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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We'll talk in just a minute to Maria Torres-Springer, Deputy Mayor of New York City for Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce. Just back, as I understand it, from a breakfast event where she presented a major new rezoning reform proposal from the Adams administration to enable a lot more affordable housing to be built all over New York City. This will affect many neighborhoods, so get ready to listen up. Many of you know by now the two-point law of affordable housing politics that we've talked about a lot on the show. Point one, everyone wants a lot more affordable housing. Point two, just don't build any near me. Before we bring on the deputy mayor, here's Mayor Adams on what he wants from city council and Albany this year.

Mayor Adams: This year, we're clear what we've learned, we need housing. We have to build more, and if we don't build more, the mayor didn't fail, we failed the people of the city, because the people who love the city, all agree we need to build more housing.

Brian Lehrer: At least on paper, he and Governor Hochul agree.

Governor Hochul: I know it's a good start, but it's not enough to fix our affordability crisis. Let's be honest with New Yorkers, the only thing that will solve this problem is building hundreds and hundreds of thousands of homes.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Governor Hochul from her State of the State in January. It's hard enough just to build in the city, then you bring the suburbs into it, and you get things like this from Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who was on this show on the topic last year.

Bruce Blakeman: I think we just have to be smart in the way that we develop those communities and realize that whatever we do we can't kill the suburban character of Nassau County.

Brian Lehrer: The suburban character of Nassau County, which translates to, "Not anywhere near my private house backyard," and why Blakeman in those very nice words opposed Hochul's affordable housing program from last year. Now we welcome Maria Torres-Springer, Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce. Deputy Mayor, welcome back to WNYC.

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: Good morning, Brian. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Did you just unveil something new this morning on behalf of the mayor?

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: We did. As your listeners heard just a minute ago, the mayor has been really clear, Brian, that we need housing relief for New Yorkers, and we need it now. The city, we have been energized from the beginning of this administration to do everything within our power. This morning at the Albany breakfast, I unveiled the latest tool that is part of our very ambitious City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan, where I mentioned that once Albany lifts something called the FAR cap, it's this artificial cap that prevents us from building at greater densities in too many places in the city, we will be ready, because we will be creating new residential districts.

We will be allowing higher densities, and we'll be requiring affordable housing in those new projects. We stand at the ready as we have from the very beginning, because solving our housing crisis, Brian, is not just the work of local government. We really do need many partners in this mission, Albany, the federal government, but we're very optimistic that we're going to get it done because that's what New Yorkers deserve.

Brian Lehrer: I'll ask you about both the state government and the federal government. I'm surprised to hear housing come up, and even some new housing financial incentives from the Biden administration in his State of the Union address. I know they're on budget year deadline in Albany, and this is still very much in play, and they can't figure out what to put through yet. I'm going to ask what you and Mayor Adams priorities on what you're pushing Albany forth last minute. First on this new city-level plan that you introduced today. Could you do a little civics before we do the politics? Can you remind people what zoning is and what it's supposed to be for?

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: Absolutely. What's been important to us, Brian, is that we look at something like zoning, which sets the rules for where we build and how we build, that that doesn't become a tool that erodes progress on housing. Here's the reality, we haven't really updated our zoning code since 1961. Back then, several decades ago, we created zoning reforms, and to be honest with ourselves, many of them were created to perpetuate segregation.

Fast forward several decades later, with the midst of a housing crisis that is incredibly dire, we have a vacancy rate of 1.4%, which is the lowest that it has been in decades, we have to look at something like zoning and make sure that it doesn't create barriers to build housing. That's exactly what we're doing through our City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, which will go into public review this year. It is proposing to build a little bit more housing in every neighborhood of our city. When we do that, we know that the collective impact is going to be huge. What does it include, for instance? It includes listing arbitrary and costly parking mandates for new residential construction.

It provides a bonus, for example, for allowing roughly 20% more housing in development, more transit-oriented development, town center types of projects. Allowing three to five-story apartment buildings to be built in your transit and along commercial corridors. Allowing homeowners to add accessory homes like backyard cottages. We think, Brian, these are common sense reform, but collectively, they represent the most pro-housing set of changes to zoning in our history, so that zoning doesn't become a tool to fossilize neighborhoods, but really a tool to drive the type of progress that moves the needle for too many New Yorkers are facing housing insecurity today.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners in New York City, are you ready to be rezoned in the ways that the deputy mayor was just describing to accommodate more housing? Yes, no, mixed, or ask the deputy mayor a question. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text for New York City Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce, Maria Torres-Springer, just back from a breakfast event where she presented this major new rezoning reform proposal from the Adams administration. Could you talk a little more about the history that you referred to of a major rezoning in 1961 that was designed to perpetuate segregation? Can you describe that a little bit more and how it perpetuated segregation?

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: Absolutely. In that year, 1961, we enacted a sweeping overhaul of zoning at that time, and it limited growth, Brian, in favor of really suburban car-dependent vision for our city. It made it difficult to build in too many neighborhoods of our city. That promoted the type of racial segregation, the scars of which we still see across too many neighborhoods in the five boroughs.

I also want to be clear that this isn't just a choice from several decades ago. One of the other things that I revealed this morning is that some of the policies that are in our way, they are of a much more recent vintage. The Department of City Planning just released an analysis of the 15 city-enacted rezonings from 2009. What it shows us is that we downzoned too many neighborhoods, and in too many neighborhoods, that type of downzoning did not, of course, result in any housing production.

In other words, as recently as 15 years ago, as the demand to live in our city continued to rise, we did the opposite of what we should have. We made it harder to build. Those were choices we made in 1961, choices we made 15 years ago. Here's the good news, because those were choices we made, today we can unmake them, and that's exactly what Mayor Adams has tasked us with doing through City of Yes for Housing Opportunity.

I want to be clear, because I know change is hard, Brian, and many, I'm sure, on your show they have questions and concerns about what it means. What we're doing through the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity is acknowledging some of those concerns, ensuring that we're not trying to advance dramatic changes in any particular neighborhood, but that we are calling on every neighborhood to do their part.

It's not just to do their part for Nameless, Faceless New Yorkers. It's to do their part for people that they care about, because the housing crisis, too many people are suffering. It includes people's children. Where are they going to live when come home from college? It includes our elders. How are they going to age in place with dignity? This is an issue that affects every New Yorker, and it's one that I'm really hoping, and I do feel optimistic that we are going to rise above our routine politics and do what is right to finally bend the curve on this crisis that we've been facing for too long.

Brian Lehrer: Our board is jammed with New Yorkers who want to talk about this. Jim and Brooklyn, hang on one second. You're going to be first, and I think you're going to hear a little pushback from Jim, Deputy Mayo. You referenced 2009, and funny enough, I was going to ask you about that era anyway, if not that particular year. That was when Mayor Bloomberg was in office. 2009 happened to be the year that he blew up the term limits law so he could serve 12 years instead of eight. He did a lot of rezoning in his day. Some people liked it, some people didn't.

Here we are again, not that many years later doing it again. I think he once answered a question that I asked him of what he thought the biggest thing that he did for the city was in the early part of his administration. He said rezoning. You just described it as limiting housing construction. As I remember it, anyway, he thought he was acting in pursuit of the same kind of affordable housing goals that you and Mayor or Adams are, because, of course, it was a problem then too. Can you describe that bit of history in a little more detail, Bloomberg rezoning, and what you think his administration got right and got wrong?

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: Of course. Now, I've worked for the last three mayors, Brian, and each one has an abiding love for the city. Each had their own plans for how to balance the equation in favor of our hardworking families. The facts show us that where we down zoned, just in that year when we looked at the rezonings that happened, the seven rezonings, for example, in low density districts that happened that year, five saw a reduction in housing, and housing built after the rezoning. There were also a number of upzonings, of course, in that year and in subsequent years. Those were typically in neighborhoods that were more likely to be Black or lower income.

What we didn't have at that time was the tool of mandatory inclusionary housing to ensure that new development delivered permanent affordability. We now have this tool that came during the De Blasio administration. We have the opportunity, this administration, is not just look at that data, but really take those lessons, what worked and what didn't work, and make sure that we're advancing the right balance of policies that really get at the root of a housing crisis. That growth is that we simply have not built enough homes. We have added 800,000 new jobs in the last decade, only 200,000 homes.

Those may seem like numbers, but they have a really large human cost of displacement, of rising rents, of predatory behavior on behalf of landlords, who often, therefore, have too much power. It does us no good to point fingers or to handle[unintelligible 00:14:08]. Our job now, we've been squarely focused on it under the mayor's leadership, is to take action, advance the right policy, and hopefully, reach the moonshot goal that the mayor set just a year ago of 500,000 new homes over the course of the next decade.

Brian Lehrer: Jim in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer. Hi, Jim.

Jim: Hi, Brian. Hi, Maria. We have a very specific example. I live at Avenue H between 7th and 8th. Currently, that corridor of Avenue H is very highly-dense with a lot of legacy apartment buildings. There is now a proposal to change the one block that is zone commercial two story to make it residential, and the inclusion-- Of course, in order to get the change, you have to include affordable housing in it. That is creating a building that would be 95-feet-tall in essentially what is the last bit of single family homes, and will create an incredible amount of density.

I think developers are using the hunger for affordable housing, and they're going through the EULA process and all of that, to build these incredibly outsized buildings. The people in the neighborhood have tried to voice their opposition, but we don't know the system. We don't know this. The people have hired lawyers and architects who know how to work the system. A block away, it's already zoned for R-7. There are many locations that could support buildings of a proper size.

Now we're taking light and air and incredible density, the parking is insufficient, and forcing it down the necks of residents who can't really support this this type of building. We're getting no support from anyone. It's just getting rubber stamped as it's going through the process. We have no way of even saying if all the studies that they say they've done are really right or not. We have a situation where literally a block away, there are multiple lots that are available for development without rezoning, but this particular one is being used because it benefits the current owner.

Brian Lehrer: Jim, hang on. You put a lot out there. Let me get your response. Deputy Mayor, talk to Jim.

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: Jim, thank you for laying out your questions and concerns. What you described, we certainly hear on different projects that go through the very formal public review process. That is where these types of questions and concerns are aired in a public way and they should be answered. I also have to make sure that you, and really all of the listeners look at this project in the context of a housing crisis in our city that has never been so dire. When I said that we have a 1.4% vacancy rate, that delivers strain for so many New Yorkers. What that means is for those apartments, for example, that are below 1,100, so our most affordable apartments, what the vacancy rate is there? It's basically zero. That problem--

Brian Lehrer: I heard the mayor talking about that just the other day, right?

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: For the people who need the affordable housing the most, the vacancy rate rate is approximately zero.

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: That's right. Every project, of course, has to go through the right review. When you say there are outsize impacts to the neighborhood, and light and air, those are important questions. What is also outsized is the insecurity that too many New Yorkers feel, including the more than 100,000 New Yorkers who are going to sleep in a shelter tonight. These are tough choices, but our ability as a city to engage in them with the type of compassion and care, not just for those New Yorkers who are sleeping in shelters, but for many of our neighbors, and our neighbor's children and our neighbor's parents, all of whom feel squeezed across the five boroughs, that is incredibly important. Otherwise, we're going to continue to be entrenched in the housing crisis that has for too long, made too many New Yorkers suffer.

Brian Lehrer: Jim, I hope that answers your question. This is WNYC, FMHDNAM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3, Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Tom River. We are a New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming at wnyc.org talking about Mayor Adams new rezoning reform proposals citywide with the Deputy Mayor, Maria Torres-Springer, who just laid it out at a breakfast event this morning. Deputy mayor, I once read that a reason a city like Houston doesn't have the housing shortage that we do is that they have very little zoning, and that that might make parts of that city ugly or really mixed use between housing and commercial or industrial, but developers' hands aren't tied in the same way, so supply comes closer to meeting demand. Is there any truth to that as far as you know?

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: I do believe that zoning can be a tool for good. Having unfettered development would have unintended consequences. There are certainly cities we can look to, Brian, who have made good choices and they are, therefore, today benefiting from that. Let's take an example, Minneapolis. The rents in Minneapolis increased by just 1% between 2017 and 2022, and you know why?

It's because Minneapolis enacted reforms including zoning changes that allowed the housing stock to grow by 12% over that same period, and you see that in a few other cities. Study after study really shows that increasing the supply of housing lowers the rent. I think there's simply no ambiguity in the empirical literature about the need to boost supply to meet demand, and we do that by reforming zoning.

We do that by ensuring there are enough resources in order to build publicly financed affordable housing. We also need the help of Albany and the federal government. That's why we're at a very critical moment, both in terms of action that's needed from Albany, and an opportunity that we have if Congress passes a tax package. This isn't a matter of "We can figure it out. We'll do it next year, or we have to create new ideas or plans." They are literally at our fingertips, and our hope is that we have partners at all of these levels of government, the city council, Albany lawmakers, and Congress, and together we will be able to bend the curve on the crisis.

Brian Lehrer: Ann, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Deputy Mayor Torres-Springer. Hi, Anne.

Anne: Hi. Good morning. Thank you, Deputy Mayor, for taking these calls. First, I do want to say I'm fully on board with the City of Yes and all the things that are involved. I'm really aware of many of those things. I represent a group of manufacturers all based here in the city manufacturing. The concern on manufacturing areas being rezoned as mixed-use is what happens when uneducated residents move into an area with manufacturing. I'm just asking, will that be looked at with extreme care to ensure that existing manufacturers aren't suddenly moved out of the few areas we have left in the city for that?

Brian Lehrer: Deputy mayor?

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: Thank you, Anne, for that question. I'm really happy to hear that you are in support of City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. I hope you will make your voice heard as this initiative moves through the public process and the city council votes on it by the fall of this year. We have to, of course, given the number of jobs in our manufacturing sector, look at any policy change with the type of care, and the type of rigor that is needed.

In fact, I hope you've kept tabs on our other City of Yes, citywide tax amendment, the City of Yes for Economic Opportunity that is a little bit further ahead than housing opportunity that actually should make its way to the city council in just a few weeks. There, we took great pains to make sure that we were thinking about our industrial areas and our manufacturing areas with a lot of nuance, with an eye towards really preserving core areas and making sure that they continue to be strong, not just for manufacturers, but for the employees who rely on those good paying jobs.

I hope that you will see that, not just in City of Yes for Economic Opportunity, but in a number of other investments that we're making, primarily through the Economic Development Corporation and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where we know that we have to stay committed to industrial and manufacturing because they are critical for the working of our city and critical for the workers who are employed by those sectors.

Brian Lehrer: Anne, thank you for your call. I hope that answered your question. I mentioned Houston before, you mentioned Minneapolis. There was an article in The Atlantic just the other day by Derek Thompson that talked about Austin. He said Texas more generally, but Austin in particular, defying the narrative that skyrocketing housing costs are a problem from hell as he writes that people just have to accept.

He writes, "In response to rent increases, the Texas capital experimented with the uncommon strategy of actually building enough homes for people to live in. This year, Austin is expected to add more apartment units as a share of its existing inventory than any other city in the country. Austin is adding homes more than twice as fast as the national average and nearly nine times faster than San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, yes, nine times faster and Austin rents have come down 7% in the past year."

Have you looked at Austin? Is there any lesson there? You're talking about, and the governor is talking about trying to build a lot more housing, and there's all this pushback. We heard one example of it on the phones already today. I could take 12 more calls like that if we had the time. Somehow, Austin got it done, a building boom, and I wonder if there's a lesson for us, or if the cities are just too different.

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: There's certainly a lesson for us, Brian, in every city, whether it's in the US or across the globe. Tokyo, for instance, has done some really interesting things. There's a lesson for us here. For me, it points to two things. The housing crisis, and therefore, the solving of the housing crisis. It's a bipartisan issue, because the strain affects blue states and red states and purple states. That to me, that creates a real opportunity.

Now, every system, of course, is different. The title of my speech earlier today is We Need to Do Everything Everywhere All at Once. If you haven't seen that movie, it's-- how would I describe it? It's a phenomenally deranged sci-fi epic, which might also incidentally be how I describe this country, the state, the city's system for building new homes. We have to overcome that, Brian. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying we do that by ignoring the questions and the concerns.

I do think that it is time to ask New Yorkers to do more, to have an openness to doing things differently, to have a willingness to embrace change, the courage to rise above our routine politics, because it's going to take all of that so that we don't look at these-- These are great cities, but come on, Austin, Minneapolis, Houston, New York, can do better. If there's something that I am 100% convinced of, something that is an undeniable truth, is that when New York City chooses to address an issue, we have an undefeated record of doing that. This is just our time, and I think it'll be the defining legacy, the defining issue of our generation, our ability to build new homes in order to meet the crisis.

Brian Lehrer: Housing in America as a sci-fi epic. I think that's the quote of the week on the show. It's Thursday already, so you're not going to have much competition. Very briefly before you go, let me touch on the roles of government levels outside the city, because as you know, and as many of our listeners know, we are in the home stretch of finalizing this year's New York state budget in Albany.

The new fiscal year begins on Monday. Last year, Governor Hochul tried to get her very ambitious housing construction program through, which would've required new development in lots of parts of the metro area as well as elsewhere in the state, and she couldn't get it through the legislature. There was too much opposition, mostly from the suburbs. What is your number one priority from Albany? Because they still don't have agreement on a housing bill from everything I've seen.

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: I just spent the last two days, Brian, in Albany, and I was very encouraged that very deep and substantive conversations and negotiation with all the stakeholders are happening on a housing package. This mayor, we've been very clear from the beginning of session, we've been a broken record. He gave us a mandate to get a housing deal done, which includes a new tax incentive to boost supply, an incentive to ensure that as offices convert, they have affordable, a way to legalize and protect basements, and the lifting of this artificial cap on density.

We continue to advocate for those policies as part of a larger deal. Brian, we're at the two-yard line of Albany action, which is a lifetime, and in terms of Albany, but I am encouraged that our leaders who more than understand what is at stake here for New Yorkers, that they're going to call the right play, that they're going to score big for New Yorkers, and that they're not going to fumble the ball.

That is both my hope, and we're doing everything that we can at the city level to make our priorities clear to make sure that voices that need to be part of these negotiations are not forgotten. The voices of New Yorkers, community-based organizations, houses of worship, MWBE developers. It's a broad coalition, Brian, of people and organizations who are saying it's now time to act. It is time to make sure we deliver for New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: With the football analogy that you used, it can often feel like we're on our own two-yard line when it comes to housing, but hopefully, you're at the other guy's two-yard line, at least in Albany with the budget year starting on Monday. Last question, I mentioned, and you mentioned the federal government earlier. President Biden has proposed a $400 tax credit, I guess it is, to help people who are buying homes to afford mortgages because of the relatively high-interest rates. Are they doing anything for renters, or are they proposing anything, or are you for Washington, and then we're out of time?

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: What happens in Washington, obviously, is critically important for New York. I was very happy in the State of the Union to hear the president, not just talk about what might be helpful for homeowners, but really a lot of new programs that are in his proposed budget at the time for renters. Here's another important opportunity that is live. There is a tax package right now that if Congress votes on it, it could unlock nearly 1.4 billion more in low-income housing tax credit equity. It's the workhorse, really, for developing more affordable housing across the country.

There are two reforms that are critically important, that if we get them through this tax package, are going to help us deliver an additional 4,000 or so in any given year homes in our city. Brian, the demand is there, the land is there, the will is there. This tax package actually has extraordinary bipartisan support having passed the house at a 357 to 70 vote. The Senate needs to act. We have really amazing leaders there, of course, and we hope that we get to the finish line there, because it would be a major investment in housing in New York.

Brian Lehrer: Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, thank you so much for joining us and laying all this out from you and the mayor's new proposal this morning. Thanks a lot.

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer: Thank you, Brian.

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