When, a little over 10 years ago, the Mayor Bill de Blasio administration approached East New York City Councilmember Rafael Espinal to win his support for a plan to rezone East New York, many residents of the economically struggling Brooklyn neighborhood feared that a rezoning would lead to gentrification and push them out.
Espinal had another view. A rezoning could bring new housing that would slow or even avoid gentrification altogether. And the process would give him leverage to bring badly needed investments to the area.
“I saw how rapidly gentrification was moving through Brooklyn in Brownsville, Bushwick and Bed-Stuy,” he recalled. “The rezoning was a way to build and maximize affordable housing, help get better infrastructure, resources for the schools and better public parks.”
A decade later, Espinal turns out to have been right.
The East New York rezoning, the first of more than a dozen such major land use changes under de Blasio, has already produced, in the space of a decade, almost all the 6,500 units that proponents of the rezoning predicted would be produced within 15 years. Almost two-thirds are below-market affordable units, a key to avoiding gentrification. Infrastructure has been improved and the area’s parks have received badly needed updates.
Graffiti adorned an auto body shop along Atlantic Avenue in East New York, May 7, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
East New York — the first time the city had used a new tool called mandatory inclusionary housing that forced developers of market-rate apartments to include a percentage of affordable units — turned out to be a model for how to use rezoning to create more housing, and to do so without spurring gentrification.
“When people look at what has been built, they say this looks like luxury housing,” said Alex Sommer, the Department of City Planning’s Brooklyn director. “And most of it has been 100% affordable. And when you point that out, people say, ‘What? This is all affordable?’”
Once one of the city’s most desirable working-class neighborhoods, East New York was home to Jazz Age songwriters George and Ira Gershwin and retailers like Fortunoff in the first half of the 20th century. By the early 1990s, it was in dire shape, with the 123 murders in the local precinct leading the city in 1993 and so many abandoned buildings that officials began knocking some of them down. It was one of the poorest community districts in the city.
But in the third term of the Bloomberg administration, the city won a federal grant to research how the neighborhood could be improved, and the City Planning department hired Sommer to work on the study. He rolled up his sleeves, studied the district and made a point of talking to community groups about what kind of changes would help the neighborhood.
Department of City Planning Brooklyn office Director Alex Sommer leads a tour of developments from the rezoning of a portion of Cypress Hills and East New York, May 7, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
When de Blasio took office in 2014, Sommer’s work emphasized that East New York would be a good place to begin using rezonings to greatly increase the pace of new housing construction. De Blasio’s goal was to build 160,000 new market-rate units and 80,000 below-market apartments over the next decade.
As Espinal remembers it, the mayor pitched him on more housing, while the Council member kept insisting that rezoning needed to be accompanied by commitments to increase the number of affordable units and make up for years of lack of city investment.
“Espinal was representing his community and he did fight for a lot of investments that were eventually made, but in some respects he was pushing against a receptive door,” said Carl Weisbrod, who oversaw the rezoning as head of the Department of City Planning.
The plan that was approved by the City Council with only one dissenting vote in April 2016 rezoned 190 blocks to encourage new six- to eight-story buildings, many replacing abandoned factories and industrial sites. The plan would produce 6,492 new units, city planning estimated, with half below-market and offered first to neighborhood residents.
Ten years later, 5,966 units have been completed or are under construction, with 3,700 — more than 60% — permanently affordable.
Early developments focused on city-owned sites, which reduced the cost.
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development committed to using its ELLA, or extremely low and low-income affordability program, which provides tax-exempt bonds, in addition to private institutional lending and city subsidies, to bring down the cost of rents.
Chestnut Commons at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Chestnut Street, is a poster child for what the rezoning has accomplished.
The 14-story building with 274 affordable units sits on the site of a former glue factory. Right next door is Public and Intermediate School 323, one of the investments promised as part of the deal which won Espinal’s vote. A companion building has just started construction across the street.
A few blocks away, a revitalized Cityline Park on the very eastern edge of the rezoning area also shows how the $267 million the de Blasio administration set aside for East New York has improved the neighborhood. Right next to another school, it has new basketball courts, a skate park and new bathrooms — all of which were being used on a recent weekday afternoon.
“It’s sometimes hard to find new park space so we take opportunities to actually reinvest in existing parks,” said Kerensa Wood, deputy director of City Planning’s Brooklyn office. Other parks have also gotten a makeover including Highland Park and Callahan Kelly Playground.
Espinal, who left office in 2020, remains a resident of East New York and is now in charge of the city’s film office, says as he walks around the area he sees essentially the same demographics as at the time of the rezoning.
Because the rezoning created more housing, the population of East New York grew by more than 12% between 2010 and 2020, topping both the growth rate in Brooklyn (9%) and the city as a whole (8%). The biggest increases in that decade came among those between the ages of 18 and 64.
As for gentrification, the number of seniors soared by 87%, the number of Hispanic New Yorkers grew by 17% and the number of Black New Yorkers by 11% even as Brooklyn experienced a large decline of Black residents.
As a Council member, Rafael Espinal pushed for the East New York rezoning. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Median household income increased from $43,653 in 2012 to $51,765, far less than the gains in Brooklyn or citywide.
The experience of East New York dovetails with extensive work from the Furman Center showing that new housing lessens rent increases and slows — rather than increases — gentrification.
And Espinal is no longer an exception as a progressive politician who has come to believe that increased supply is a key to solving the housing crisis and reducing flight from the city.
With the improvements in East New York, developers are now eyeing construction of market-rate buildings that have 25% to 30% of units set aside as affordable, said Sommer. A walk down Atlantic Avenue spotlights numerous commercial and former industrial sites that are available for housing.
The historic Empire State Dairy Building sat next to an affordable housing development along Atlantic Avenue in East New York, May 7, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Not everyone thinks the rezoning is a success or has benefited from it.
When the rezoning passed, Rachel Rivera called it a “sham,” speaking for the advocacy group New York Communities for Change. She says she was pushed out of the neighborhood and had to move to Brownsville when her rent-stabilized building was sold and went market rate.
“When they say rezoning, I think of gentrification,” said Rivera.
As the Mamdani administration embarks on another wave of rezonings, East New York remains a lesson on how to do them.
“When the city delivers on its promises as it did in East New York, it creates credibility for future rezonings and when it doesn’t, as has been the case so often, it undermines the ability to engage communities,” said Weisbrod.
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