votes on are about land use. This change disrupted the logic of the process — and its outcomes.

After 1989, the number of land-use applications approved for housing declined sharply. Residential rezonings today are approved at just 60% of the pace at which they were during the 1980s, when applications were typewritten, maps assembled by hand and applications took more than a week to transmit to Community Boards by mail. Member deference has effectively allowed a Council member to block new affordable housing in their district. “Don’t bother spending your time and money on this; I’m not going to let it happen” has been the message to builders. And unsurprisingly, the map of where housing gets built — and doesn’t — bears a strong resemblance to the map of where rezonings have been approved. This has made member deference a powerful tool for reinforcing segregation and exclusion. 

Even for the most pro-housing local electeds, ULURP actions in their district are a political hot potato, giving them an incentive to delay, dodge or defer the conflict that they stir up. Notably, the Council recently approved two affordable housing developments over the objections of local members, which is worth celebrating! But this doesn’t disprove the logic of member deference; it’s actually the exception that proves it.

The only times in recent history that the Council has bucked member deference — in 2025, 2021 and 2009 — have all come in the waning months of the four-year electoral cycle, when the internal politics of the legislature are uniquely fluid. If we’re going to make producing housing an ordinary rather than an extraordinary accomplishment, we need to be able to do this during the other 90% of the political calendar, too.

So as much as election season draws our attention to politicians and who might be political winners or losers, let's keep our focus on New Yorkers’ most pressing needs and the Charter reforms that can make us better, more affordable and more equitably housed.