City Council bill adds racial impact study to rezoning process

City Council passed a bill last week requiring a racial impact study as part of the rezoning process. Eagle file photo by Paul Frangipane

By Rachel Vick

The New York City Council passed a bill last Thursday that will require the city to study the racial impact of zoning changes to ensure equitable development.

The new legislation, co-sponsored by Council Member Rafael Salamanca, mandates a report on the racial impact of rezoning and developments to be assessed and presented as part of the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.

Salamanca said that the bill, which passed 42-2, “is groundbreaking legislation that has the potential to change the way we think about land use and housing policies as a country.

“In 2021, New York remains a divided and inequitable city, with persistent disparities between Black and Latino families and White families," Salamanca said. "Much of this persistent inequity is due to the legacy of decades of explicitly discriminatory housing and land use practices from redlining, to urban renewal, to exclusionary covenants.”

The bill also includes the creation of an equitable development data tool from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Department of City Planning. The information on the publicly available tool will also be sent to the local councilmember, the public advocate’s office and the City Council speaker to aid in their ULURP decisions.

Rezoning applications submitted once the bill goes into effect on June 1, 2022 will need to submit racial equity reports on housing. The analysis would include factors like demographic, social, economic, and housing conditions and trends to determine if the build would place undue burden on current residents.

The bill will have to include methods to address potential disparities or risk of displacement, such as issuing protections against tenant harassment, right to counsel protections and workforce development programs.

In Queens, the bill would have changed the ULURP process for the Flushing waterfront development. Though the plan is moving forward, affordable housing and displacement concerns were at the forefront of residents’ and local leaders’ opposition to the plan. 

New proposals will also have to prove a commitment to include factors that further fair housing and promote equitable access to opportunity in line with the city’s fair housing plan, which works to combat disparities in housing access and racially or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty.

"In neighborhoods across the city, we have seen rezonings lead not to stronger community growth, but to rising rents and displacement," said sponsor Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Particularly in communities of color, these forces have been unchecked in the name of development, and a failure to recognize the racial impact of these projects has been detrimental.”

The bill now moves to Mayor Bill de Blasio for signing.