New York City will fast-track affordable housing development on city land by prequalifying developers and streamlining the bidding and approval process.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Deputy Mayor Leila Bozorg and Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Dina Levy on Wednesday launched the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track program, an expedited process to speed the delivery of affordable housing on city-owned land. The program will allow HPD to pre-qualify affordable housing builders and shorten the pre-development Request for Proposals process by eight months for certain projects – cutting the time to select an affordable housing developer by nearly half.
Together with the new Expedited Land Use Review Procedure (ELURP), these programs will cut the pre-development process by more than two years, officials said.
The mayor, who made the announcement at 784-800 Myrtle Ave., where 100 apartment units will be built under this expedited process, said the implementation of the programs was about "taking on the crisis that is pushing New Yorkers out of this city."
The mayor, who was alongside City Council Member Chi Ossé and Black clergy leaders including Rev. Dr. Adolphus Lacey, pastor of Bethany Baptist Church and co-chair of East Brooklyn Congregations and Rev. Dr. David K. Brawley, pastor of St. Paul Community Baptist Church and co-chair of Metro IAF, said the lack of affordable housing has had a disproportionate impact on Black New Yorkers.
"In the last few decades, we've seen more than 200,000 black New Yorkers leave this city," the mayor said. "From 2010 to 2019, we've seen the population of Black children and teenagers decline by 19%. These are things that are the results of the policies that either we do pursue or we refuse to. And what we do today is show a different kind of path."
The HPD will release a Request for Qualifications due May 8 for affordable housing developers who will pre-qualify for the Neighborhood Builders program, with a focus on nonprofit organizations and minority- and women-owned businesses. Once development teams have been qualified, the faster Neighborhood Builders process will be used at sites such as 784-800 Myrtle Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant and other sites in the Bronx and Queens.
HPD expects to use the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track to advance development of as many as 1,000 new homes over the next two years, which also includes homes to purchase, according to Bozorg.
Later this spring, the city will also release recommendations from the Speed Task Force, which brought a group of experts together to figure out how the city can get people into the housing faster, she said.
"Record low vacancy rates continue to push rents through the roofs," Ossé said. "I know it and you all know it too. More housing needs to be built in every single neighborhood to relieve this crisis and give New Yorkers some breathing room."
