City lawmakers reacted with scorn when Mayor Eric Adams announced last month that he will push to rewrite the city’s governing document to boost housing. The unexpected step surprised even some plugged-in figures in the city’s housing world, and was viewed by City Council leaders as another attempt to infringe on their power.
But as the mayor’s new Charter Revision Commission prepares for its first meeting on Tuesday, some experts view the effort as a rare opportunity to remove barriers that stand in the way of development and build on the progress made with the City of Yes plan that passed last month. Housing advocates told Crain’s that they are batting around ideas to pitch to the 14-member commission, which may ultimately choose a few to put before voters in November.
Some of the early ideas being floated involve changes to the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure: the city’s cumbersome seven-month review process for zoning changes. While short-circuiting ULURP would be politically fraught, advocates may propose exempting fully-affordable developments from the full review, or removing a rule that requires developments on city-owned land to go through ULURP.
And some advocates have their eyes on “member deference,” the City Council tradition that lets individual lawmakers unilaterally reject projects in their own districts. While the unwritten practice could not be formally ended by a charter revision, the commission could propose reducing the council’s final say on land-use matters.
Howard Slatkin, executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, laid out the possible approach: “Are there ways to temper the tendency toward member deference in the structure of the process? Is there a way for the City Planning Commission to push back on a council decision that seems insufficiently broad-minded?”
Another idea involves creating a “builder’s remedy” — a legal tool that exists in places like California, in which a developer whose project is rejected can appeal to some other body for recourse. While the council could bristle at the idea of removing their veto power over projects, advocates also see a way to get the council on board by tying the policy to the Fair Housing Framework championed by Speaker Adrienne Adams in 2023. That law would set growth targets for each neighborhood but lacks any enforcement in its current form; the new charter changes could give the framework more heft by prioritizing projects in neighborhoods where little is getting built.
“It would be inappropriate to say anything is off the table,” one person close to the charter commission told Crain’s last month.
Although Speaker Adams’ office condemned the new commission as an effort to “escalate conflict” and serve “wealthy corporate interests,” housing groups hope to ultimately win over the speaker — or at least convince council leaders that the commission is serious-minded. That dynamic may constrain the kinds of policies that get proposed, since housing advocates and commission members are mindful of maintaining relationships with lawmakers and may not support changes that the council views as unacceptable.
“The charter effort will only be successful if [City Council members are] full partners in figuring out how we can build housing faster, cheaper, better,” one member of the new commission told Crain’s.
Slatkin said the commission should consider chipping away at New York’s landmark 1989 charter overhaul. That well-intended effort to enfranchise more minority communities also gave rise to member deference by enshrining the council as the final boss of land use.
“The council can still have power. But the council has to act based on citywide imperatives as well as reflecting member priorities,” Slatkin said. “The problem is that too often the council has acted in a strictly local capacity. That is not what was intended under the charter.”
‘A middle finger to the council’
The new charter commission is inspiring some optimism thanks to its membership. Last year, Adams convened a different charter commission in the midst of a policy dispute with the City Council and stacked the group with loyalists, fueling criticism that it was a naked political ploy. Thanks to a legal precedent, the mayor’s commission blocked the council from trying to amend the charter to give itself more power to vote down the mayor’s commissioner-level appointments — a concept known as “advice and consent.”
But the new housing panel looks different: its chair, Richard Buery, is CEO of the charity Robin Hood and a former deputy mayor under Bill de Blasio. Other members include Anita Laremont and Carl Weisbrod, who both formerly led the City Planning Department; Partnership for New York City President and CEO Kathryn Wylde; Tech:NYC CEO Julie Samuels; and YMCA of Greater New York President Sharon Greenberger.
“How do we make this all work faster? How do we make sure that land use decisions are taking into account citywide need? That’s the direction that the mayor is interested in,” the person close to the commission told Crain’s.
The commission’s first meeting will be held at noon Tuesday in Lower Manhattan. After gathering public input over the course of months, the commission is expected to propose questions to put on the Nov. 4 general election ballot, although it could also select another future election date.
Before the mayor announced the housing panel, the City Council was planning to establish its own Charter Revision Commission in 2025 — but Adams’ efforts will again preempt the council from the November ballot. It was unclear what policies the council commission would have proposed, but it may have revisited the “advice and consent” issue that Mayor Adams steadfastly opposed. (State lawmakers have introduced a bill that would end the squabbling by allowing both the mayor and City Council to propose ballot questions in the same year.)
Mayor Adams’ 2024 commission managed to block the council from making its own ballot proposals. Voters approved four of the five ballot questions that came from the mayor’s commission, which consisted of largely technical changes that also added new speedbumps to the council’s legislative process.
Even some supporters of the new housing effort see it as another attempt to bigfoot the City Council — but that doesn’t mean it’s without merit.
“I do think it’s a middle finger to the council, but we’re in a housing crisis,” said one industry figure. “We need to be doing more.”
