Tag Archives: Department of Housing Preservation and Development

Vacant Land in NYC

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photo by Eric Fischer

NYC Comptroller Stringer has released an Audit Report on the Development of City-Owned Vacant Lots by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Stringer has  taken some cheap shots on Mayor DeBlasio’s housing plans before (here for instance). This report amounts to another one. The Audit Findings and Conclusion read,

Our audit found that the City owns over a thousand vacant lots that could be developed under existing urban renewal programs, but many of these lots have been allowed to languish and remain undeveloped for up to 50 years or longer.  While HPD contends that over the years it has disposed of most of the lots it has been responsible for, we found that as of September 18, 2015, HPD listed 1,131 vacant lots under its jurisdiction.  Further, we found that although HPD solicits developers to build on these properties, it has not established plans with realistic time schedules to actually transfer City-owned vacant properties to developers.

Pursuant to General Municipal Law § 502, HPD has devised urban renewal plans for areas that include its vacant properties.  However, we found that the projected schedules are often pushed to a later date and sometimes no date is specified at all, notwithstanding the fact that the law requires “a proposed time schedule for the effectuation of such plan.”  Accordingly, it appears that schedules with adequate procedures to enable the transfer of City-owned properties to developers in accordance with those schedules have not been consistently formulated.  Finally, we identified an additional 340 City-owned vacant lots under the jurisdiction of other City agencies that could be considered to be used for residential construction. (2)

Even the language of this summary reveals the Comptroller’s spin. It is laughable to say that the City has allowed vacant land “to languish and remain undeveloped  for up to 50 years or longer.” The fact is that the City took ownership of much of this land during the ’60s and ’70s because it was abandoned by the owners who did not pay their property taxes. Much of the land had absolutely no value for decades.

This has certainly changed in the last 20 years or so, so it is worth evaluating whether the City should be taking more aggressive steps to get this land developed. Certainly one would think that this Mayor would want to do just that. And indeed, the Comptroller’s report shows that the Mayor has slated over half of those parcels for development over the next few years. The City’s response to the Audit indicates that many of the remaining parcels pose development challenges for residential development.

My take (having written extensively about abandoned land in NYC, here for instance) is that Stringer is making a mountain out a molehill. Every mayor from Koch through De Blasio has attempted to develop or sell much of the vacant land owned by the City. This audit fails to demonstrate that the City has a serious problem on this count.

Urban Reviewer: NYC’s Neighborhood Plans

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NYC land use geeks will want to check out the Urban Reviewer. From its website,

The City of New York has adopted over 150 master plans for our neighborhoods. You can see which areas have been affected and what those grand plans were here.

Neighborhood master plans – often called “urban renewal plans” – were adopted to get federal funding for acquiring land, relocating the people living there, demolishing the structures and making way for new public and private development. Plan adoptions started in 1949 and many plans remain active today. Development in the plan areas sometimes happened, like Lincoln Center, and sometimes didn’t, like many still-vacant lots in East New York and Bushwick. Areas were selected for renewal because they were considered blighted or obsolete. The “blight” designation always came from outside the communities that got that label – from inspectors working for the mayor’s Committee on Slum Clearance in the early period and Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) employees in the later period.

This is one of those resources that seem pretty obviously useful once someone has gone to the trouble (and great trouble I am sure it was) to construct it. One can imagine urban historians and planners making good use of it as well as community activists. It also provides a great model for other communities to follow.

Kudos to 596 Acres, Partner & Partners and SmartSign for building this resource.

Reiss on de Blasio Housing Plan

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Law360.com quoted me in Developers, Attys Embrace De Blasio’s $41B Housing Plan (behind a paywall). It reads in part,

Real estate attorneys and their developer clients are cautiously optimistic about New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s new affordable housing plan, lauding its concrete objectives while noting that regulatory and financial hurdles could stall some of the most ambitious elements.

The mayor unveiled Monday the highly anticipated plan [you can find the plan here], which presents a $41 billion investment in affordable housing. He pledged to encourage affordable housing development by breaking down existing barriers to density, from adding efficiencies to the land use review process, to making better use of subsidies and tax incentives, to changing the multiple dwellings law to allow for higher floor area ratios at residential buildings.

The multifaceted approach appeared to appeal to many in the development community, who are eager to build across the city but have been uncertain in recent months about how the mayor’s plans to create or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing would align — or compete — with their interests.

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While de Blasio’s new housing plan is mum on details, Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen said during the press conference Monday that the administration also planned to “take a hard look at where we are able to rezone or upzone to create more opportunities for affordable housing.”

During the last administration, more than 30 percent of the city underwent rezoning, opening up scores of new lots for developers but enraging many community groups and local residents who feared that new market-rate towers would bring with them skyrocketing prices and gentrification.

De Blasio said Monday, however, that while Bloomberg had changed the rules of land use in much of the city, many opportunities remain to increase density — and therefore affordable housing, with mandatory inclusionary zoning — by upzoning additional neighborhoods.

Experts say this may well be one of the most controversial aspects of the plan, though developers and their attorneys generally welcome it. For the most part, they are pleased with the administration’s direction, but the question remains as to whether the plans will be borne out in the face of opposition, said David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who blogs about commercial real estate and housing issues.

“The big debate is: Are we going to have a real commitment to increased density in parts of New York City? And if we don’t, it’s hard to imagine we can really reduce the cost of housing,” he said.