Announcement Follows On-Time, Balanced, and Fiscally-Responsible $112.4 Billion Adopted Budget That Invests in Future of New York City
Historic Investment Comes as Adams Administration’s Addresses Housing Crisis with “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” Proposal to Produce as Many as 108,850 New Homes Over 15 Years
NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday, July 2, celebrated an on-time, balanced, and fiscally-responsible $112.4 billion Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Adopted Budget that addresses the city’s affordability crisis head-on and invests in the future of the city and the working-class people who make New York the greatest city in the world. The budget specifically invests $2 billion in capital funds across FY25 and FY26 to the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and New York City Housing Authority’s (NYCHA) capital budgets. In total, the Adams administration has committed a record $26 billion in housing capital in the current 10-year plan as the city faces a general housing crisis. The historic investments support the Adams administration’s “moonshot” goal of building 500,000 new homes by 2032 and its commitment to transforming NYCHA. Finally, the announcement comes as the Adams administration is advocating for passage of the “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity,” the most pro-housing zoning proposal in New York City’s history that will help build “a little more housing in every neighborhood.”
On Sunday, the City Council voted to pass the FY25 Budget. After Friday’s announcement, New Yorkers from across the city, including housing advocates, praised the budget for its wide-ranging investments that help protect public safety, rebuild the economy, and make New York City more livable.
“Despite facing unprecedented challenges, our administration and the City Council passed a collaborative budget that addresses the issues that cost New Yorkers the most, including housing,” said Mayor Adams. “Together, we are investing a historic $2 billion in capital funds to HPD and NYCHA, bringing our total investment in affordable housing to more than $26 billion — a new record level. We must throw open the doors to new solutions and housing in our city to keep New York a city for everyone. With these investments, we are going to build to build a city that is more affordable, and that provides opportunity and security for all.”
"Investing in affordable housing is an absolute priority for the future of our city," said First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright. "This additional $2 billion in funding for preserving and building affordable and public housing is a huge win for our community, and we are grateful for our partners in the City Council for recognizing how important housing is for all New Yorkers. Our administration is committed to our expansive housing agenda. With the ‘City of Yes for Housing Opportunity’ and combined with this significant investment today, we are confident in our trajectory to increase housing opportunities for all New Yorkers.”
"Making good on our promise to increase affordable housing, support cultural institutions, and invest in libraries, we have funded and restored critical services for New Yorkers thanks to responsible fiscal management,” said Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce Maria Torres-Springer. “With an additional $2 billion in funding for affordable and public housing, we are building off our legislative wins in Albany, advancing our pathbreaking ‘City of Yes’ proposal, and continuing to demonstrate how Mayor Adams is the most pro-housing mayor in our city’s history. We thank the City Council for their partnership and shared commitment to improving the lives of all New Yorkers through this year’s budget process.”
The $2 billion in capital funds across FY25 and FY26 will deliver $700 million towards NYCHA, primarily to support PACT and Public Housing Trust projects. These extensive renovation projects will result in critical upgrades and improved conditions for NYCHA homes and campuses. Recent PACT projects include updates to units, such as redone bathrooms, kitchens, and new flooring; as well as upgrades across properties, including updated heat and hot water systems, refreshed building entryways, free WiFi, and enhanced security systems. The scope of specific updates for properties are developed through engagement processes involving NYCHA residents.
The remaining $1.3 billion will support HPD programs that focus on preserving and building new affordable housing, supportive housing, and homeownership. At a time when low vacancy rates and high housing costs underscore the need for affordable housing, this investment will result in the construction of new affordable homes for lower-income households, create more supportive homes for those who can benefit from on-site supportive housing, offer the opportunity to build generational wealth through access to affordable homeownership, and fund preservation work to improve housing quality, enabling tenants to stay in their homes.
Thanks to the Adams administration’s ongoing strong fiscal management, which was bolstered by better-than-expected revenue growth, the administration overcame unprecedented challenges in this budget cycle to stabilize the city’s financial outlook and close a $7.1 billion budget gap. Now, because of steady, decisive decision making, this Adopted Budget allows the Adams administration and the City Council to reinvest in initiatives and programs that make New York City more affordable and that address the three things that cost New Yorkers the most — housing, child care, and health care — and invest billions of dollars of city resources in critical areas, including early childhood education, cultural organizations, parks, public safety, housing, health care, and more.
Through a set of carefully crafted zoning changes, City of Yes for Housing Opportunity will increase overall housing supply across the five boroughs. DCP released the draft environmental impact statement of the proposal, which estimates it could produce as many as 108,850 new homes over the next 15 years. The proposal includes lifting arbitrary and costly parking mandates for new residential construction; the Universal Affordability Preference, a bonus allowing roughly 20 percent more housing in developments, as long as the additional homes are permanently affordable at an average of 60 percent of the area median income; transit-oriented development and Town Center zoning, which would allow three-to-five story apartment buildings to be built near transit and along commercial corridors, respectively; and allowing homeowners to add accessory homes like backyard cottages.
Additional proposal components include facilitating conversion of non-residential buildings like offices to housing; re-legalizing small and shared housing models with common facilities like kitchens; allowing development on large lots known as campuses that are today limited by outdated rules from using existing development rights; and creating new zoning districts that would allow more housing, including mandatory affordable housing, that had previously been restricted by state law. City agencies are also advancing a slate of related, non-zoning efforts to guide implementation of the proposals, such as rules for HPD’s administration of the Universal Affordability Preference, as well as technical assistance and financing tools to assist homeowners who want to add secondary homes onto their properties.
In addition to City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, the Adams administration is using every tool available tool possible to address the city’s housing crisis. Mayor Adams and members of the administration successfully advocated for new tools in this year’s New York state budget that will spur the creation of urgently needed housing. These include a new tax incentive for multifamily rental construction, a tax incentive program to encourage office conversions to create more affordable units, lifting the arbitrary “floor-to-area ratio” cap that held back affordable housing production in certain high-demand areas of the city, and the ability to create a pilot program to legalize and make safe basement apartments.
Under Mayor Adams’ leadership, the city financed a record number of affordable homes in 2023 and is ahead of schedule on a 2024 State of the City commitment to advance two dozen 100-percent affordable housing projects on city-owned land this year through the “24 in ‘24” initiative. Mayor Adams has also taken steps to cut red tape and speed up the delivery of much-needed housing, including through the “Green Fast Track for Housing,” a streamlined environmental review process for qualifying small- and medium-sized housing projects; the Office Conversion Accelerator, an interagency effort to guide buildings that wish to convert through city bureaucracy; and other initiatives of the Building and Land Use Approval Streamlining Taskforce.
City of Yes for Housing Opportunity is the third of the Adams administration’s three “City of Yes” initiatives to update New York City’s zoning for a more sustainable, prosperous, and affordable city. The first — “City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality”— was adopted by the City Council last December. The second — “City of Yes for Economic Opportunity” was adopted by the City Council in June.
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