Adams orders NYC agencies to find any available sites to build affordable housing

NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – Mayor Eric Adams signed an executive order on Wednesday directing city agencies to investigate whether they have land available for potential housing development.

This order comes as New York City faces a generational affordable housing crisis, with a rental vacancy rate of just 1.4 percent, according to city data.

“If there’s any land within the city’s control that has even the remotest potential to develop affordable housing, our administration will take action,” Adams said.

The executive order supports the Adams administration’s ambitious goal of building 500,000 new homes by 2032.

“To solve a generational affordable housing crisis, we must bring new, innovative ideas to the table and activate all city agencies, whether they are directly involved in creating housing or not, to help deliver for New Yorkers,” Adams said. “Today’s executive order is one of the many ways we will continue to exhaust every option to meet this crisis head-on and fulfill our pledge of building 500,000 new housing units by 2032.”

In 2024, Adams and his administration advocated for new tools in the New York state budget to spur the creation of urgently needed housing. These include a tax incentive for multifamily rental construction, a program to encourage office conversions to create more affordable units, lifting the “floor-to-area ratio” cap that has restricted affordable housing production in high-demand areas, and the ability to create a pilot program to legalize and make safe basement apartments.

The Legal Aid Society called the executive order a “step in the right direction” and expressed hope that it is “part of a wider, multi-faceted plan to tackle the City’s complex and ongoing housing crisis.”