Council Passes Flurry of Bills in Last Meeting, And What Else Happened This Week In Housing

At the City Council’s last stated meeting of 2025, lawmakers passed bills requiring city-funded housing projects to include a certain number of family-sized apartments and deeply affordable units—against opposition from the mayor’s office, which says the new rules will stymie development.

The City Council held its last meeting of 2025 on Thursday where lawmakers passed a flurry of bills, including a dozen housing-related measures that aim to overhaul the controversial tax lien sale, ensure tenants have access to air conditioning in hot weather, and give nonprofits an early shot to buy troubled buildings.

Several pieces of new legislation that create mandates for city-funded housing—requiring the production of more family-sized apartments and deeply affordable units, among other changes—have drawn the ire (and potential veto) of outgoing Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, which says they’ll stymie development.

Affordable housing developers issued similar warnings about two of the bills, and Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani also “has concerns” about the measures and how they could impact his ability to carry out his campaign pledge to build 200,000 new “truly affordable” apartments, a spokesperson told the Times.

But Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is term-limited this year and presided over her final session Thursday night, said the bills are “are meant to ensure that the city’s public dollars are used wisely to actually create housing that is affordable and can support working families.”

“Our city is experiencing an exodus of working class and middle-income families due to the affordability crisis,” she said.

The dispute is the latest between Mayor Adams and the current Council over housing policy. The two sides have previously sparred over expanding the CityFHEPS voucher program and changes to the land use review process. In November, New York City voters passed a slate of ballot measures—proposed by a mayoral-convened Charter Revision Commission—that curtailed some of the Council’s powers to approve and shape development projects.

The housing-related bills passed by lawmakers Thursday include:

• Intro. 958-A requires that at least 4 percent of all newly constructed affordable units subsidized by the city be for homeownership opportunities, what officials say will double the current rate.
• Intro. 1433-A requires 25 percent of city-financed rental apartments be two-bedroom units and 15 percent be three-bedroom units starting in July 2027, an effort to address a lack of affordable housing for larger families.
• Intro. 1443-A requires at least half of all city-financed rentals starting in July 2027 be set aside for very low-income households (equivalent currently to four-person families earning between $48,600 to $81,000 per year) and at least 30 percent for extremely low-income households (below $48,600 a year for a four-person family).
• Intro. 910-B sets higher wage standards for construction workers on certain city-funded housing projects.

A spokesman for Mayor Adams called the bills “irresponsible” and said City Hall officials are “reviewing our next steps” in terms of a potential veto. They point to an estimate from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development which said the four measures would cost the city an additional $600 million a year—about one-third of the agency’s annual budget—or without the extra funding, result in 3,275 fewer new apartments.

“The Council passed a suite of housing bills today that will add red tape, drive up rents, and deplete critical city resources at a time when our housing budget faces significant threats from the federal government,” spokesman Fabien Levy said. “These short-sighted bills will not only worsen the affordability crisis, but will also sandbag the incoming mayor and speaker.”

Should the mayor veto any pieces of new legislation, the Council has the option to vote to override him—a decision that will likely fall to the body’s new Speaker Julie Menin, who will take over the post in the new year, and the 2026 members of the Council.

Here’s what else happened in housing this week—

ICYMI, from City Limits:

• Learn more about the revised version of the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act that the Council also adopted Thursday, five years after it was first proposed. The bill will give certain nonprofits—and for-profits, if they team up with a nonprofit—an early shot to bid on certain residential properties that go up for sale.
• The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) says it made progress this year in chipping away at its multibillion dollar repair backlog through two—at times, controversial—initiatives that convert properties to the federal Section 8 program as means to drum up new funds.
• A transgender former shelter resident is suing the city, saying it failed to place her in a homeless shelter for women or transgender people, putting her at risk of assault on multiple occasions. Advocates say she is not alone.

ICYMI, from other local newsrooms:

• Mayor Eric Adams is expected to appoint four new members to the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, an effort to block Mayor-elect Mamdani from delivering on his promised rent freeze for stabilized apartments, according to Gothamist. Tenant advocates have vowed to protest any new appointees, as City Limits previously reported.
• Mamdani named Leila Bozorg, the city’s former housing czar under Mayor Adams, as his deputy mayor for housing and planning, the New York Times reports.
• New York State approved all three of the remaining bids for downstate casinos, paving the way for two projects in Queens and another in the Bronx, according to The City.
• Immigration right advocates are outraged that federal immigration enforcement agents were previously able to access some of the city’s homeless shelters, amNY reports.
• The city will study the feasibility of building new housing on Wards Island, according to 6sqft.