By: Hellen Zaboulani

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has often expressed his goodwill towards his friend, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Notwithstanding, the Adams administration seems to be pinning some of the blame for the current housing crisis on Bloomberg’s zoning laws in some neighborhoods.

To be sure, Bloomberg, who had served as NYC mayor from 2002 till 2013, was lauded for authorizing several high-profile rezonings that forever boosted low-rise neighborhoods including Hudson Yards, Williamsburg and Long Island City into high-density neighborhoods filled with high rise developments. Per Crain’s, however, at the same time, that administration had more quietly restricted dozens of neighborhoods—rezoning or “downzoning” to freeze growth and limit construction in some neighborhoods. At this time, as the city grapples with a severe housing crisis and affordability crisis, Mayor Adams’ office is looking at increasing housing construction as its best option for easing rents.

In March, Maria Torres-Springer, Adams’ deputy mayor for housing, announced the release of a report examining the consequences of 15 rezonings passed under Bloomberg in 2009. Torres-Springer made a speech on housing on March 28 speech at New York University, saying that seven of those neighborhoods experienced a decline in housing in the decade after they were rezoned by Bloomberg’s admin.

“It offers a pretty telling snapshot of our city’s planning politics in the 2000s,” she said. “As recently as 15 years ago, as the demand to live in our great city continued to rise, we did the opposite of what we should have — we made it harder to build housing.”

The limits on zoning seem to have been set in wealthier areas with posh white residents in the outer boroughs, in which locals had pushed to block more development which would be “out-of-character” for their neighborhoods. An example of the 2009 “downzonings” included Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, which had height limits introduced and which saw a 78% fall in new housing.

Permitted housing units fell from 743 in the decade earlier to only 164 in the decade which followed 2009, per Crain’s. Adam’s admin’s new housing study also showed that in North Corona, Queens, a similar 2009 rezoning led to curbing new housing construction there from 1,232 in the 10 years before 2009 to just 100 units in the decade that followed. The Adams administration was legally on the hook to release the “lookback” report due to a 2021 city law.

The Bloomberg-era plans were meant to be “balanced neighborhood rezonings”, which would allow some growth in major commercial streets but curb density and limit heights on residential side streets. Another example was in Park Slope, Brooklyn, rezoned in 2003 to allow more growth along 4th Avenue but limiting the heights on construction in the nearby brownstone-lined side streets. “The expectation was that these would control height, rather than stop new housing,” said Howard Slatkin, who had served as a City Planning official under Bloomberg’s administration. “But they likely did a bit of both.”

Slatkin, who currently serves as executive director of the nonprofit Citizens Housing & Planning Council, said in a recent interview that the city’s stalled housing growth “calls into question how much those downzonings may have prevented new housing, even beyond the intent at the time.”

Mayor Adams’ City of Yes housing plan proposes adding “a little more housing in every neighborhood.” Outer-borough commercial streets and neighborhoods near transit would be rezoned to permit four to five story buildings.