New York City Mayor Eric Adams unveiled his administration’s three-pronged plan to “Get Stuff Built” this month as a possible answer to skeptics who had previously doubted his ability to tackle what is becoming its largest existential challenge. 

True to its moniker, the plan calls for the construction of 500,000 total units of affordable housing in all five boroughs to be completed by the year 2030. In doing so, it will effectively meet the city’s currently projected need for 560,000 units in the same time frame. New York is currently developing just 14% of that figure and will address the daunting remainder in line with its previously-announced homelessness and economic recovery initiatives. 

"If New York is to remain the city we love, we must have places for the people we love. We need more housing, and we need it as fast as we can build it," Adams said at a press conference on December 8. "The system has been broken for so long that we have come to view it as our reality. Our city declared a housing emergency five decades ago, yet, we have failed to address it with the same urgency we would any other crisis. That ends now. We can, and we must, do better. We need to add hundreds of thousands of units to address the problem, and that is exactly what we are going to do.”

The three guiding charges central to the optimistic plan are to: Build Faster, Build Everywhere, and Build Together.

The first mandate aims to shorten the complicated approval process by 50% through the removal and easement of pre-certification procedures, streamlining of Department of Buildings inspections, and pivotal exemption of small housing projects from the City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR). The next expands on the recommendations put forth in the administration’s City of Yes plan, focusing on two neighborhood-scale planning efforts in the Bronx and Brooklyn and introducing a zoning text amendment that would ease the conversion of commercial buildings and allow for additionally accepted housing types to be built using expanded floor area ratios previously reserved for senior housing. 

Finally, the last ‘Build Together’ portion offers to enhance existing partnerships with state and federal partners in order to advance a shared regional agenda that includes the prohibition of exclusionary zoning practices, legalizing the city’s controversial (and dangerous) network of basement apartment dwellings; creating new tax incentives for multi-family development; adding density, and further converting obsolete office spaces into apartment buildings while preserving the existing public housing stock through various measures.

The Department of City Planning (DCP) Director Dan Garodnick said in a press statement, “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment,” promising, “By cutting down on red tape, speeding up housing approvals, and advancing significant citywide and neighborhood plans, we will enable a quantum leap in the creation of new homes throughout the city.”

His sentiments were echoed by new acting DOB commissioner Kazimir Vilenchik, who said: "This interagency approach to streamlining the construction process in our city is an important step towards tackling the housing crisis.”

"We are in the grip of a housing crisis in New York that will not remedy itself. Our recent 'Construction Outlook' report shows we are hundreds of thousands of units behind where we should be," Carlo A. Scissura, president and CEO of New York Building Congress, closed by adding. "We must build faster. We must build better, safer, bolder, stronger – and we must build together. We applaud Mayor Adams and his administration for their bold actions to speed up processes, cut red tape, and coordinate agencies. Our members stand ready to build across the city, in all boroughs, and there can be no such thing as 'not on my block' in a 'City of Yes.’”