Brian Lehrer: It is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Real treat coming up later this hour. Patti Smith will join us ahead of a concert that she'll be giving in New Jersey tomorrow. Patti Smith coming up in about a half hour. Right now, Mayor Adams unveiled a new housing plan that he says could pave the way for 100,000 new homes in New York City over the next 15 years.

The so-called City of Yes plan proposes a range of initiatives, including incentives for developers, to add income-restricted units to their projects, policies allowing single-family homeowners to build a spare apartment in their backyard, and the elimination of parking requirements that currently make new apartment buildings additionally expensive to construct. The proposed changes aim to address the decades-long housing shortage, soaring rents, and the homelessness crisis in the city, obviously all while the Adams administration calls out exclusionary zoning practices which it says hinders new housing and locks out low and middle-income New Yorkers.

There have been so many housing proposals by so many mayors over the decades. Can this one be any different and really move the needle in ways that others haven't? We're going to go over what the mayor's proposing now with Vicki Been, professor at NYU School of Law, faculty director of NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. That's a housing policy think tank. She was also the Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development under Mayor Bill de Blasio, you may remember, from 2019 to 2021. Hi, Vicki. Professor Been, welcome back to WNYC.

Professor Been: Thank you, Brian. Nice to be back.

Brian Lehrer: Where would you want to start in describing what Mayor Adams proposed yesterday in ways that won't make our listeners' eyes glaze over as, "Oh, here we go again," all these words?

Professor Been: [chuckles] Look, I think there are some really great things about the proposals and some significant things to be improved. How about if we start with the great things and try to break those down-

Brian Lehrer: Okay.

Professor Been: -and then we can talk about the improvements needed? I think the great things are-- and I really commend the mayor and his team for aggressively moving to add new capacity for housing to the city. As you said, we have a housing crisis - a longstanding housing crisis - and it requires aggressive bold action. I think there are bold moves here, and really want to commend the mayor for those. I think a couple of things to note. One is that the approach is an all-of-the-city approach. The mayor said, "We're going to allow the building of a little more housing in every neighborhood." I think that's really important.

The zoning battles of the past several decades have been between some neighborhoods trying to get a pass on having to have any new development, and other neighborhoods fed up with what they considered to be an unfair share of the development. By saying very clearly every neighborhood is going to get more housing, needs to take more housing, you get beyond some of that tension, that we versus them tension. I think that's a really important feature of their approach.

Related to that is the emphasis on, as you mentioned, the exclusionary housing. The emphasis is really on how do we have fairer housing? How does our housing policy work to reduce the kinds of inequities that we've seen along racial and class lines? What they've done here in terms of focusing on getting more housing into every neighborhood into the neighborhoods with great transit, with good schools, with lower crime, that helps to break down some of the opportunity hoarding, frankly, that we've seen in some neighborhoods.

The other thing I would say is that the proposal really builds on proven models. You mentioned the parking; ending the parking minimums. We did that in the de Blasio administration for senior housing and for some affordable housing, and it was a game changer. Developers of affordable and senior housing constantly told me, "I was able to add 10 more apartments, 20 more apartments because I didn't have to provide parking. I was able to use smaller lots than I could ever use before because I didn't have to provide parking." That's a real game changer, and it builds on what we know works.

Similarly, things like the ADU provision that you mentioned. We know that that works because California has been on it for several years, and we're starting to see in Los Angeles, in the suburbs, real development of those accessory dwelling units. The extra in-law apartment or the apartment above the garage in a predominantly single-family neighborhood. We know that that works, and it's great to see those kinds of proposals being put forward.

Similarly, the proposal builds on what we call the heirs bonus, which was in the de Blasio administration. A 20% bonus for senior housing. The Adams administration is proposing to expand that to all housing or to all affordable and senior housing where it will provide more room for additional apartments, and for all housing in general where it's going to depend on subsidies. We know that that works. We got a lot more housing from that heirs bonus. It's good to see that being added onto what affordable and senior buildings can do now.

Those are some of the things that I think are terrific about the new proposal, and they will result in more housing because we've seen them result in more housing.

Brian Lehrer: Let me go over a few of the particulars. Listeners, if you want to weigh in with a question or an endorsement or a complaint about any of these new housing policies from Mayor Adams with the attention to add 100,000 new homes in New York City over the next 15 years as a result of these policies to help ease the housing shortage, which leads to higher rents, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for the former Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development under Mayor Bill de Blasio, Vicki Bean, who is also a professor at the NYU School of Law and the faculty director of NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, a housing policy think tank.

Smaller apartments is part of this. Some could even have windowless bedrooms, which I think is against the housing code right now. Can you talk about the role of either of those things?

Professor Been: It is important to have smaller apartments when really in the 1980s we outlawed a form of housing that provided a lot of housing for people getting started. What we call the single-room occupancy buildings. When I first came to New York I lived in one. It's what made it possible for me to afford New York, and it worked for many, many, many people. Those were small. My apartment was, I don't know, maybe 200 square feet, if that. Bathroom down the hall, that kind of thing.

It's important to provide that housing. In the immigrant crisis, we're seeing many, many people come to New York, sending money back to their family at their original home. You need that kind of entry-level housing, and we basically outlawed that. This would open some of that up and allow small apartments. Obviously, people would prefer to have bigger apartments, many of them, but it's not necessarily affordable, and people would prefer to have an affordable apartment to no apartment at all.

Allowing that kind of smaller units, we require larger units than many, many, many other cities across the nation. We've always been on the high end there. We've dropped the unit size over the years and the world hasn't come to an end. This would drop it further and allow that single-room occupancy or shared housing, meaning you might have a living room that four bedrooms open onto. Those aren't roommates in that sense. They're cohabitants of a common area, but they're not roommates in the traditional sense. That works for a lot of young people getting started in the city.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor also wants to lift a rule I see that prevents landlords from converting offices to apartments. Obviously, there's so much talk about that these days with the remote work era post-pandemic, meaning that there's a lot of unoccupied office space and a lot of pressure to convert offices to apartments. What's the rule that makes that hard?

Professor Been: There are many rules that make that hard. Both zoning rules and building code rules that require-- Setbacks that require space by the windows, that kind of thing. Many of the office buildings of course are very big, and it's hard to get apartments where every bedroom has a window into those office buildings. Adjustments need to be made there where appropriate. I think not all offices are suitable for conversion. Not all offices have enough vacancy to really justify that. Wouldn't have to buy out the existing tenants and that kind of thing. We have to be careful about how much is really going to be produced there, but clearly, there's opportunity.

Now, that brings me though, Brian, to one of the areas that needs improvement, and that is that in the rezoning that would allow conversion of offices to apartments, there's no requirement for any affordability. After we passed Mandatory Inclusionary Housing in 2016, whenever a developer got significant rezoning, they were required to provide some affordable housing. This wouldn't do that, and I think that's a real missed opportunity.

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get housing into neighborhoods that have a lot of great transit, a lot of great amenities. Not to have any affordable housing in those conversions, I think is a missed opportunity. There's a question about how that gets paid for, but that's a debate that we should be having. One thing I would urge the Adams administration to really reconsider is requiring affordability like we did for Mandatory Inclusionary.

Brian Lehrer: I think we have a call on exactly that point, how to pay for more affordable units. If they're not going to be as profitable for the developers to construct, why would they construct them? Jenny in Jackson Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jenny.

Jenny: Hi there. Yes. This is just more of the same. You mentioned affordability, Ms. Been, but even the MIH housing that we've seen built in neighborhood after neighborhood, it's supposedly affordable.

Brian Lehrer: Just to bring the listeners along on the alphabet soup, Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, MIH, meaning what Vicki Been was just describing. If a developer got a zoning variance so that they could build a taller building than is usually allowed in that neighborhood. Under De Blasio, a certain percentage of it needed to be below market rate. That's MIH. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Jenny: Yes, correct. But what was deemed affordable was not affordable. I'm a middle-class person. I couldn't afford half of these apartments. You know that are deemed affordable, and they were usually maybe 20%. You had 80% market rate housing coming in to-- I think the exclusionary housing is a huge red herring. That's not the biggest problem New York City and the State is facing. What we're facing is there is complete austerity. There is no public money going toward public housing, which is crucial. There's no public money going to build de-commodified housing like CLTs, or even HDFCs or funding.

If you want a developer to build something, how about if 80% of it is affordable? Why are we subsidizing these developers' profits at like a 30% or 20% margin? There's no other industry in the world that's guaranteed those kind of margins. The other thing I want to say is that it's not neutral to build luxury housing, even in a wealthy white neighborhood, because it drives up the price of the land and you're increasing the coffers of these developers. To me, that's the real issue that no one seems to face. Neither Kathy Hochul nor Vicki Been, with all due respect, nor our mayor. We've got to change direction.

Brian Lehrer: Jenny, I'm going to leave it there and get a response. I think a fair point that she makes, that even in your and Mayor de Blasio's administration, there were activists, maybe including that caller, who were saying, "Look, this 80/20 formula in some buildings that was more affordable units or below market rate units than 20%, but still these kinds of things they're only adding, ultimately, primarily to the gentrification of neighborhoods. What the city needs to do is just restrict all new development to genuinely affordable housing for a period of time. If that's all the developers are allowed to build, then they'll find a way to make their profits and build that." What do you say?

Professor Been: The math just doesn't pencil, Brian. Jenny, I appreciate the question and I appreciate the passion. First of all, the city does spend billions of dollars on both public housing and subsidized affordable housing. During the De Blasio administration, we spent over $10 billion and leveraged another $30 billion in financing. We do spend an enormous amount, including for community land trusts, which you mentioned, but the numbers just don't pencil out. There's no evidence that developers are making 30%, as Jenny said.

In fact, when we run the numbers at the Furman Center, because property taxes for rental buildings are so high, by the time you pay for the operating costs, for the property taxes and to pay off your mortgage, you have hardly any money. Even in the highest-rent districts, you have hardly anything left to buy a piece of land. What's happening is that land is being built by people who are building condos, or it's just being kept off the market for this generation.

It just doesn't pencil to require us to flip the script, so to speak, for 80% affordable and 20% market. It just doesn't pencil. It's not penciling even today without some form of tax exemption to address the high cost of rental property taxes. We absolutely are-- The city is experimenting, has experimented with new models. They funded five CLTs throughout the city, but the bottom line is that we need market-rate housing, first of all, because there are people who can pay for it. Second, because market-rate housing also takes the pressure off of people who would buy now a rental apartment and convert it into a single-family home.

What we see is that where you have new market-rate housing, the evidence shows that you reduce the rents or you at least reduce the rate of rent growth. That the people who move into that market-rate housing are freeing up apartments that then become available across the city, across a broader range of the city.

Brian Lehrer: Then by that math, wouldn't we need much more construction than we're seeing, even in this plan that Mayor Adams announced yesterday that he says is the most pro-housing policy change in the history of New York City's modern zoning code? The goal that he's laying out here, the projection is only 100,000 new homes over the next 15 years. In a city approaching 9 million people, I don't know how much that moves the needle on supply and demand.

Professor Been: The zoning changes are incremental. I believe that what he means is that these zoning proposals he's projecting would build an additional 100,000 beyond what is currently being built, or what was being built when there was a tax exemption in place. Yes, we need lots more housing, and Mayor Adams has said his moonshot goal is 500,000 new homes. Whether that's exactly right or a little low or a little high is really not the point. We need lots more houses, lots more apartments for renters, and that's what's critical here.

The proposal does make a difference in opening up areas that could not now be built. Could not now support new housing. It will make a difference. Whether it's 100,000, that's very, very hard to say, but it will make a difference. As I said, it builds on a record of making a difference. These are proposals that are being expanded from what has been tried already in New York City or in other jurisdictions, and that we know works to produce housing.

Brian Lehrer: Trisha in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Vicki Been. Hi, Trisha.

Trisha: Hello. Thank you for taking my call. This is really exciting. While I was on hold, I heard that affordability wasn't part of the plan. My first question is why bother? I am a complete advocate for stopping lot line to lot line development, which is what I fear will happen here. There's no room for green infrastructure, for blue infrastructure, for the things that make a space livable. I am for a livable city, and a livable city is an affordable city. Once again, Bird Song is the number one indicator of human health and happiness. I am a victim in Winter Terrace, where Brad Lander, Eric Adams, and our aldermen, Robert Carroll, completely sold the neighborhood down the sink.

We said we would prefer to have a homeless shelter there rather than a lot line to lot line "luxury development" that literally does look like a prison. The walls are so small. We've lived for two years. Been working almost every Saturday, and this one neighborhood, the socio-economic part of this neighborhood is some of the few mixed people. There are retirees here, there are teachers here, and we have just been shunted aside because we did not have the wherewithal to hire attorneys and to really make it happen.

Brian Lehrer: The lawyers. When you say lot line to lot line, you mean building right next to building right next to building without any open space?

Trisha: The open space? Yes. The open space--

Brian Lehrer: When you say lot line to lot line, that's what's missing?

Trisha: That's what's missing. That's what the whole thing. We need to make it livable. We need to have a place for climate change, rain to go. We need to have a place to have crickets. Just little slivers of land in the city on 36th Street. We're just concreting all of New York, and that is not a way to live. The older people, retirees, young people, we need trees. We need the little community garden. We have to make it livable, and that's possible. These designs are-- There's a book called The Pattern Language. I recommend everyone who's interested in this, check it out. Life is a series of patterns and we need to meet them, and we're not meeting them.

Brian Lehrer: Trisha, thank you very much. Vicki Been, anything on that?

Professor Been: Every time that we build housing in New York City, we need to be paying attention to, is it coming along with the kinds of amenities that she was talking about. Yes, we need green space. We need gardens. We need parks. We need little vest pocket parks that provide that sliver that she was talking about. That's the responsibility of the planning and housing teams, is to make sure that those kinds of amenities are coming along with new development.

Brian Lehrer: Anthony in Red Bank wants to react to one of the items in the mayor's proposal that I mentioned in the intro but we didn't talk about yet. Anthony, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Anthony: Hi. Me?

Brian Lehrer: Anthony-- Yes, you.

Anthony: Oh, hi. Yes. You guys keep mentioning livability and affordability and all of that. That's great, and there are solutions to that. One of them that I just keep hearing is units and bedrooms without windows. Bedrooms have windows so people don't die in fires. Making bedrooms and apartment units and things like that without windows means that if there's a fire everyone's going to die. Isn't life more important than affordability?

Brian Lehrer: Anthony, thank you. Was this "windowless bedrooms allowed" part of the proposal, and is that against the current New York City Fire Code, Vicki?

Professor Been: The current housing code does not allow windowless bedrooms. I didn't hear very much about exactly what Mayor Adams is proposing there. I know that he said in the past that he believes that some bedrooms could be windowless. Obviously, that has to meet fire safety rules. My experience of working on the city's building code is that we protect against fire and we will continue to protect against fire. I don't know what the mayor has in mind there. It's not something I would support.

Brian Lehrer: Listener texts this question or suggestion. "What we need is small developers. With fewer barriers for small developers, the market could actually meet our housing needs." Your reaction?

Professor Been: I totally agree. When I was housing commissioner, we had all kinds of programs to try to bring smaller developers, especially MWBEs, into the fold. One of the things that this proposal does that allows that is by authorizing the accessory dwelling units, which tend to get built by smaller developers. By making smaller lots available because you don't have the parking minimums, you end up getting a lot more smaller affordable housing buildings that are being built by smaller developers, newer developers. We absolutely need to support that part of the industry, and I think a lot is underway to do exactly that.

Brian Lehrer: We may have one such person calling in. Tanania in Newark, you're on WNYC. Hello, Tanania.

Tanania: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. This is such an exciting discussion. I'm actually a developer of color. I'm a woman, obviously. I actually purchased the property probably like 10 years ago right during the crash. It ended up accelerating. I have a lot of equity, so I've decided to develop on it. When I developed, I didn't realize how my performer would change literally based on the taxes. The taxes, along with the construction cost, are just astronomical.

My goal was to take a two-unit commercial building and build housing on top of it, so I'd go to 15 units, which makes sense. I love the area, I want to build up the community, all that good stuff. I think, like Victoria was saying, it's such a myth that these numbers make sense easily. I think a bigger discussion we need to be having is how do we deal with taxes. I'm in New Jersey. Taxes are crazy here, but we got to find a way to deal with that as well.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Vicki?

Professor Been: First of all, thank you, Tanania, for being one of those small developers who's trying to make it work in the city. I totally agree. The truth of the matter is that it is, well, nigh impossible to build in New York City these days. To build rentals without some form of tax exemption because property taxes on rentals are just so high. They're high in part because the tax system is unfair. It's unfair between people with similar types of housing, and it's unfair between rental housing and ownership housing.

That needs to change. That's a huge political battle. We tried to take that on in the de Blasio administration. We came out with a proposal. Got basically nowhere in Albany, which is the decider. That needs to be fixed. I totally agree.

The other thing is even if we fixed the property tax system and reduced some of those inequities, still, property taxes on rentals, given the high cost of construction in New York City, continues to be a problem. That's why before the last few years, you had the 421A type of exemption. 421A needs to be reformed. To go back to a point that Jenny made earlier, the affordability requirements in 421A need to be lower. The number of units may need to be higher. We need to reform 421A, but there needs to be some form of accommodation for rentals, otherwise they can't compete against condo development. They just can't.

Brian Lehrer: Last question. Advocates have long called on the city to push more development in wealthier neighborhoods, which have historically resisted that sort of change. Does this plan have teeth in that respect?

Professor Been: That is one of the things that I think is admirable about this plan, is that it says, "Look, every community needs to step up. Every community needs to have the capacity for more housing." One of the problems there, though, is that in many of those wealthy neighborhoods, they are already very built out to the maximum that the state allows housing to go to. Under state law, housing can only be built at 12-floor-area ratio. 12 times the size of the lot essentially. Whereas a commercial building could be 24 times, 30 times. That's crazy. We've asked repeatedly for Albany to change that, and Albany must change that.

Brian Lehrer: We'll leave that as the last thought from Vicki Been, professor at NYU School of Law, faculty director of NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, a housing policy think tank, and former Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development under Mayor Bill de Blasio. We will see what comes of these latest affordable housing proposals and development proposals from Mayor Adams. Thank you for joining us, Vicki.

Professor Been: Thank you for having me.

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