The City of Yes plan would change the city’s zoning text to incentivize developers to build more units by getting rid of costly required parking minimums. That simple change — which doesn’t eliminate parking, of course, but only the requirement — has been a controversial sticking point in the plan’s ongoing public review process.
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“The requirement to provide parking sets up an incentive to build smaller buildings because as soon as you go past a certain threshold you need to provide parking, and that’s not a trivial expense,” said Slatkin.
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“You can build apartment buildings in theory, but they rarely get built because providing all that parking is extremely difficult and uneconomical,” said Slatkin. “In R5 districts, you will see fewer units than are permitted on those sites because the parking requirements are so high.”
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“A report from Citizens Housing & Planning Council estimated that from 2011 to 2020, R1-R5 districts produced 0.45 new housing units per 1,000 residents per year, behind even the suburbs in Long Island.” Read the report here.
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“The vacancy rate really is a factor in tearing families and communities apart because if someone has to move, they might not be able to find housing where they can be close to the people and things they want to be close to,” Slatkin told Streetsblog. “There are things that are complicated about growth, but the absence of growth means housing for fewer people and more displacement, period.”
Read more at Streetsblog.
