For the first time in decades, an effort is underway to reconsider the city’s approach to real estate development in a bid to help alleviate the housing crisis.

Mayor Eric Adams in December convened a Charter Revision Commission to consider changing the city’s governing document to refine and possibly ease the processes surrounding land use. 

The commission will move ahead toward producing proposals for voters to consider on Election Day, even with Adams’ political future uncertain and four deputy mayors set to resign — including Maria Torres-Springer, who leads the istration’s planning and housing initiatives.

“It’s an independent commission, and so the mayor’s role was appointing the of the commission, and now the commission exists,” said Alec Schierenbeck, executive director of the Charter Revision Commission.

He framed the work of the group as confronting existential issues facing New York City. 

“Housing costs are severe, and the commission is looking at ways to address the core affordability challenge facing New Yorkers,” Schierenbeck said. “The stakes are really high. What kind of city will it be? Who is it going to be for?”

The 13-member body, which is chaired by civic veteran Richard Buery, could come up with proposals to speed up the lengthy review process or cut red tape. The average land use review process in New York takes over two years and can increase construction costs up to $82,000 per apartment, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

Public hearings on the subject began this month.

The Commission’s work continues in the same mode of Adams’ successful citywide rezoning agenda, City of Yes, part of which makes it easier to build housing. Both the City of Yes and now the commission seek to nudge more housing development in neighborhoods where development has lagged in recent years.

Action to change the city charter on land use could potentially usurp the City Council’s substantial leverage over proposed projects. The current land use review process gives the Council a decisive vote, and Council have typically deferred to the member representing the project’s district, leading to many proposed developments getting rejected or withdrawn over the years.

A Council spokesperson called Adams’ commission “politically motivated.” 

“This Council has a clear record of leadership on housing, including approving major land use projects that will result in more affordable housing for New Yorkers and securing historic zoning reforms and infrastructure investments through the City for All housing plan,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The commission became a lightning rod for further controversy after Adams recently suggested he could ask the commission to look into changing New York’s sanctuary city laws through amending the charter — action that would align with his explosive pledge to help the Trump istration on immigration enforcement in exchange for dropping federal corruption charges against him. 

Buery said in a statement he “would strongly oppose” revisiting the laws, which bar city agencies from inquiring about immigration status or cooperating in many instances with federal authorities, and emphasized the commission’s independence.

“The city’s sanctuary laws already allow for cooperation with federal authorities when they have a warrant and the subject has been convicted of one of over 170-plus crimes,” Buery said. “At this time, we should be doing everything in our power to assure that our law-abiding neighbors feel ed. That’s what it means to be a New Yorker.”

Other of the commission concurred.

“I believe most commission would not want to mix charter reform into the volatility and political implications of the sanctuary city debate,” wrote Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, in an email. 

Commission Carl Weisbrod, senior advisor at HR&A Advisors, and Anita Laremont, a partner at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, also both said they ed the commission to work on questions of expanding housing and affordability, not to weaken sanctuary policies.

Koch’s Warning

Already, the Commission is starting to contend with balancing citywide interest with local priorities, as well as how the land use process s for community engagement and political dynamics. Those same questions came up decades ago.

The latest Charter Revision Commission in many ways picks up where another Charter Revision Commission left off in 1989. The 1989 commission resulted in the current land use process and gave an expanded City Council enhanced powers, including the final vote on land use matters. 

The changes were in part meant to give minority communities better representation, but opened up space for spurred a practice known as “member deference,” in which lawmakers follow the desires of the local Council member with respect to approving or rejecting development proposals.

Mayor Ed Koch had warned against the possibility of member deference in a letter to the commission, saying the new process could “give legislative legitimacy to the NIMBY reaction that now threatens to block any socially responsible land use policy,” and would “run the risk of land use paralysis.”

But the decisive Council say on land use remained in the package because key groups said it was necessary to drum up voter .

Eric Lane, the executive director of the 1989 Charter Revision Commission, said, “Member deference wasn’t intended but we couldn’t bar it because of the politics of our own referendum.”

He said then-Council Speaker Peter Vallone promised he wouldn’t allow any individual Council member to veto a project in their own district.

“That lasted through Chris Quinn,” Lane said. (Quinn declined to comment.)

Developers might not even propose projects to begin with where the local Council member appears to be hostile to development, and some have argued — including during the recent Commission public hearing — that member deference privileges local concerns over the needs of the city. 

The latest Charter Commission could attempt to curb member deference, but that would be a politically tricky move, with some Commission reluctant to limit the power of the Council because they fear that would lead to well-funded opposition to any charter reforms, according to knowledgeable sources. 

One idea floating around is to find a way to give borough presidents — who only have an advisory opinion on land use matters — a bigger role in the process, since they tend to have a broader perspective than individual Council .

Council have leveraged member deference to not only defeat projects, but to secure changes for the community — often to increase affordable housing commitments.

But the expectation that Council can stop projects or profoundly alter them can put Council under extreme and unwanted political pressure.

Case in point: this month, the Council approved a housing development on the site of the former Arrow Linen laundry company in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, that had generated substantial pushback as well as much within the mostly low-rise neighborhood.

Councilmember Shahana Hanif negotiated the proposed project from two 13-story buildings with 244 apartments, with about a quarter affordable, to two 10-story buildings without losing any apartments. She also increased the below-market-rent share to 40%.

“This was a hard project, and balancing the needs of my constituents with the needs of the city is how I prioritize what fights I take on,” Hanif said. “This is an incredible example of that, and I feel proud.”

But Hanif — who faces a Democratic primary challenge in June — had to maneuver around delicate political territory, as some of her constituents mounted a pressure campaign to reject or downsize the project, while others encouraged her to embrace it.

“It’s unfortunate that approving housing and ing housing is a heroic act instead of an ordinary and responsible part of the job I signed up for,” she said.

The potential political price is real for Council : after coming out to lost her Council seat to Republican Kristy Marmorato.

Due Process

So far, proposals floated to the Commission from pro-housing groups like Open New York, Citizens Housing and Planning Council and the Citizens Budget Commission have argued that the Council’s power — especially member deference — must be curtailed.  Other ideas include exempting certain kinds of projects from the land use process, such as affordable apartments built on city-owned land, to ensure better coordination among agencies. 

Other groups called for comprehensive planning rather than a project-by-project approach and further empowerment community boards.

Ruth Messinger, who served as a Council member and Manhattan borough president and had input into the 1989 Commission’s proposals, said she didn’t think amending the charter to target the land use process would result in faster approvals for housing.

“You could have several layers of approval, if you want them to move quickly, then the directive has to be they move quickly,” she said. “Clumsy as it may be, the back and forth on housing and land use is part of the nature of government. You don’t legislate it out of existence, unless you are looking for dictatorial power.”

Ken Fisher, a former Council member and now an attorney at Cozen O’Connor with land use clients, said it can take one to three years for the Department of City Planning to deem a land use application complete, which must happen before the public review period begins. The application process can require navigating multiple agencies.

“No single change to the charter is going to completely eliminate the bottlenecks, but most of the bottlenecks are a function of the will of the istration and the amount of resources that the istration is prepared to put into the process, and the willingness of City Hall to to push the agencies, which all suffered devastating blows during COVID,” Fisher said. “They’re still struggling to fill all the vacancies.”

City Planning acknowledged it is “finding ways to cut red tape, speed things up and make the land use application process a more -friendly experience,” in order to hasten housing production.

Additional reporting by Greg David.