GET STUFF BUILT

New York City Mayor Eric Adams today unveiled “Get Stuff Built,” a comprehensive, three-pronged effort to address New York City’s affordable housing crisis and underlying housing shortage by rapidly accelerating the pace of housing production, with a “moonshot” goal of meeting the need for 500,000 new homes over the next decade. Read his full remarks as prepared for delivery below:

Good morning, New York: The greatest city in the world.

My hometown, and yours. A city made up of millions of stories over hundreds of years.

Generations have come and put down roots, formed communities, raised their families here.

More New Yorkers arrive every day, each one of them bringing their dreams, energy and ambition.

It is the people who make this city what it is. And if New York is to remain the city we love, we must have places for the people we love.

We need more housing, and we need it as fast as we can build it.

That means affordable housing for working families. It means apartments for young people and places for people to grow older. It means supportive housing for those in need and those in crisis.

And today, we are announcing our next steps to get there.

Because if we do not deal with this housing crisis, New York will no longer be a city for working people, for families, for immigrants or for elders.

We cannot let this happen. We must take action now.

This crisis has been decades in the making, but the reality is here now:

There is nowhere for people to go.

The stories are everywhere. For some, it means racing to sign a lease, only to find the apartment snapped up by someone else. Others are forced to squeeze a family of five into a one-bedroom apartment for years on end. Many fear a rent increase that will force them to leave the neighborhood they grew up in and the relatives they rely on.

And for 60,000 New Yorkers, the housing crisis means more than difficulty and drawbacks. It means spending the night in a homeless shelter.

This is real for me.

I lived on the edge of homelessness growing up. As a young man in South Jamaica, Queens, I carried a trash bag to school filled with my clothes because my mother was worried that we would be forced onto the streets without warning and wouldn’t have a change of clothing.

Every day I wondered if I would come home to a roof over my head.

That was nearly 50 years ago, and the problem has only gotten worse. Now, the average household would need to double their income to afford the average apartment in this city.

In the last decade, New York City grew by nearly 800,000 jobs, but we added just 200,000 homes to our city.

It’s not complicated: We have more people than homes.

This shortage gives landlords the power to charge any price they want, and leaves too many New Yorkers with no place to go.

That needs to change. And history is on our side.

We used to build things — and we can do it again. We built the Empire State Building in just over one year, at the lowest point of the Great Depression.

During the 1920s, we built 750,000 new homes. More than three times the number of homes built over the past 10 years.

Think about that for a minute.

But as the decades have passed, the dysfunction has increased. We imposed rules that blocked new housing, or made it more expensive to build, and rents went up.

In addition, exclusionary zoning and redlining prevented Black and Hispanic communities from finding affordable housing and accumulating wealth.

We’re still living with the remnants of those failed policies today. 94 percent of families in our shelters are Black or Hispanic.

That cannot continue. Equity must be a part of the New York story, just as it is a part of the American Dream.

And building more housing is one of the best ways of creating wealth and economic opportunity.

One national study estimates that the shortage of affordable housing costs the American economy about $2 trillion a year in lower wages and productivity.

Our city declared a housing emergency five decades ago, yet we have failed to address it with the same urgency we would any other crisis.

If our city is to have a true post-pandemic economic recovery, we need to build more.

This crisis doesn’t have to be our reality. We can do better. And we must do better.

Today, we are saying YES to more housing. YES to getting stuff built.

We are going to build faster. We are going to build everywhere. And we are going to build together.

This morning we released a roadmap to a new way of getting stuff built in this city.

The “Get Stuff Built” report contains more than 100 actions that will help us build faster, smarter and cheaper.

It begins with changing outdated processes that prevent us from creating the housing we need.

Let me give you a few examples. Most new residential buildings that require zoning approvals or receive public financing are required to conduct a formal environmental review.

These reviews take at least eight months to complete and can cost tens of thousands of dollars — money that gets absorbed into the rent for every apartment in the building.

We’ve found that most smaller buildings have no significant impacts on the environment. Yet every new project is required to go through the same formal analysis.

We are going to exempt small housing projects from that review so we can deliver new homes with lower costs.

We’re also going to shorten the time it takes for city agencies to review new housing and other development proposals.

The process to make zoning changes is called the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure or ULURP. It takes up to seven months, and includes input from community boards, Borough Presidents, the City Council and members of the public.

Before that process even begins, there is an entire pre-certification process. That’s right, the city has a process before you can start the process!

The pre-certification has no mandated timeline. It can take two years or more to complete. We are going to make the process faster by eliminating certain requirements.

In other words: Cutting red tape and bureaucracy.

Every day, my team hears stories of how the existing system is failing New Yorkers.

For instance, a small minority-owned business wanted to buy a parcel of land and build 100% affordable housing.

They wanted to apply for city approval to build 230 quality, affordable homes for their community. But they had to downsize to 155 apartments because the city’s land use and environmental processes were taking too long and costing too much. The result? 75 families lost out on the opportunity for good homes.

It’s time to make sure that old rules are not getting in the way of new housing.

And the Get Stuff Built plan is how we get there.

But we know that building faster only works if we can build everywhere.

So, we need to start saying yes in my backyard, yes on my block, yes in my neighborhood.

No more locking communities out of prosperity because neighborhoods are afraid of change. We are all New Yorkers. There is space here for all of us.

That is why we will push forward with our Zoning for Housing Opportunity amendment.

This amendment will ease conversions of underutilized buildings, so we can create new housing without building from the ground up.

It will make it easier for owners to alter and update their property, whether it is adding a family room or an extra apartment; unlocking the potential of tens of thousands of new units in every neighborhood.

When we say build everywhere, we mean everywhere. We will invest in housing in all five boroughs, starting with two major neighborhood planning efforts in the Bronx and Brooklyn.

Today I am proud to announce we are going to bring 6,000 new homes to the Bronx with the Bronx Metro-North Plan.

Four brand new Metro-North train stations are set to open in East Bronx in 2027, and we are going to build affordable homes and create well-paying jobs around them.

We are able to do this by making zoning changes in Parkchester/Van Nest and Morris Park.

At least 1,500 of these new homes will be rent regulated through the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program. The plan will create 10,000 new jobs, bringing more opportunities for people in the neighborhood.

And we have already begun working with the Central Brooklyn community to bring in affordable housing through the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan.

This plan will also deliver commercial and industrial jobs and infrastructure improvements to Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

We will also be working with additional communities to develop even more neighborhood plans in the months ahead.

But we can’t do this alone. We need everyone to step up and do their part. And that means local, state and federal governments coming together in common cause.

Major projects like Innovation Queens, Hallets North and Bruckner Boulevard have already been approved by our partners at the City Council.

We need to keep that momentum going and bring housing to the communities who need it most. And we need the Council to join with us in advancing the reforms in the Get Stuff Built report.

It’s not just about what we can do in partnership with the city and state. We also need to work with our federal partners to increase fiscal resources and change regulations.

This means making it simpler for New Yorkers to access Section 8 vouchers to pay for housing. Increasing our tax-exempt bonds and lowering the fifty percent test.

Those terms might not mean much to the average New Yorker, but these actions would make their tax dollars go further in creating affordable housing. We look forward to continuing to work with the federal government in advancing these priorities.

We also need to engage the entire city to solve this crisis. That includes helping the faith-based community play a more active role in building the housing their communities need.

For too long these leaders have been left on the sidelines. That stops today.

Faith leaders are our partners in this mission. They see people in need of help every day. People in crisis, people in danger, people who are at risk of falling into the rivers of dysfunction.

So much of this is because they need a place to call home.

We have been meeting with faith groups to share ideas that will help address the housing crisis and serve the needs of their communities.

They bring so much to the table. Many have served their communities for decades, or even centuries. They have a strong community presence and deep ties to generations of New Yorkers.

But the most important resource our faith groups bring is their resolve, their partnership, and their desire to get stuff done for the community.

That partnership is key to solving this crisis going forward.

In addition to working with faith groups and other advocates, we will work with Governor Hochul and our partners in Albany on a legislative housing agenda that puts New Yorkers first and equity front and center.

We need to restore critical incentives for residential builders to include more affordable housing in their projects.

And we also need incentives for existing building owners to make investments in their units that preserve affordable apartments or make unused units safe and available again.

We need to make it easier to convert underused commercial buildings into affordable homes and eliminate arbitrary caps on density in midtown Manhattan.

We will also work to eliminate exclusionary zoning practices throughout the entire New York metro region.

The failure of our neighbors on Long Island and Westchester to accept new housing has made the New York metropolitan area one of the most racially segregated in the country. More segregated than Birmingham, Alabama, and St. Louis, Missouri.

This is not right. But it is reversible.

It is time for neighbors to do their part to ease the housing crisis.

Our agenda calls for the State to make it easier for homeowners to create smaller accessory apartments, like basement apartments. And we want to change outdated rules, like parking requirements, that prevent housing near transit hubs.

We want to thank Governor Hochul for her leadership and support on this critical housing agenda.

As the Governor said last week, “There’s no kicking this can down the road.”

We’ve tinkered around the edges enough. We have failed too many people for too many years.

It’s time to build the next generation of affordable housing in New York City.

Experts have proposed different numbers, but everyone agrees: to address the affordability crisis, we must double the rate at which housing is built in the city.

It’s a major task

A major ask.

But I did not become mayor to climb a hill. I became mayor to climb a mountain.

And I want every one of you to climb it with me.

Today I am issuing a call. To our partners in the City Council, and our colleagues in Albany and in DC. To the development community, non-profits, faith leaders and neighborhood advocates:

Let us work together to meet the need for 500,000 new homes over the next decade.

This is our mission, our moonshot.

A bold effort that must fire ambition and inspire teamwork.

Because teamwork is the only way this gets done. We need everyone doing their part to reform outdated laws, expand incentives, increase coordination, and build, build, build.

And we must start now.

We have already made significant progress this year on several fronts:

We have committed $22 billion for housing — the largest investment in our city’s history. And we released Housing our Neighbors, our comprehensive blueprint for housing and homelessness.

We are building more deeply affordable housing for the entire city. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve worked with the Council to approve more than 12,000 additional homes.

And we recently announced that the largest 100% affordable housing new development in four decades will be coming to Willets Point in Queens.

Most importantly, we have been taking care of the housing stock we already have. For decades we have underinvested in NYCHA, leaving crumbling infrastructure and aging utilities.

In partnership with the State, we fought for the NYCHA Trust, so that residents could have the safe, high-quality, affordable homes they deserve.

But we need to do more.

How we respond to this crisis will determine what kind of city we become. A city where people struggle to make ends meet, or a city where everyone has the chance to reach their potential.

At moments like this I think about my mother. She was a single mom who worked two jobs in order to look after six children. She created opportunities for us so that we could live our American dream. But she had to do it on her own because the city was not there for her.

No New Yorker should struggle to keep a roof over their head like my mother did.

Safe, stable, affordable housing cannot be a privilege; it is the foundation of a prosperous society.

This city was built on the bedrock of opportunity. Not just the opportunity to work here or pass through, but to live here.

This is what makes New York City possible: New people, new ideas, and new cultures converging here in search of a dream.

The best people in the world in the brightest city on earth.

If we want to remain that city, the economic engine of America and the most diverse community on the globe, we must get stuff built — not for the few, but for the many.

Brick by brick, block by block, this new city will rise together.