Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC at a quarter to 12:00. Quick mention of what's coming up in 15 minutes, which is All Of It with Alison Stewart. Alison will have Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario, who has covered every major conflict of her generation. Now, a new documentary follows her as she tries to find a balance between her dangerous work life and her family. That and more coming up at noon on All Of It here on WNYC.

Now, New York City voters have spoken, and they said yes, all three of the housing-related ballot questions, Propositions 2, 3, and 4, were approved on Election Day. Together, they will change parts of the city's land use process in ways supporters say will make it easier to build affordable housing and critics said could leave local communities with less of a voice. The measures will speed up approvals for certain affordable and mixed-income projects, especially in neighborhoods that have added the least housing in recent years. They'll also create a new appeals board that can overturn City Council land use decisions.

One of the most debated changes on the ballot moving power away from City Council on this. New York is officially a City of Yes, yes on all three of those proposals to change the city charter. What actually happens now with these faster-track development rules, and for the new mayor who will have the opportunity and the responsibility to carry them out? Well, joining us is Amit Singh Bagga, who is a key supporter of these proposals as campaign director for the Yes On Affordable Housing PAC. He is also a Democratic Party strategist. Amit, hi, welcome back to WNYC.

Amit Singh Bagga: Thank you so much, Brian. Just a quick point. I've been waiting to come on your show since I was 14 years old. This is a real privilege.

Brian Lehrer: Great to have you. Listeners, to be clear, we're no longer debating these because they passed. We're going to talk about implementing them with this advocate, and we can take your questions. 212-433-WNYC 433-9692. Well, let's go right to Proposition 2. Certain affordable projects move forward without City Council approval in districts that have built the least housing in recent years. It doesn't name those districts. How quickly do you think we'll start naming the names of what neighborhoods and having things implemented there in a different way?

Amit Singh Bagga: Well, thank you, Brian. It's no surprise that these proposals passed and passed pretty overwhelmingly because I think New Yorkers from the Bronx to Brooklyn know that our housing crisis has been a house on fire. People simply cannot afford the roofs over their heads. Fully 50% of renters and homeowners are cost-burdened, meaning they're spending more than 30% of their monthly income on rent. Everybody knows that the rent is too damn high. We know that there is broad support to fix our broken housing approval system.

Specifically with respect to Proposal 2. It fast-tracks two types of housing. The first is 100% city-financed affordable housing. This is where a project is developing housing where 100% of the units are financed by the city and subway. Sometimes there are state and federal subsidies as well. These are the types of developments where you often see the most affordable housing produced, meaning the depth of affordability is as much as the city can generate. Sometimes going as low as 30% area median income.

If you're a household of three, you could be making $43,000 a year to qualify for a unit in one of these buildings. If you're a single person, that could be $34,000, which is essentially the equivalent of an annual income of minimum wage. This is really designed to meet the needs of the lowest-income New Yorkers.

The second element of Proposal 2, as you mentioned, would fast-track developments that are 25% affordable or more in the 12 community districts that have built the least amount of housing. We actually already know which community districts these are. They are largely in the outer reaches of the city. The New York Housing Conference just released their latest annual housing tracker, which they release every single year. They have broken down housing production by council district.

What we see is that there are many districts across eastern Queensland, southern Brooklyn, Staten Island, that have basically produced no housing in the last 10 years. The districts that have produced the most include districts in the south and west and central Bronx, which have produced over 7,8000 units of housing in 10 years. The least producing districts have approved fewer than 100 units in that same period of time. Really, what Proposal 2 is about is addressing this housing construction disparity.

Our housing crisis is a citywide problem, as I think all of your listeners will agree, and that demands a citywide solution. The challenge that we've had under our current system is that far too often, a small group of neighbors can weaponize the existing housing approvals process to block housing where we so desperately need it. Which has resulted in a smaller number of districts taking on the task of building housing.

Brian Lehrer: I want to go on to Proposition 4, the new appeals board, which was maybe the most controversial of the three Prop 4 Council Member Lincoln Ressler, progressive member of council, was on the show just before the election and said he could back numbers 2 and 3, but warned that number 4 could weaken the council's leverage to secure-- not nimby, he was arguing, but deeper affordability, family sized units and neighborhood improvements.

What's your response to that concern? How do you think communities can use what leverage they have left under whatever the new rules are to influence what kinds of development take place in their communities?

Amit Singh Bagga: Let's talk about what Proposal 4 does and also what it doesn't do. Proposal 4 does not take any power away from the council to negotiate the best deal they possibly can in good faith on behalf of their constituents. This includes things like the concessions and investments that Lincoln, who by the way is a personal friend and longtime colleague, talked about when he appeared on your show. When it comes to larger land use projects or rezonings, all of that still has to go through the council. What Proposal 4 is really designed to be is a scalpel, not a hammer.

In the rare instances where a larger land use project or a rezoning actually fails at the council level, and it included a significant amount of affordable housing, the appeals board can potentially reinstate that affordable housing, which had already been approved by the Department of City Planning. Functionally, what this really does is just add the borough president to the list of stakeholders with whom a developer and a community have to negotiate.

If you can get the borough president on board as part of the process at the council level, by the way, community board review is fully included in this, then you can get a deal done. What this essentially does is change the incentive structure. As I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, our current system allows small groups of neighbors to often block housing in many parts of the city because they essentially force individual council members into what I think is a Hobbes choice. Block housing or lose your seat.

We saw this most recently with Marjorie Velázquez in the Bronx a couple of years ago. She came around and demonstrated courage and leadership on getting the Bruckner Boulevard rezoning done, which included many affordable housing elements. She lost her seat as a result. That too, to Republican, by the way, that result was very different just a couple of nights ago. Really, what we're doing here is we're saying let's change the incentive structure so that the goal is really to produce as much housing as possible while extracting concessions from developers.

Let's remember, it's only corporate landlords and developers that benefit from the current status quo of very, very high rents. The city doesn't benefit from that. The lowest-income New Yorkers don't benefit from that. Really, what we're doing here is loosening the vice grip that our system has currently placed on housing production.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a call from Alex in Brooklyn, who I think voted no on number 4. Alex, you're on WNYC. Hi. What's your question for our guest?

Alex: Hi, Brian, how are you? I actually voted yes on 4, but no on 2 and 3, but that's okay. My question is about those first two. One of the concerns that I had and that I had seen raised is that expediting timelines for approvals might lead to less oversight of developers or which developers would receive these contracts. Developers with poor track records or who might be doing things to cut corners to get the bids, there will be less of an oversight through an expedited process. That was my concern. I'm just wondering if your guest has a reply.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I'll just throw in that we have another caller from the Upper West Side, also about Prop 3, saying any kind of housing could sail through, and luxury housing might have the same easy fast track as affordable housing under this Prop 3 that passed. What do you say to those two callers?

Amit Singh Bagga: Both great questions. On Prop 2, the way in which Prop 2 will function is not that it's actually cutting out a whole bunch of review. It does cut out the City Council, but any proposal still has to go through the City Planning Commission, Housing Preservation and Development, the Department of City Planning. There are multiple city agencies that are still involved in very rigorous oversight. What Proposal 2 really does is collapses the timeline of that oversight to be-- essentially all of the oversight is taking place at the same time as opposed to consecutively.

On paper, what is currently a minimum of a nine-month process becomes 90 days. With the exception of the City Council being removed from that review, all of the other reviews that are currently required are maintained. Let's remember that we used to have, actually, a cottage industry of affordable housing developers in New York. Obviously, there are still some, but there are not as many as they used to be.

Part of the reason for that is because the amount of time and the amount of money that is required to go through the current process or the process as it has been, is often several years and several million dollars even to produce affordable housing. That has resulted in a situation where it's really only corporate landlords and developers that have the resources to build housing. Let's be honest, they're only interested in building luxury housing. Part of what this system is designed to change is that incentive structure as well. I want to-- sorry, go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Well, we have about two minutes left, and there's one question that I really want to ask you, which is that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will be the first to govern under these new rules. In fact, we had a couple of callers on election day who said they voted yes on the housing proposals specifically because they trust Mamdani to use them well. How do you expect his administration to use or to be tested by these new powers? As an advocate for these now that they passed, what's your message to Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani do what?

Amit Singh Bagga: Well, I have full faith and confidence that Mayor Elect Mamdani is going to have on his housing team the brightest and best policy minds and those who have been thinking about this issue as critically and creatively as possible for a long time. I think he is going to bring to the table really important community organizations, organizations like DRUM and CAV, and New York Communities for Change, Churches United for Fair Housing, Make the Road, and others to the table in a credible way to have a conversation about what the community's needs really are.

How we can leverage the new tools in our toolbox to meet those needs? Bridging that gap is something that mayors have tried to do. Certainly, as an alum of the Bill de Blasio administration of two terms, I can tell you that was a priority for him. Because these tools did not exist, it was very difficult to have that conversation. People who we call housers, who are housing experts, have come up with a lot of potentially very good solutions to our affordable housing problem, but have not necessarily been able to co-create some of those solutions with community groups.

These tools give us the opportunity to do that. Mayor Elect Mamdani's specific approach to governing, I think is going to give us a unique opportunity to do that as well.

Brian Lehrer: All right. We will obviously be following the rollout of these new rules and opportunities when the mayor comes on the show, as well as in other ways. For today, we thank Amit Singh Bagga, campaign director for the Yes On Affordable Housing PAC and a Democratic strategist. Thanks for explaining what happens next. We really appreciate it.

Amit Singh Bagga: Thank you so much, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen produces our Daily Politics Podcast. We have interns this term, Amanda DeJesus and Miranda Santos. We had Julianna Fonda and Amber Bruce at the audio controls. Thanks for listening today, everybody. Stay tuned for All Of It.

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