Opinion: Jamaica Rezoning is a Gift to Real Estate, Not Residents

“Despite community pleas for affordable homeownership opportunities, the proposal guarantees effectively none for Jamaica residents. Other desired community benefits (e.g., sewer upgrades and funding for local non-profits) remain entirely hypothetical.”

The Department of City Planning (DCP), led by Mayor Eric Adams-appointee Dan Garodnick, is rushing to finalize a proposed 230-block rezoning of Jamaica, Queens under the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP). City Council members are now deciding whether to green light this gift to real estate developers. Under ULURP, City Council’s deadline is Oct. 14, so their vote—that has not been publicly announced—will happen any day now. The Jamaica rezoning must first clear the council’s Land Use Committee, which meets this Thursday, Oct. 9.

The proposed land use changes would accelerate gentrification and fail to provide sufficient affordable housing for Jamaica’s Black and brown residents who already struggle to pay rising rents.

Meanwhile, the upzoning caters to the real estate industry by increasing the maximum density for new buildings, which would yield higher economic returns—usually in the form of more rent—to the owners of affected properties. 

Obscuring its pernicious effects, DCP officials market the rezoning as “The Jamaica Neighborhood Plan,” calling it “a comprehensive vision crafted in collaboration with the vibrant community of Jamaica, Queens.” DCP’s project booklet leads off by stating “thousands of community members shaped the planning process.” 

Despite presenting the plan as community-driven, city government’s outreach to Jamaica residents has been woefully inadequate, and most have no idea that a ULURP is underway for this major rezoning that has profound implications for their lives. 

“There should have been mailings, leafleting, and tabling throughout the targeted area, at every major transportation hub, every apartment building, and other direct outreach efforts to homeowners, renters and public housing residents,” says Lisa Edwards, who owns a co-op in Downtown Jamaica and has lived in the neighborhood for 25 years. “Outreach should have also been conducted in multiple languages like Spanish and Bengali.”

Nafisa Mahmud, who has also lived in Downtown Jamaica for 25 years, attended some DCP events about the rezoning. She describes how city officials responded to her observations that the plan would exacerbate community displacement: “I was shut down. I was asked why I didn’t come sooner, with the expectation that I should have known these things were happening. But how would I have known, as just a random person in the neighborhood? We weren’t in the room when these decisions were being made. They talk about community engagement, yet when the community shows up and voices concerns, we’re shut down.”

The Jamaica rezoning’s boosters in government misleadingly imply that the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) policy would prevent residential displacement, with Garodnick and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards publicly stating the land use changes would generate 4,000 income-restricted units. 

The project’s draft environmental impact statement gives lower figures, finding “approximately 2,500-3,744” affordable units would be built out of the projected 12,319 total apartments. This range reflects the different MIH options that City Council could apply, all of which would fail to prevent the displacement of Jamaica residents, many of whom earn far less than the area median income used to define “affordability.” 

Moreover, luxury development would continue to fuel Jamaica’s rising rents, as it has in other upzoned working-class neighborhoods and communities of color, including Williamsburg/Greenpoint and Manhattan’s Chinatown. Urban Planner Tom Agnotti’s earlier assessment applies here: “MIH will be used as a Trojan Horse to convince communities to accept rezoning schemes that will result in substantial new market-rate housing and significant displacement.” 

And since a 2024 settlement rolled back community preference for new affordable units in New York City, Jamaica residents would only have preferential access to 600 to 800 apartments (15 to 20 percent of all affordable units) under Garodnick and Richards’s high estimate. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) also plans to build 34 apartments for affordable homeownership and 83 affordable rental units on city-owned property as part of the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan. Again, under the 2024 settlement, that is a piddly five to seven affordable homes and 12 to 16 affordable rentals set aside for Jamaica residents.

According to its draft environmental impact statement, the rezoning will exacerbate the community’s school overcrowding while reducing its (already low) open space per capita. 

When community members express fears about the initiative’s consequences for infrastructure and public services, government officials say private developers will provide solutions, pointing to planned incentives for building schools and privately-owned public spaces. During the Queens borough president’s June 5 hearing on the rezoning, a DCP representative confirmed no city-owned sites could accommodate new schools in the area, even as District 28 Superintendent Eric Blake described local schools as already “bursting at the seams.” 

Queens Community Board 12 (CB12), which represents most of the project area, voted overwhelmingly to pause the rezoning process on May 21. At the City Planning Commission’s July 2 hearing for the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan, Rev. Carlene O. Thorbs, CB12’s chairperson, said they wanted it “to cease and desist and to stop.”

Rather than address the existing community’s needs, DCP has designed the rezoning to incentivize transit-oriented real estate development. In February 2024, one DCP official told community members at York College that Downtown Jamaica could eventually look like Downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City. 

Indeed, real estate developers support the upzoning, which will increase regional property values. One prominent example is Eric Deutsch, a principal and founder at DL Development. Deutsch testified in favor of the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan at a Sept. 9 City Council hearing, reading a statement that resembled an advertisement to future tenants and a pitch to potential investors: “[Jamaica] is one of the most transit-rich neighborhoods in the country, making it ideal for transit-oriented development. Jamaica station is unique in all of New York. It is the one place where you can have a one seat 20-minute ride to JFK, Grand Central, Penn Station, and Atlantic Terminal…There’s no better place to be connected to all points in the city and Long Island.”

According to 2021 state records, Deutsch is part of Southside JQ Member LLC—a consortium of real estate developers with an office on Manhattan’s 5th Avenue—that bought a Downtown Jamaica property for $10 million in 2020 and subsequently remediated it through New York State’s brownfield cleanup program. 

Since early 2023, Southside JQ has paid the lobbying firm Patrick B. Jenkins and Associates $251,750 to meet regularly with city officials about the Jamaica rezoning and its potential impact on their property. Jenkins and Associates have engaged a variety of people on these matters, including Garodnick, DCP staff, Richards, Menashe Shapiro (Mayor Adams’ Deputy Chief of Staff), City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, and City Councilmember Dr. Nantasha Williams, according to mandatory filings with the NYC City Clerk’s Lobbying Bureau. The City Council’s custom of member deference has made Williams’ support essential to the rezoning, as her district encompasses most of Downtown Jamaica.

Jenkins and Associates also have close ties to Councilmember Kevin Riley, whose political committee paid Jenkins and Associates $9,000 for raising $74,518 for his 2023 campaign. Riley chairs the City Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises, where Deutsch testified.  

During public ULURP hearings, much of the rezoning’s community support has come from churches who wish to build affordable housing on their properties in partnership with real estate developers. Non-profit organizations operating in Jamaica also support the plan. Their statements invariably include funding needs, indicating hopes to receive money through a community benefits commitment that Councilmember Williams is working to secure from the mayor’s office in exchange for backing the plan.

In a Sept. 10 op-ed, Councilmember Williams expressed her dissatisfaction with the mayor’s office over present negotiations for those benefits, including “long-overdue sewer and stormwater infrastructure upgrades, groundwater flooding relief, open space and transit improvements, school capacity, support for cultural institutions, pathways to homeownership and protection for local businesses and faith-based organizations.” She made clear her support for the rezoning is contingent on these investments. 

Anticipating the next mayoral administration—whoever leads it—might renege on secured promises, Williams also wants to establish a Downtown Jamaica Oversight Task Force. Modeled on the Gowanus Oversight Task Force, the body of community-based volunteers would have the power to monitor, but not to compel, any pledged investments in Jamaica.

Trading wholly uncertain community benefits for the authorization of large-scale displacement is a raw deal for Jamaica residents. The proposed Jamaica Neighborhood Plan might line the pockets of developers, but it would do little to address the city’s affordable housing crisis. Meanwhile, the plan’s costs would be borne by Jamaica residents displaced from their homes before receiving any benefit at all.

Natalie Bump Vena is an assistant professor in the department of urban studies at Queens College-CUNY.

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Editor’s note: A spokesperson for the Department of City Planning responded to this op-ed submission, noting that residential development is currently allowed as-of-right in Jamaica, with no affordable housing requirements in place. The rezoning would change that by requiring developers to include affordable units under Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH), a tool that was unavailable in the earlier city rezonings the piece references (Williamsburg/Greenpoint).

“New York City is in a severe housing crisis, with a citywide vacancy rate of 1.41 percent and a vacancy rate for Queens of .88% percent. The status quo isn’t working, and we need to create more homes of all types at every income level. This plan would help address current and future demand for housing in this important jobs and transit hub,” DCP Spokesman Joe Marvilli said in a statement. “We’ve held dozens of in-depth meetings with the community to shape this important plan and look forward to continuing to work with the City Council to get it over the finish line and bring forth a more equitable, vibrant Jamaica.”

Patrick Jenkins, of Patrick B. Jenkins and Associates, responded to this piece with the following comment: “As a lifelong resident of Jamaica, I am proud to be a part of the continued evolution and improvement of my community. I have seen a lot—the looting and the destruction in the 70’s, the ravages of crack in the 1980’s, the renewed hope and investment in ‘90’s in Downtown Jamaica and the creation of Jamaica Station and the Airtrain. We have come a long way, and the future of Jamaica is promising.”

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