New York, Dec. 8. New York on Thursday announced a new plan to deal with high home prices in the city, under which it plans to loosen some rules and procedures in order to facilitate the construction of more buildings.
The Mayor’s initiative aims to speed up real estate developments by reducing bureaucratic burdens, but also, for example, by exempting smaller projects from the usual environmental impact assessments.
“The decades-long housing crisis requires policies that urgently respond and help New Yorkers get safe, quality housing as quickly as possible. There’s no time for old-fashioned bureaucracy, outdated policies, and endless paperwork that doesn’t help.” to New Yorkers,” the mayor, Eric Adams, said in a letter.
According to Adams, with the new initiatives it will be possible to reduce the time required to approve a project by up to 50% at a time of particular need for new homes to meet prices that continue to rise.
“We need to add hundreds of thousands of units to address the problem and that’s what we will do,” the mayor said in a statement.
After a setback during the early stages of the pandemic, home prices have soared in New York, a city where two-thirds of the population rents and where more than a third of residents spend more than half of their rental income despite that there is a large heritage of public housing.
In Manhattan, the most central neighborhood, the average rent stood at over $4,000 a month in November, while the average rent -distorted by luxury apartments- exceeded $5,200.
In recent years, the Big Apple has tried to address its housing shortage with several large real estate developments, especially in other boroughs such as Brooklyn and where developers are almost always required to include a certain percentage of affordable units.
While many of the measures in the plan announced today can be done by City on its own, others require the support of local or state legislators.
For now, state governor Kathy Hochul today applauded the initiative, believing it essential to make housing cheaper.
Adams, a centrist Democrat who became mayor with safety as his number one priority, also has this issue high on his agenda, though his bid so far has focused largely on giving developers facilities to expedite the construction process and thus meet the question, instead of contemplating any price control measures.
Some organizations have criticized in recent months the large financial contributions provided by real estate companies to Adams’ electoral campaign, which has already received large sums also from this sector in view of his re-election in three years. EFE extension
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