Dive Brief:
- New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration on Thursday unveiled 12 neighborhoods selected for the city’s “fast track” initiative to increase and more evenly distribute affordable housing development throughout the city.
- Rezoning proposals aimed at creating affordable housing in the 12 neighborhoods call for reducing the land use review process to 90 days compared with the typical seven-month review period, starting Jan. 1, 2027.
- The 12 neighborhoods combined produced 724 of the 63,870 affordable homes — just 1.1% of the city’s new affordable housing — in the past five years, according to the city. “Every neighborhood has a part to play in making our city fairer and more affordable,” Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Dina Levy said in a news release.
Dive Insight:
New York City last year recorded a historically low housing vacancy rate of just 1.4%.
New York City voters approved a number of measures to speed up housing production in November 2025, including a fast-track program to address the uneven distribution of affordable housing development in the city.
A recent study found that longer permitting processes often correlate with lower housing production in cities.
Five of the districts selected for the New York City program are in Queens, three are in Brooklyn, two are in Manhattan and two are in Staten Island. The 12 districts will be recalculated every five years, according to the city.
The Mamdani administration’s Block by Block housing plan calls for developing 200,000 new affordable homes over the next decade and preserving 200,000 more.
“New York’s housing crisis is not going to be solved by asking the same neighborhoods to do all the building,” Mamdani said in a news release. “Every New Yorker deserves a home they can afford, and every neighborhood must be part of delivering it.”
