City of Yes rewrote the zoning — but zoning doesn't pour concrete. Permits do. And nobody's really looked at that handoff yet. New York City Politics and Urbanism Daily, Friday. Today: the Comptroller takes apart the subway's own scorecard, the Bar Association hands the new administration a housing memo with names on it — and the DOB queue, where every zoning promise either lands or stalls. Daniel R. Garodnick, writing in New York City Planning:
New York City is facing a severe housing shortage that makes homes scarce and expensive. Outdated, restrictive, and complicated zoning laws limit opportunities to build new homes and make those that do get built more expensive. The rental vacancy rate is 1.41% – the lowest since 1968 – and more than half of renters spend over a third of their income on rent.
The illustrated City of Yes guide is back in the rundown, dated April 2024 — Alfred Twu's cartoons and all. It predates the current administration, so just to be clear, we're looking at the original sales pitch here, not anything new. Right, but the one number in there still matters: 1.41 percent vacancy, lowest since 1968. That's the whole leverage argument — when there's nothing to rent, landlords name the price. And that's the front of the pipeline. The pitch is parking mandates, ADUs, transit-oriented development — but the back end is the DOB permit queue, and it's in today's rundown for a reason. That's the thing the illustrated guide doesn't draw: zoning changed the rules, sure — but are applications actually moving at Buildings, or did we just shove the bottleneck downstream where the cartoons can't reach? The MTA says subway on-time performance is above 85 percent — so why do so many riders feel like the system is still a mess? What are we actually measuring here? Here's the distinction. On-time performance, or OTP, measures whether trains finish their runs on schedule — it's built around the train, not the rider. It doesn't answer the commuter's question: did I get to work on time? If one train gets delayed, bunches up, or gets pulled from service, thousands of people can get shoved onto the next one while the system-wide number barely budges. DiNapoli's September report says subway OTP in 2024 and into the first half of 2025 was better than in 2019, so the MTA isn't inventing the metric. But the report also says the delay causes have shifted as riders returned: planned maintenance, police and medical incidents, plus aging signals and equipment are all driving slowdowns in new patterns. NY1 also reported that OTP was over 85 percent system-wide in August, while the R train was just under 80 percent. So an average can hide a lot of pain on one corridor. The Comptroller's point is that a train-based dashboard can look okay while the platform feels worse. So is the MTA being deliberately misleading, or is this just the wrong measuring stick? More the wrong measuring stick. But DiNapoli's also pushing the MTA to show how its Subway Action Plan money is aimed at the root causes, instead of just defending the headline number. Watch whether the MTA starts publishing rider-weighted delay data alongside OTP, and whether its capital spending on signals and rolling stock — the problem areas the report flags as growing — actually changes those delay causes. Here's New York City Bar Association:
The Housing and Urban Development Committee (Farhana Choudhry and Julia Solo, Co-Chairs) issued a set of policy recommendations to the new mayoral administration to address the City’s housing affordability crisis. The memo emphasizes the urgency of addressing rising housing costs, financial distress in affordable and rent-stabilized buildings, and administrative barriers that slow housing production and access.
Okay, here's a document with names on it. Farhana Choudhry and Julia Solo, co-chairs of the City Bar's housing committee, and recommendation number one is reform how affordability gets defined — drop the reliance on HUD's Area Median Income. That's the exact AMI question I've been chewing on all week, now in a formal memo to the new administration. And note who “the new mayoral administration” means here — Mamdani's team. This is going to a live administration, right now. Right, so this stops being abstract. Choudhry and Solo are on record saying the unit of measurement is broken. It's the subway fight all over again — measuring trains when we should've measured riders. Now the housing bar is saying we use a regional median when we should be looking at what New Yorkers actually pay in rent. Same disease across three agencies this week. The metric is built for the program, not for the person standing on the platform or signing the lease. The Comptroller called it out on subways this morning; the City Bar is doing the same on housing. But watch what the memo makes concrete versus what it just floats. Recommendation two is a government-sponsored insurance option, because premiums are quietly threatening rent-stabilized stock. That's how a building disappears without a single zoning change. The illustrated guide we walked through earlier is all about new production; this is the stuff that bleeds out the back door while nobody's looking. And recommendation four is the unsexy one — staffing and technology at the housing agencies to kill delays. After a week of zoning-reform enthusiasm, somebody finally pointed at the permit queue. A memo doesn't spend money, Sarah. We've got authors, we've got the ask — now show me which one this administration actually writes a check for. Deirdre A. Carson, writing in Greenberg Traurig LLP:
New zoning amendment allows conversion of most non-residential buildings built before 1991 to housing across New York City, with fewer restrictions than before. New Universal Affordability Preference (UAP) program replaces the previous voluntary inclusionary housing system, potentially allowing more floor area for projects that include affordable housing.
Here's my favorite tell on this whole City of Yes file — the document driving the rundown today is a Greenberg Traurig client alert. Dated January 27, 2025. A law firm memo from last winter — Carson, Segal, the land-use bench — explaining the rules to the people who build buildings. And that's the audience that matters. When the real estate bar writes the explainer, you know which way the money's already leaning. They're not reading the illustrated guide with the cute cartoons — they're reading this. The guide we hit earlier today is the public-facing version. This is the version that tells a developer exactly which envelope changes they can monetize. Same reform, two very different readers. So the zoning passed. I keep coming back to this: do the applications actually move now, or does the bottleneck just slide downstream to the permit office? Rezoning the lot doesn't pour the foundation. Hold that thought. We've got the DOB applications page coming up — that's exactly where this lands or stalls. Here's City of New York:
Before any construction project begins in New York City, an application must be submitted for review by DOB to make sure the plans are in compliance with the Building Code. The majority of construction requires a Department of Buildings permit.
After a week of City of Yes enthusiasm — the illustrated guide, the zoning rule changes — here's the unglamorous back end: DOB's job application portal. Every one of those upzonings becomes a filing in this queue. Right, and the page itself tells you where the bodies are. They're still migrating from paper to DOB NOW — you have to check multiple datasets to see the full list of job applications. That's the system that's supposed to absorb a zoning surge. SPEED promised to cut eight months out of predevelopment delay. But permits don't issue themselves. If all the apartments City of Yes is supposed to generate have to funnel through a half-digitized filing process, the bottleneck just moves from the zoning code to this office. And nobody's tracking that number. We argued all week about who wins on the rezoning — owners, builders, which income bands. The actual win is a certificate of occupancy. If the construction dashboard shows filings up but certificates of occupancy flat, the reform stalled right here, and the press release never mentions it. If this briefing helps you keep up with New York City politics and urban life, subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you have a moment, leave a review — it really does help other people find the show.
You'll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, take a minute to read it in full. That's New York City Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.