City Council Approves Controversial Citywide Rezoning Overhaul
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City Council yesterday approved the widest reaching zoning changes to the Five Boroughs in decades. The legislative body passed the two controversial anchor-weights of Mayor de Blasio’s affordable housing initiative (“Housing New York”) – Zoning for Quality and Affordability (ZQA) and Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH). His goal is to create 200,000 units of affordable housing by 2024.
The plan, which the Mayor will soon sign into law, was almost universally panned by the web of Community Boards and grassroots organizations around the city. CB3, in particular, rejected both ZQA and MIH.
DNAinfo has the goods from yesterday’s vote:
It includes Zoning for Quality and Affordability, a push to raise building heights and lift parking requirements in order to facilitate the construction of more affordable and senior housing, and Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, which will rezone certain neighborhoods and require affordable units in some new construction.
-Zoning for Quality and Affordability: 40-6-1
-Mandatory Inclusionary Housing: 42-5-0Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito had acknowledged earlier Tuesday that the Council vote did not represent the desires of many of their constituents.
“No plan is going to make 100 percent of people happy,” she said. “Find me a plan that does.”
Mark-Viverito pointed to concerns that communities won’t get enough in exchange for what they give up to facilitate development, and insisted that there will be “many more opportunities to come back and renegotiate” for those communities on a case-by-case basis.
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