Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani, Deputy Mayor Leila Bozorg, and HPD Commissioner Dina Levy have announced the new Neighborhood Builders Fast Track, a program intended to speed affordable housing development on City-owned land across New York City. The initiative will allow HPD to pre-qualify affordable housing developers and shorten the Request for Proposals process by about eight months for certain projects, cutting the developer selection timeline by nearly half. City officials said the first three sites slated for the program are 784-800 Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, 1337 Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, and 109-43 Farmers Boulevard in Queens.
According to the administration, the three initial sites could collectively yield as many as 300 affordable homes, including about 100 affordable homeownership opportunities at the Bronx and Queens locations. HPD said it expects the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track to help advance as many as 1,000 new homes over the next two years. The agency is also issuing a Request for Qualifications due May 8 for developers seeking to pre-qualify for the program, with an emphasis on nonprofit organizations and minority- and women-owned businesses.
The new fast-track program is part of a broader effort by the Mamdani administration to accelerate housing production on public land. Officials said the initiative will work alongside the Expedited Land Use Review Procedure, or ELURP, to reduce the overall pre-development process by more than two years. The administration also pointed to its LIFT and SPEED task forces, which are reviewing City-owned sites and affordable housing production procedures in an effort to identify additional opportunities for faster project delivery.
“Our city is facing a historic housing crisis — the last thing we need to do is tie ourselves in red tape,” Mamdani said. “The Neighborhood Builders Fast Track will speed up housing development and make it faster to build on city-owned land.”
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The city needs to desperately decrease red tape and fast tract every building project.
There’s a very simple solution to producing massive amounts of housing units on the upper side the upper west side for middle income and low income residence. It’s very easy years ago development was only allowed on the avenue so what was developed luxury development so right now there’s about 50 to 100 blocks that can be developed in between the avenues currently there’s only five story buildings . Simply allow these people to get new air rights over their properties and stipulate that middle income housing will be built so if a developer comes and buys five 5 story buildings at a premium he can then put up an 80 story building in between the avenues. It’s very simple go to 80th St. go to 81st St. go to 82nd St. go to 83rd St. go to 84th St. there are no large buildings in between the avenues so change the policy and all of a sudden you’ll have an oversupply of housing. You can build from the 20’s to the 90’s at least 100 (80) story buildings of middle income apartments. My idea just created 8000 units to 50,000 units .
very tall apt buildings for middle and low income can only be built with subsidies. so $ is your idea issue.
People don’t tear down central Paris or Amsterdam to add more soulless overpriced housing. While there are definitely areas of Manhattan prime for redevelopment like surface lots and 1 story commercial, its the outer boroughs that hold the answer to much more new housing.
But cutting red tape will only reduce costs so much. The fact is that land value, materials and labor costs are much more expensive now. Developers want the most profits, and so the world will need to consider other options to make housing truly affordable to everyone.
Go ruin whatever city you came from
Manhattan should not have affordable housing. They should be in the outer Boros or the suburbs.