Calls for more affordable housing in LIC grow as city rezones nabe
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As the city attempts to rezone a large swath of Long Island City, locals and elected officials are urging them to ensure the neighborhood is developed with more affordable housing in mind. Over the past decade, LIC has become one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Queens. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
One of New York City’s fastest growing neighborhoods is gearing up to grow a bit more – again.
In the last decade, Long Island City has become one of the most developed and expensive neighborhoods in Queens after a boom of luxury buildings made the area look like an extension of Manhattan.
Now, the city is undergoing another large-scale attempt to build on the final swath of LIC, which has thus far evaded development – for better or for worse. But locals say the new effort to build has to look different than the last. Rather than building luxury towers locals can’t afford, the city needs to focus on affordable housing in the once-industrial neighborhood.
The neighborhoodwide rezoning, known as ONE LIC, was announced in mid-October. Earlier this year, officials released their initial plan for the project, which included building close to 14,000 units of housing, 4,000 of which would be income restricted.
The Department of City Planning held the first of several expected meetings on their draft plan on Monday afternoon. During the online hearing, locals and elected officials called on the DCP to remain committed to bringing more affordable housing to the increasingly expensive neighborhood. Several even said that the current production of affordable housing outlined in the plan doesn’t go far enough.
Councilmember Julie Won, who has partnered with DCP for the project, said she feels the current affordable housing numbers fall short of the needs of the neighborhood.
“This will compound the existing pattern of unaffordable development in our neighborhood,” she said. “The plan needs to commit to 100 percent affordable housing on public parcels in Anable Basin that is truly affordable, which the scoping document does not address.”
Though the upzoning project applies to a large swath of LIC, including portions of the neighborhood that have already undergone development over the past decade, ONE LIC will primarily focus on the area of the neighborhood west of the entrance to the Queensboro Bridge. The area was once known as an industrial center for the city, and was once targeted by Amazon in 2018 for a new headquarters, a project the company abandoned in the face of widespread community pushback.
The neighborhood as a whole has been one of the fastest growing in the entire city in the past decade. The population of LIC grew more than 43 percent between 2010 and 2021, outpacing the rest of the city and adding an additional 20,000 housing units along the way.
Many of those units came in the form of high-rise luxury towers with high rents that priced out residents who have called the community home for years.
Apartments.com, a commonly used site for finding living arrangements, cites the average rent in LIC as $3,354 per month, more than a thousand more than the average rent in neighboring Astoria and nearly $1,500 higher than Sunnyside, the neighborhood to LIC’s south.
According to city data, the median income in the area has risen 85 percent since 2010.
While ONE LIC aims to broaden the scale of economic opportunity in the neighborhood, some longtime advocates are wary that the city’s efforts will result in anything tangible – ONE LIC isn’t the first time the city’ has attempted a nieghborhoodwide rezoning in the area.
Projects like the Waterfront Access Plan at the Northern Hunters Point Waterfront was kicked off by the city in 1997. The plan was created with the intention to open up the area’s waterfront, but ultimately saw no development.
The Special Long Island City Mixed-Use District in 2001 introduced mixed-use zoning to the
the neighborhood. Other parts of Hunters Point, Dutch Kills and Sunnyside Gardens were all also rezoned in the mid-aughts, but none of the rezonings did much to help local affordability.
Later attempts like Your LIC, which was going to build housing on 28-acres of Anable Basin, broke down in 2020 and was also opposed by several local officials.
“The Anable Basin waterfront has been the site of multiple development proposals that have not come to fruition,” said Won on Monday. “Previously completed rezonings have transformed the neighborhood by bringing almost 23,000 new housing units but very few of it has been for working class New Yorkers.”
While the city references these efforts as missed opportunities, locals are increasingly worried that ONE LIC could meet the same fate, by either fizzling out or failing to actually make the neighborhood more affordable.
“We've seen a lot of development in Long Island City, and it's done nothing to have [rent decreases] occur,” said Queens Community Board 1 chair Evie Hantzopoulos.
Hantzopoulos, who’s community board includes some of LIC and Astoria, said that she was skeptical of the city’s affordable housing commitments and wanted to hear more about what they had planned.
“If that is something that people are saying is going to happen, I would like some numbers about that,” she said.
Danielle Brecker, the former chair and current member of Community Board 2, agreed with Won and other officials who said ONC LIC’s affordable housing should be made available to New Yorkers with some of the lowest possible incomes.
“I want comprehensive community planning, but now this just feels like another rezoning,” she said. “This plan creates 12,000 market rate units and only 4,000 affordable units, that is unacceptable.”
“One-hundred percent should be affordable in perpetuity,” she added. “More market rate apartments in an area that is already grossly unaffordable will lead to more unaffordability, wealth segregation, gated towers and displacement.”
With the new housing, locals said the city will also need to pour money into building up the neighborhood’s already burdened infrastructure.
On Monday, Long Island City locals weighed in on the large ONE LIC rezoning plan for their community. Many had worries that the plan does not go far enough to help local affordability and livability. Screenshot via the New York City Department of City Planning
“There has only been limited investment In public infrastructure, and now we want to build more with only a vague possibility of capital investment in public infrastructure,” Brecker said. “Increasing density by transit only works if that transit is not already totally overwhelmed and inadequate, as it is in Long Island City.”
Other locals stressed that the plan needs to include opportunities for low-income residents who live in LIC now, namely the residents of the Queensbridge Houses, who are mostly locked out of the ONE LIC plan.
“If this study remains the way it is drawn now, stopping at Queensbridge Houses, it's actually redlining our community,” said Bishop Mitchell Taylor, a local non-profit leader.
Taylor wants to see the project’s boundaries increase into the Queensbridge Houses, and to see more opportunities for LIC’s pre-existing low-income residents.
“I think this would be a tremendous opportunity to create at least 10,000 units of next level affordable housing for residents that live in Queensbridge,” he said.
The planning of ONE LIC is still in its earliest stages – the full plan is not expected to be certified until March 2025. But DCP has already been knocked for artificially speeding up the clock on the project, officials say.
ilmember Julie Won has led some of the outreach efforts for the city’s ONE LIC plan. The lawmaker, who first introduced the effort alongside City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Mayor Eric Adams administration officials in 2023 said on Monday during a hearing that she worries the plan doesn’t do enough for low-income residents. File photo by Emil Cohen/NYC Council Media Unit
Monday’s hearing came during a particularly quiet time in New York City when many residents may be out of town. Additionally, DCP has allowed residents to submit written comments on the plan until Sept. 13, however, some locals say that without pushing the deadline back, the two local community boards whose boundaries include LIC won’t have the opportunity to meet and hear from members of their community until the feedback period has closed.
“We request that the comment period be extended…to allow broader participation and more meaningful community input,” said State Senator Kirsten Gonzalez.
Hantzopoulos and Brecker agreed.
“The period to submit comments ends before the two community boards that this rezoning impacts have time to have public hearings,” Brecker said. “Please extend the comment time.”
Though DCP plans to hold a number of additional hearings on the draft plan, they have yet to schedule times or dates for future meetings.
The agency also says that the Sept. 13 deadline is already an extension from the usual 10 day time limit after the scoping hearing.
"Creating a more equitable and affordable community is a key goal of the Long Island City Neighborhood Plan,” said DCP Spokesperson Joe Marvilli. “This initiative would help alleviate the neighborhood’s housing shortage and mandate permanently affordable housing for the first time here. We appreciate the valuable feedback received during this week’s scoping meeting and look forward to continuing our conversations with local stakeholders to ensure we deliver the best possible plan for Long Island City."
A previous version of the story inaccurately stated that Danielle Brecker was a member of Community Board 1.
