Inclusionary Zoning
Background
In 2003, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced expansive plans to rezone over twenty New York City communities – including the Far West Side of Manhattan, Greenpoint/Williamsburg, Long Island City, and parts of the South Bronx, among others. Some of these rezonings promote new development by converting manufacturing areas to residential use, allowing taller residential and commercial buildings, and encouraging mixed-use business districts. Others restrict development, especially in low-density areas of Staten Island and Queens. A few offer a balance.
As originally proposed, the plans offered little prospect of creating any new affordable housing. While the rezonings are expected to generate over 50,000 units, the vast majority were slated to be in market-rate areas, where units sell and rent to people earning over $100,000 a year. The Bloomberg Administration rejected initial calls to link rezoning to the creation of affordable housing, and the 2003 rezonings of Park Slope and Long Island City were passed with no provisions for affordable units.
The Pratt Center joined with community groups, advocacy and religious organizations, and has played a leading role in the effort to persuade the City to adopt “inclusionary zoning” (IZ) to guarantee affordable housing. After much dialogue, debate, and organizing, the Bloomberg Administration agreed to implement aggressive inclusionary zoning approaches in the Hudson Yards and Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning. We are now working to persuade the Administration to use this approach everywhere it rezones, and also to help make the program work.
Brad Lander at the IZ Press Conference
Why Inclusionary Zoning?
New York City faces a shortage of land where affordable housing can be built. The vast majority of City-owned land and buildings (where over 200,000 affordable units were created or preserved over the last generation) have been redeveloped. Moving forward, most development will take place on privately-owned land. In some neighborhoods, existing financial subsidy programs will be enough to persuade some developers to build affordable housing. However, in many neighborhoods developers generally prefer to build exclusively market-rate housing, which far exceeds what the average New Yorker can pay.
Inclusionary zoning provides a way to insure that affordable housing will be built in these neighborhoods as well. IZ provides mandates and/or incentives (usually density bonuses, which can be combined with tax and financial benefits) for developers to include affordable housing in new developments. As a result, affordable housing is created in mixed-income communities, stretching government resources further (since less subsidy is required), and capturing some of the windfall value created when land is rezoned to allow for more market-rate development. IZ has been adopted by hundreds of cities around the country, and resulted in tens of thousands of units of affordable housing in such varied places as Boston, Oakland, Denver, and Montgomery County, Maryland. Many studies have shown that even mandatory IZ programs do not dampen development and are economic feasible for developers and property owners.
The Report
In 2004, the Pratt Center partnered with PolicyLink to produce, Increasing Housing Opportunity in New York City: the Case for Inclusionary Zoning, a report that documented the need for affordable housing in New York City and offered recommendations on how to utilize inclusionary zoning as one strategy to provide a diverse, stable supply of housing that serves all New Yorkers.
The Campaign
The Pratt Center also helped to form a new citywide coalition of housing and social justice groups, the NYC Campaign for Inclusionary Zoning, with over 70 members, including ACORN, Habitat for Humanity NYC, Housing Conservation Coordinators, St. Nicholas Neighborhood Preservation Corporation, Los Sures, Afford Chelsea, and many others.
The Campaign's strategy was to work with grassroots groups organizing in the affected communities, and to pressure the City Council to insist that inclusionary zoning be applied – beginning in Hudson Yards and Greenpoint-Williamsburg. We joined large rallies organized by local groups in these neighborhoods, and helped to organize for the Housing Here and Now rally on February 2, 2005. The Campaign also provided research and support to community organizations, made dozens of presentations to community members, and educated City Council members and Bloomberg Administration officials about inclusionary zoning.
The Results
The Campaign for Inclusionary Zoning helped to bring about dramatic change in the City’s policies. City Council members – led by Council members David Yassky, Diana Reyna, and Christine Quinn (with critical support for a range of other elected officials, from Assemblyman Vito Lopez to Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz) – made clear that affordable housing needed to be guaranteed through inclusionary zoning and negotiated for affordability in each rezoning. The Bloomberg Administration, under the leadership of HPD Commissioner Shaun Donovan, ultimately agreed to modify their plans to include a creative and ambitious approach that combines density bonuses, tax and financial incentives, and the dedication of publicly-owned land to guarantee affordable housing.
Key elements of this new model for IZ in New York City include:- Targeted to areas of upzoning/density increases.
- Voluntary program that combines density increases, tax benefits, and financial incentives for developers who include affordable housing (the Pratt Center continues to prefer a mandatory approach, but believes that the incentives included in this program are sufficiently strong that most developers will choose to utilize them).
- Permanently affordable units.
- Targeted to a range of incomes.
- Prioritizing on-site, but allowing off-site (in same community) options, including the preservation of existing affordable units.
- Use of publicly-owned land in rezoning areas to maximize affordable units.
- Prevailing wages for building-service workers in larger buildings.
Next Steps
The Pratt Center is now working to help the City, affected communities, CDCs, and developers to implement the new inclusionary zoning program, and also encouraging the Bloomberg Administration to incorporate inclusionary zoning into its plans from the beginning as it rezones more neighborhoods. Next up are Jamaica, Sherman Creek, South Park Slope, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Flushing – all neighborhoods where people are in desperate need of affordable housing. As inclusionary zoning becomes a successful model, there are more neighborhoods where residents would be willing to see more (well-planned) density and development, if they know affordable housing will a significant part of what gets built.
Related Links:
Summary of NYC's New Inclusionary Zoning Program
Greenpoint-Williamsburg Rezoning
"Guaranteeing Affordable Housing for NYC's Future" slideshow presentation
Testimony on Rezonings
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