Mamdani Administration Releases SPEED Task Force Report

Established on Day One of Mayor Mamdani’s Administration, the Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development (SPEED) Task Force, an interagency task force led by Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg and Deputy Mayor for Operations Julia Kerson, was changed with identifying strategies to speed up the delivery of housing in New York City. To develop a package of proposed reforms, the Task Force met with over 100 industry experts, advocates, developers, builders, and trade organizations, including the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter.  

There are seven major initiatives put forward in the SPEED Report: 

1. Cut the city’s pre-certification timeline for many zoning actions from two years to six months so housing projects can be reviewed and approved faster 

2. Assign a dedicated central project management team to every city-financed affordable project to shepherd projects through the up to 15 agencies that are responsible for permitting, environmental review, and financing 

3. Accelerate the review process for Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plans 

4. Streamline office-to-residential building conversions 

5. Improve the fire alarm inspection process 

6. Reimagine the affordable housing lottery from the ground up 

7. Launch new programs to more efficiently move homeless New Yorkers from shelters into permanent, affordable homes 

Some specific notable recommendations include: 

• Leverage anticipated changes by the State to environmental review to streamline the pre-certification process at DCP from 2 years down to 6 months for most eligible projects. This will include the establishment of a new, dedicated review team exclusively focused on advancing these projects into public review. 

• Invest in agency capacity. The City will invest in agency environmental review capacity, to ensure that agencies have the expertise needed to carefully and efficiently study impacts. New staff at the DCP, Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), Department of Transportation (DOT), Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) will help move environmental review faster and ensure communities are protected. 

• Expand the Department of Buildings’ Affordable Housing HUB Program by providing a Department of Buildings (DOB) project advocate to help HPD-subsidized new construction projects on City-owned land navigate DOB’s permitting process. 

• Create a new team at the Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI) to coordinate the creation of Application Programming Interfaces to link the back-end data located within the permitting portals of multiple agencies involved in housing permitting to improve customer experience and transparency, provide clear metrics detailing review timing and queue length to applicants and agencies, and automate project approval management across agencies. 

• Create a targeted violation amnesty policy that removes building code violations and clears title hinderances on City-owned property to allow designated builders that were not responsible for the violations to begin construction faster.  

• Add additional staffing and front-end IT improvements to maintain or to improve the current 45-day review time for SWPPP and give applicants and agency staff more tools to better communicate comments and revisions. 

• Create a third party testing procedure in advance of FDNY final inspections. In an effort to reduce defects and violations that delay sign-off and approval of the system, the FDNY will accept third party testing as an indicator of full readiness for inspection, increasing sign-off success rates.  

• Add additional staffing and positions at FDNY’s Fire Alarm Plan Review and Inspection Unit to reduce wait times to a one-to-two-week turnaround time for application reviews and inspections. 

• Increase staffing for DEP’s Bureau of Water and Sewer Operations that will lead to faster permit review for construction and Certificate of Occupancy reviews for construction closeouts. 

• Collaborate with EXPRESS NY, a new statewide initiative from Governor Hochul to tackle outdated policies, regulations, and practices and make it faster and more affordable to deliver the critical housing and other infrastructure projects that New Yorkers need.