Adams achieved zoning and housing reforms that could help future mayors address New York City’s affordable housing shortage.
gothamist.com
Mayor Adams’ legacy? Look to the future of affordable housing in NYC.
https://gothamist.com/staff/david-brand
By
David Brand
Published Nov 5, 2025 at 6:30 a.m. ET
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
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Mayor Eric Adams took office nearly four years ago with seemingly inexhaustible energy, a mission to drive down crime and a vow to breathe life back into a city still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
What he lacked, however, was a
sweeping policy goal that could reshape the city long after he left Gracie Mansion.
The swagger he brought to local politics was soon overshadowed by criminal investigations and convictions of top City Hall officials, including Adams' own indictment on federal corruption charges. Collaboration with President Donald Trump in exchange for dismissal of those charges sealed Adams' fate as a one-term mayor.
And yet, Adams will leave office having achieved a lasting legacy despite the dysfunction and scandal that swirled around him for the better part of four years. On Tuesday, voters approved a set of far-reaching
changes to land use rules that, combined with new zoning regulations passed late last year, could make it much easier to build housing across the city.
The outcome now depends on whether the reforms lead to the construction of even more homes out of reach of most renters, or if they can be harnessed to alleviate a deep shortage of affordable apartments.
“When future generations look back at this time, the last four years of the work on housing, they might say this was the moment New York stopped managing a housing crisis and really started solving it,” said Maria Torres-Springer, who served as first deputy mayor before resigning when Adams sidled up to Trump. “We didn't just do the same things over and over again.”
In true Adams fashion, his record on housing is filled with contradictions.
While voters’ approval of the housing questions represents the latest achievement when it comes to easing development, the city’s long-lasting housing crisis has only worsened during the mayor's time in office.
Rents and home prices have continued surging to record highs across the five boroughs. So has the number of people entering homeless shelters, an increase explained in part by the spike in newly arrived migrants that dissipated later in his term.
Unaffordability became the
issue that animated the race to replace Adams and pointed to the “parallel stories” of his administration, said Samuel Stein, policy analyst at the Community Service Society.
On the one hand, Stein said, apartments in the city became more and more unaffordable and Adams opposed strategies to aid tenants, like expanding housing vouchers, capping rents in stabilized apartments and improving emergency assistance programs. But on the other, he paved the way for future housing construction, at least some of it for low- and middle-income tenants.
“Government has to do things for 10 years down the road, but you also need to be able to address people’s immediate needs even as you do stuff for the long-term,” Stein said.
City Hall spokespeople did not make Adams available for an interview for this story.
'Most pro-housing' mayor?
Adams has touted his tenure as the “most pro-housing administration in city history,” but it's those long-term efforts that came to define his housing policy. In a break from past practice, he even included nearly 200,000 “planned” or potential units in this year’s annual
production figures — a tally usually reserved for housing that has actually been approved or built.
Last year, Adams administration officials negotiated with the City Council to approve his
“City of Yes” plan, which changed zoning rules, like
lifting off-street parking requirements to make room for more housing and allowing some property owners to add an extra unit on their lots as a way to squeeze more housing into every section of the city. The changes could lead to the creation of more than 80,000 new homes, according to Department of City Planning estimates.
Less than a week after the Council approved the package, Adams empowered a charter revision commission to
propose additional rule changes meant to make it easier to build new housing. The changes would speed up the approval process for projects where all apartments are reserved for low- and middle-income renters and any new housing in neighborhoods producing little new housing compared to the rest of the city. They will also allow developers or city officials to appeal rejections by the City Council. Voters
approved those by a wide margin in a referendum on Tuesday.
New Yorkers will benefit from the groundwork the Adams administration has laid
James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York
Over the past two years, Adams and city planners pursued multiple neighborhood rezonings, like blueprints for turning
the Garment District into a new residential neighborhood, adding more housing
along the Bronx Metro-North corridor and building more in
Jamaica and
Long Island City, Queens.
At least early on in his administration, Adams used his political capital to
support specific housing proposals deeply unpopular among residents, like a plan to allow new apartment buildings in a suburban section of the Bronx along Bruckner Boulevard. Over the past few months, however, he reversed himself on two
contentious housing plans in Lower Manhattan and the Northeast Bronx.
He advocated for major changes to the
funding stream for thousands of New York City Housing Authority apartments and a
controversial plan to rebuild and demolish two adjacent public housing complexes in Chelsea.
He and his deputies worked with state leaders to change rules and create tax incentives for building owners who turned offices into condos and apartments,
fueling a conversion boom in Manhattan.
And he pushed the legalization of other types of housing, like
basement apartments and other “accessory dwelling units.” More recently, the city’s housing agency began pursuing legislation to allow new
single-room occupancy units — tiny dorm rooms with shared bathrooms and kitchens that once served as vital housing for low-income New Yorkers.
“Future elected officials and all New Yorkers will benefit from the groundwork the Adams administration has laid on housing policy issues,” said Real Estate Board of New York President James Whelan in an email to Gothamist.
Paul Williams, executive director of the economic development group Center for Public Enterprise, credited Adams for installing deputies, commissioners and creative policy experts focused on housing.
“It’s up to the future administrations to make the fullest and best use of their reforms,” Williams said.
Those reforms could come in handy. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has vowed to oversee the construction of 200,000 new homes for low- and middle-income tenants, all financed and funded by the city. He has also worked behind the scenes to quell private developers’ suspicions that his democratic socialist views would spoil their luxury construction plans.
But none of the zoning changes initiated under Adams will guarantee new housing gets built, especially for the lowest-income New Yorkers most in need.
In 10 years, New York will be more expensive.
Darius Gordon, director of the Met Council on Housing Executive Director
Citizens Housing and Planning Council Executive Director Howard Slatkin said it will all depend on Mamdani and his successors’ approaches to investment and development, along with many factors outside their direct control. Those include whether the state offers policy and tax incentives to build more affordable housing, what happens in Washington under the Trump administration, and unpredictable market forces that can make development cheaper or much more expensive.
“Great ambitious accomplishments have been achieved by this administration on housing,” Slatkin said. “But there’s no endzone dances at this stage of the game.”
Slatkin pointed to the ongoing examination of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s zoning and housing policies, which he helped craft. The changes drove production,
especially market-rate apartments in sections of the city near Manhattan, while sharply curtailing construction in many more neighborhoods. Under Adams, city planners attempted to reverse some of those limits.
Only more gentrification?
Many organizers and tenant leaders have already made up their mind on Adams’ impact on housing. They find him guilty of fueling gentrification through future luxury housing construction.
Met Council on Housing Executive Director Darius Gordon, whose nonprofit organizes tenants citywide, said the zoning changes under Adams will reshape neighborhoods and drive up home prices without protecting longtime residents, especially people of color who rent.
“In 10 years, New York will be more expensive,” Gordon said. “That’s the only thing I can promise you.”
Gordon’s organization and a range of other groups, from tenant advocates to conservative civic associations, found common cause with the City Council in opposing the ballot measures Adams initiated. They warn that the measures will limit community input and take leverage away from individual councilmembers to secure deeper affordability or local investments in new developments.
Supporters say the changes are essential for getting more housing, including income-restricted apartments, approved and built much faster.
It will take years to determine the effect Adams’ policies and reforms will have on the city, and whether they were enough to put a dent in the housing shortage.
Jessica Katz, who served as Adams’ first chief housing officer and drafted his 2022 housing plan, said the administration is allowing future leaders to address the affordability crisis. But she said the mayor leaves office with a mixed record.
“The current administration is handing the next mayor tools that will really lay the groundwork of success,” Katz said. “I want to make sure the next mayor is focused on the real dangers at NYCHA and the day-to-day experience of being homeless and low-income in New York City.”