Build, Baby, Build: Adams Mobilizes City Land For Massive Housing Push

NEW YORK CITY – Live next to a city-owned space? Prepare for construction. A number of large city agencies will now be required to identify city-owned and controlled land for potential housing development, per a new executive order issued by Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday.

The order includes the NYPD, FDNY, Parks Department, NYC Health, the New York City Housing Authority, the New York Public Library, the Department of Education, and more.

Simply put, the order represents an attempt to expedite the transformation of what you might think of as low-hanging fruit – or locations that the city controls and therefore may develop more efficiently – into housing.

“New York City is experiencing a housing shortage that must be addressed through the production of additional housing at all levels of affordability,” the order reads, citing a 1.4% vacancy rate that it notes “is the lowest this measure has been since 1968.”

Patch has asked the Mayor’s Office how it interprets “all levels of affordability.”

Any City-Owned Site

There were roughly 100 vacant city-owned sites in Manhattan when then Comptroller Scott Stringer undertook an audit of these properties in 2016. The vast majority of these spaces – 92% – had been left vacant by the city for more than 20 years.

But the new executive order encompasses far more than vacant parcels, and requires agencies to review all city-owned and controlled land. The goal is apparently to find any available space that could potentially be used to build housing, whether it's currently in use or not.

The Eliza

A site emblematic of the kind of development the city envisions this order facilitating more of is the Eliza, in Inwood.

Built atop a newly constructed library at 4790 Broadway – previously the Inwood Library and a parking lot – the Eliza is a 12-floor development that contains 173 apartments, plus one unit for a building super.

How affordable is it? According to housing lottery materials, about half of the Eliza’s units were set aside for those whose incomes are approximately 60% of the area median income (AMI), or between $74,580 and $115,560, depending on family size. Another chunk of apartments were open only to those whose incomes were between 30-50% of AMI, and approximately 15% of units were set aside for the formerly unhoused. Applications closed in 2023.

Building the Eliza wasn’t easy, however, and it didn’t happen quickly: years were spent on community outreach, and the development relied on a controversial rezoning of Inwood that was approved despite significant community opposition in 2018.

The demand for affordable housing, however, is clear, and as many as 70,000 families applied for the building’s 173 units.

500,000 New Homes?

Where will Mayor Adams build 500,000 new homes? Even a massive recent rezoning nearby in the Bronx that will yield 7,000 new homes – 1,700 of them to be permanently offered at below-market rates – is barely a drop in the bucket.

Back in Manhattan, the city may soon succeed in building 123 units of affordable housing in city-owned space currently occupied by the Elizabeth Street Garden, but only after a contentious, decade-long battle.

The new executive order is thematically aligned with Adams’ “City of Yes,” the mayor’s plan to generate “a little more housing in every neighborhood,” which is expected to produce between 58,000 and 109,000 new homes over 15 years.

In a statement, a City Hall spokesperson emphasized the administration's "commitment" to fulfilling its 500,000-home pledge.

Today’s executive order represents our administration’s commitment to New Yorkers to examine, review, and assess any and all potential land for housing in our city. From city owned garages to working with our libraries, like at the Eliza in Inwood, we are looking to build both state-of-the-art new library branches and affordable housing to bring new innovative ideas to the table to help deliver for New Yorkers. This executive order is one of the many ways we will continue to exhaust every option to meet this crisis head on and fulfill our pledge of building 500,000 new housing units by 2032.

Is there a space in your neighborhood that you believe should be developed into housing? Or are you concerned about the mayor’s plans? Email michael.mcdowell@patch.com.