On October 1, Mayor Mamdani and the Department of City Planning announced that the Upper East Side is one of 12 community districts where the new Affordable Housing Fast Track will apply. The designation was expected. Since the methodology was first proposed in the spring, FRIENDS has warned that the way the City counts affordable housing would almost inevitably put our neighborhood on the list.
Manhattan Community District 8, which covers the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island, joins the Upper West Side and ten districts in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Beginning January 1, 2027, rezonings in these districts that meet Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) affordability requirements can be approved through a 90-day review. The City Planning Commission will make the final decision, and the City Council will have no vote. The designation lasts five years. DCP has also said it is looking at City-led rezonings and development on public sites in the 12 districts.
FRIENDS supports more affordable housing on the Upper East Side, but we strongly believe preserving the affordable and relatively-affordable homes the neighborhood already has must be part of the discussion.
One of the City’s Densest Neighborhoods, and Still on the “Bottom 12”
The Upper East Side is one of the most densely populated residential areas in the country, and it has seen no shortage of construction. Rather, the district landed on the list because of what and how the City chose to count. The formula looks at only one thing: how many new affordable units a district produced over five years, as a share of its housing stock. That narrow measure leaves out most of what actually determines whether low- or moderate-income New Yorkers can live here.
The housing that already exists. Thousands of Upper East Side households live in rent-stabilized and relatively affordable apartments, many of them in Yorkville’s historic tenement buildings. None of that housing counts, and neither do efforts to preserve it. Shelters and supportive housing are excluded altogether.
What has been lost. The formula counts new units and never subtracts the ones that disappear. When older rent-regulated buildings are demolished and replaced by towers, often with fewer and far more expensive units, the neighborhood’s affordability declines while its ranking stays the same. On the Upper East Side, this has been the dominant pattern of recent development. An analysis of DCP data reported by Gothamist found that over the past 15 years, owners demolished or combined 2,687 Upper East Side units while adding 4,598, a net gain of only about 1,900. NYU’s Furman Center counts fewer than 300 of the new units as affordable to low- and middle-income households.
FRIENDS’ own research tells the same story. The Upper East Side lost 14,438 affordable units between 2007 and 2020, and new luxury buildings often hold fewer homes than the ones they replace. At the southeast corner of East 75th Street and Third Avenue, four tenement buildings with 43 apartments were demolished for a 214-foot tower with just 38, averaging about 2,570 square feet each. At 175 East 82nd Street, 50 rent-stabilized apartments were lost to make way for 73 condominiums.
The difference between one unit and another. A studio counts the same as a three-bedroom family apartment. A unit priced for a household near the area median income counts the same as one serving a much lower-income family. Neither square footage nor depth of affordability plays any role.
The cost of building on the UES. High land and construction costs, and limited access to subsidies such as HPD financing, make the projects the formula rewards especially hard to deliver on the Upper East Side. That is a structural challenge rather than a lack of will. The City and Suburban First Avenue Estate shows what targeted HPD support can accomplish. After the Landmarks Preservation Commission denied a hardship application, HPD-supported financing helped secure affordable housing there. That approach deserves to be repeated elsewhere in the neighborhood.
The reliability of the data. The rankings draw on records from multiple agencies, include projects marked confidential that cannot be independently checked, and now stand for five years.
Less Say for the Community
The Fast Track also removes the City Council from land use decisions in these districts. Community Boards and the Borough President will still review applications, but on a compressed timeline, and the final decision now rests with the mayor-appointed City Planning Commission. FRIENDS raised this concern when the ballot proposals were first introduced. We support reducing unnecessary delay, but not at the cost of meaningful community input. The neighborhood has already done its part: Community Board 8 sent DCP a plan last year identifying sites east of Second Avenue that could take new housing, but as Gothamist reports, the City has yet to act on it.
The Fast Track is not the only City plan that misreads the Upper East Side: HPD’s draft Fair Housing Growth Strategy, a separate but related effort, assigns the district a target of 12,725 new units by 2030, the highest in the city, with the same disregard for its density and the affordable housing it is losing.
FRIENDS supports more affordable housing on the Upper East Side. Protecting the affordable homes the neighborhood already has is just as essential.
Resources
DCP will host a virtual information session on December 3 to explain the new process.
DCP – Affordable Housing Fast Track
City Limits – See the 12 Communities on New York City’s Affordable Housing Naughty List
Gothamist – Upper East Side braces for affordable housing fast track, and backlash from residents
FRIENDS – CPC Hearing: Affordable Housing Fast Track Rules
Also see:
City Planning Commission - Affordable Housing Fast Track methodology