“Allowing new housing development—in conjunction with other measures to protect tenants and make New York more affordable—is how our city can survive and thrive in the years to come.”
City Limits rounds up the latest housing and land use-related events, public hearings and upcoming affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon.
Residential rezonings, including one approved this summer for Edgemere, are poised to bring thousands of new apartments to the Rockaways over the next decade, but just a single hospital has served the peninsula since 2012. A new task force is being asked to create a roadmap for expanding local healthcare services, including a facility that offers trauma care.
The Council’s Land Use Committee voted 10-0 to approve a residential rezoning along a strip of Bruckner Boulevard in Throggs Neck after Councilmember Marjorie Velázquez said she backed the plan, following months of opposition.
Innovation QNS has emerged as the latest flashpoint in a debate over housing production, with supporters saying the plan will provide much-needed units for New Yorkers of all income levels, while opponents say it includes too few income-restricted units for low- and middle-income residents.
The land use plan, part of a broader initiative known as Resilient Edgemere, encompasses the area bound by Beach 35th Street and Beach 50th Street and will change zoning rules to increase density in some areas, limit development in others and raise the shoreline along Jamaica Bay.
The project would create about 664 housing units, two commercial towers and a new park in place of vehicle lots and low-rise buildings in an area that city officials have been eyeing for years for potential economic and real estate development.
New Queens Councilmember Lynn Schulman wants to incorporate hospital capacity into New York City’s zoning process, following decades of medical facility closures, including several in Queens.
Home prices in the predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood began to tick up before then-Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to rezone 190 blocks in 2014. But affordable housing advocates and local residents say the rezoning, approved in 2016, only drove more speculators to scoop up homes, jack up prices and push out existing residents.
As part of the 2018 Jerome Avenue rezoning deal, city officials committed $1.5 million in financial assistance for area merchants, intended to help relocate existing businesses that would be displaced. But officials have yet to issue any such grants, a City Limits investigation found.
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