Borough prez says ‘yes’ to City of Yes – with conditions

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards issued his conditional support of Mayor Eric Adams’ controversial City of Yes for Housing Opportunity zoning proposal on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach

By Ryan Schwach

Queens Borough Donovan Richards told the Adams administration on Monday that he tentatively supports their controversial citywide rezoning plan, which was rejected by more than two-thirds of the borough’s community boards.

In his recommendation shared exclusively with the Eagle, Richards, a general supporter of both public and private development projects, said he mostly endorsed the massive rezoning plan known as the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, but listed around half a dozen conditions he says the city needs to meet in order to enjoy his full support.

The BP said he had serious concerns about what he said was a lack of a commitment to build affordable housing included in the platform. He also said he opposed the elimination of parking mandates in neighborhoods without robust access to the city’s public transit system. He also pushed back against the city’s plan to allow homeowners to build accessory dwelling units on their property, a proposal Richards worries will put further strain on the borough’s outdated infrastructure.

“This is a perfectly imperfect plan,” Richards told the Eagle last week. “The Department of City Planning has a right to present their plan, it's our job to shape the plan.”

Richards is the last of the city’s borough presidents to weigh in on Mayor Eric Adams’ ambitious proposal, and joins Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine in their support of the City of Yes. Only Staten Island BP Vito Fosella recommended against the plan, issuing a single-word rejection of the proposal – “unfavorable.”

Richards’ conditional support also comes after 11 of Queens’ 14 community boards said they were outright opposed to the plan. Of the remaining three, two issued their full support while one gave their conditional approval.

Even with his concerns, as well as those expressed by the community boards who sent him their recommendations, Richards said he’d be passing up on a major opportunity to address the city’s housing crisis had he outright rejected the City of Yes, which the Adams administration claims will allow for a “little bit of housing in every neighborhood.”

“I would be complicit in adding to the homelessness crisis if I'm a person who believes in taking no action here,” he said. “I think most boards and most [civic associations] know where I'm at, so, I don't think it will be a surprise to them that I'm certainly going to be a ‘yes.’”

“I have to take the bird's eye view,” he added.

Opposition to the City of Yes in Queens has been robust and a vast majority of those who testified at a recent hearing on the plan hosted by Richards urged the BP to vote against it.

Most of the opposition to the City of Yes in the borough comes from Queens residents living in lower-density, suburban-esque communities, who say they want their neighborhoods to remain as they are.

Richards has pushed against that perspective, both in his recommendation on the City of Yes and while expressing support for other housing projects, like the one planned for the former Creedmoor campus in Eastern Queens.

“People are used to their way of life, and what I would say is, Queens has always evolved,” he said. “Many people forget that where they live was farmland at one point and it got developed.”

And while some in Queens – including urban planning consultant Paul Graziano, who countered the Department of City Planning at a number of community board meetings throughout the city over the last year – claim that some of the City of Yes’ proposals would be “catastrophic” to the borough’s neighborhoods dominated by single-family homes, Richards said otherwise.

Citing proposals like the “town center” element of the City of Yes, which would allow for the building of a few stories on top of commercial buildings, Richards said he doesn’t believe the plan will drastically increase the density of a neighborhood or truly change the character of communities.

“These are small landlords, they don't have the means to do large-scale development,” he said. “So, I don't think the plan is going to lead to this big building boom that people think it will.”

But Richards still sympathizes with some of the community boards’ worries.

Much like a number of boards, Richards argued that the plan is too “cookie cutter” and doesn’t take into account the many differences between neighborhoods in the most economically diverse city in the country.

“Whenever you're doing large-scale development, you can't treat every neighborhood the same,” he said. “If you don't know the community, there can be unintended consequences when you do some of these projects.”

Department of City Planning Chair Dan Garodnick has pushed back against that characterization of the plan.

“A little more housing in every neighborhood is designed to give us a significant impact citywide while not having dramatic changes in any one area,” Garodnick told the Eagle in July.

Perhaps Richards’ biggest gripe with the proposal is its the lack of commitment to making housing affordable, something he wants to see increased, as well as subsidized by the city.

While there is no specific affordability measure in the City of Yes plan, the mayor and DCP have argued that by building more housing, the market price of housing will begin to decrease.

“We have an inventory issue, folks,” Mayor Eric Adams said when kicking off the proposal’s review in April. “We cannot continue to have a city where housing is pushed in the same communities over and over again.”

But Richards wants to see the plan go further.

“My big fear here is that this is a real market-rate plan, and unless the city really is committed to subsidizing these units, or doing co-ops, you largely will just see market-rate housing,” he said. “I think there has to be some [affordability] mandates put in place.”

In his recommendation, the BP called for the city to allocate funds and subsidies for the developments City of Yes will bring.

“This is also a question of commitment by the administration. How much resources and money are they willing to spend on this plan?” he said.

Richards also said he took issue with the aspect of the City of Yes which would ax parking spot mandates for new developments.

While the city hopes the proposal will encourage developers to use previously-mandated parking space to build more housing, Richards worries the elimination of the mandates in some neighborhoods in Southeast and Eastern Queens, which are often described as “transportation deserts,” will leave some new residents stranded.

“I'm not going to be supportive of eliminating parking mandates around transit deserts,” he said, citing neighborhoods like his hometown of Far Rockaway.

“If you travel to the neighborhood, you would know that even to get to the [Long Island Rail Road station] you have to drive,” he said. “If we had a better transit system, if we extended the subway system into the further reaches of Eastern Queens and Southern Queens, then I wouldn't have an issue with leaving the parking piece optional.”

In his recommendation, Richards said that in places with a plethora of transit, like Jamaica, Downtown Flushing and Long Island City, parking mandates should remain optional “in order to increase housing opportunities” in those communities.

Garodnick has said in a previous statement that he believes that the elimination of parking mandates does not mean developers won’t still build parking where they want to.

“This isn't a ban on parking,” he said in April. “Instead, it's letting builders include parking where it is needed, rather than having a minimum mandate that is in conflict with new homes where parking is simply not necessary.”

Richards’ last major suggestion concerned the legalization of Accessory Dwelling Units – or ADUs.

As it stands, the City of Yes would allow New Yorkers to build, and rent, other units on their property, including in basements, garages or in external structures like a backyard cottage.

Some Queens locals have been very vocally opposed to the ADU plan, worrying it will create density issues in the more suburban-esque parts of the borough.

Richards also takes issues with the proposal, but for different reasons. He said he is worried that with an already-overtaxed “sewer system in parts of our borough, hooking up garages will only exacerbate that issue.”

“[The Department of Environmental Protection] needs to be a part of this conversation, and there should be no building that would impact infrastructure in pockets of Queens where we have the challenges already around infrastructure,” he said.

The BP said that rather than allow ADUs in all parts of the borough, an assessment should first be made to see which neighborhoods could handle the additional units, and which couldn’t.

“There may be some places that can absorb it, but I would say for places like Southern and Eastern Queens, where you do have these infrastructure issues, it should be a non-starter,” he said.

However, Richards is all in on basement apartments, and even wants to see the city help kick in $1 billion along with the state and federal governments to fund a basement apartment pilot program recently introduced by the mayor. Richards even suggested going further and establishing an amnesty program for homeowners who have already built and are renting basement apartments illegally.

“A lot of people who rent basements, they do it because it helps to subsidize the mortgage,” he said. “If you really want them to convert their basements legally, there is going to be a need for governmental assistance.”

Richards' recommendation, which is non-binding, marks the end of the boroughs’ review of the proposal.

Next, the plan will be reviewed and voted on by the City Planning Commission, which is largely expected to approve it.

The City of Yes will then come before the City Council, which is expected to vote on the proposal sometime this fall.

Richards said that even if the proposal is approved by the council and put into action by the mayoral administration, the city should continue to think about ways to create more affordable housing in the five boroughs.

“I don't want to say that this plan should be viewed as the end all be all,” he said. “I am in the belief that we can't talk our way out of this, we do have to build our way out of this.”