Today, the City Council (by a vote of 31 to 20) approved the modified City of Yes for Housing Opportunity text amendment (COYHO), which aims to combat the housing crisis by making it possible to build a little more housing in every neighborhood. COYHO is the final piece of Mayor Eric Adams's City of Yes vision, a trio of legislative packages that seek to modernize and update the City's zoning regulations. The first was the City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality, passed in December 2023, which promotes environmental sustainability, and the second was the City of Yes for Economic Opportunity, passed in June 2024, which supports economic growth and resiliency.
COYHO is estimated to create 80,000 new homes over a 15 year period. While these changes to the Zoning Resolution are essential, many Council members believed the text changes did not go far enough to address the City's housing crisis, and issued their own plan in the beginning of November 2024, called the City for All. The City for All attempts to fill in the gaps that cannot be accomplished through changes to zoning, with the goals of creating deeper affordability, increased levels of affordable homeownership and housing preservation efforts, community infrastructure investments, stronger tenant protections, better utilization of housing vouchers, and increased funding for housing agencies. City for All was instrumental to the passage of COYHO, securing a commitment of $5 billion in public funding -- with $4 billion coming from the City and $1 billion coming from the State -- to support the City housing crisis. Specifically, City for All sets aside $2 billion towards sewers, flood protection, streets and open space investments, $2 billion towards housing related-capital funds, and $1 billion to tenant protections and flood monitoring, over a ten year period.
COYHO is discussed in more detail in our previous blog post, which summarizes the major components of, and modifications made by the City Council to, the COYHO text.