There’s over a dozen candidates vying to replace incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who has dropped out of the Democratic primary. In an effort to stand out, many mayoral candidates are showcasing their bold ideas for solving the city’s housing crisis.
Adams’ massive City of Yes for Housing Opportunity (CHO) proposal, launched in 2023, called for a citywide overhaul of all zoning districts in an effort to produce more housing in every neighborhood. It was met with some pushback from elected and communities, but most agreed that more housing needed to be built citywide and that it was a good idea.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, one of the candidates for Mayor, proposed a complementary City for All housing plan in 2024. Her plan was in response to the Mayor’s zoning proposal to address the “lack” of “affordability, infrastructure, and housing protections”. A modified version of City of Yes and City for All were approved last year.
This year’s mayoral candidates are picking up the gauntlet from the Mayor and Speaker, pitching their ideas for how to accomplish building more housing that people can afford.
“We understand that housing and childcare are the two fundamental expenses that families are dealing with,” said former State Assemblymember Michael Blake, a candidate for Mayor, at his press conference at City Hall on Thursday, April 17.
“From my family to yours, every single day. And so we want to make sure we’re focused on what we’re doing to have truly affordable housing,” he continued.
Blake’s housing plan is called the ‘Welcome Home’ initiative. The plan is to build up to 600,000 more units of housing in the city, under the Mitchell Lama program, with a portion targeted towards returning veterans, recent college graduates, and native New Yorkers. The plan also calls for an end to using credit scores on rent and homeownership applications, replacing the problematic area median income (AMI) with a Local Median Income (LMI) to better reflect a neighborhood’s true cost of living, and raising income thresholds for housing eligibility.
