by: Bria Donohue
On Monday, AIA New York had the pleasure of welcoming Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg to the Center for Architecture. This Advocacy Program allowed members to hear directly from the Mamdani Administration about the details of their recently released housing plan, Block by Block.
Block by Block is a comprehensive 10-year action plan that takes an all-of-the-above approach to tackling New York City’s housing crisis, setting ambitious targets to build 200,000 new units and preserve 200,000 units. The plan is broken out into eight chapters: (1) Empowering Tenants and Strengthening Enforcement, (2) Preserving Affordability and Improving Housing Quality, (3) Securing NYCHA’s Future, (4) Building Neighborhoods for Working People, (5) Expanding and Stabilizing Homeownership, (6) Reducing and Preventing Homelessness; (7) Investing in Innovation and Good Jobs, (7) Investing in Innovation and Good Jobs, and (8) Achieving Public Excellence.
Deputy Mayor Bozorg spoke about how the perception of housing policy has evolved over the past decade, the success of City of Yes and what’s next for zoning, expansion of transit oriented development, dealing with financial tools and regulations under state authority, strategies for building climate-conscious affordable housing that pencils out, plans for leveraging city-owned property, opportunities for construction code reforms, prioritization of public excellence and making government work efficiently, and the role of quality design in delivering affordable housing.
Notable items in the housing plan include:
- DOB to convene an Affordable and Efficient Code Reform Task Force to work in collaboration with the City Council’s Advisory Group on Housing Affordability (start by looking at expanded allowance of smaller elevators and use of plastic piping materials)
- Maximize housing development opportunities on city-owned land; Co-locate housing with city-owned buildings, such as libraries, schools, and other public assets
- Pursue citywide transit-oriented development strategy, particularly zoning changes tied to transit improvements like the Interborough Express and new Bus Rapid Transit routes
- Establish The Bronx Plan to improve housing quality, reduce health disparities, and build equity for low-income and working-class Bronxites with targeted HPD assistance to improve housing conditions and coordinated community quality of life improvements
- Advance equitable housing by strengthening neighborhood climate resilience with the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice’s Climate Strong Communities program
- Establish standardized technical specifications to enable replicable models for industrialized construction
- Incentivize investments in housing quality and energy efficiency with the recently state-authorized extension of the J-51 program