Despite hints that the City Council would take its fight against housing ballot measures to the courts, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams says the next phase will be a war of words.
Adams on Wednesday said the Council will turn its attention to educating the public on three ballot questions it believes are misleading.
The Council had urged the city’s Board of Elections to remove the questions from the ballot, arguing that the trio concealed from voters that power would be taken away from their elected officials on certain land use matters. The board overwhelmingly approved the measures on Tuesday, along with two other questions that were not targeted by the Council.
Though an attorney for the Council indicated last week that the Council wasn’t shy about suing the administration, Adams said Wednesday that it will instead focus on an “intentional campaign” to inform voters on the measures’ consequences.
“We were hoping that the BOE would see our side of it,” she said when asked by a reporter about filing a lawsuit.
Adams began Wednesday’s press conference by defending the Council’s reputation, calling claims that the Council isn’t pro-housing “preposterous.” She said it is “completely dishonest” to characterize the Council’s land use powers as the biggest obstacle to housing production, noting that her guiding mantra has been: “We cannot be the Council that says no to housing.”
In a statement on Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams said the Council “will now be remembered for trying to block voters from having a say in eliminating New York City’s barriers to housing and bringing down the cost of rent.”
The speaker repeatedly took shots at the mayor during the press conference, which preceded the Council’s planned override of three bills the mayor vetoed.
She said the mayor — who has repeatedly bragged that he led the most pro-housing administration in the city’s history — has been taking credit for the Council’s work getting major rezonings and housing projects across the finish line. She touted the promise of a $5 billion investment ahead of the approval of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, saying the commitment wouldn’t have happened without the Council (housing projections were also reduced as a result of changes sought by the Council).
“This Council is doing the work. Not just talking about it,” she said.
Though the fight over these measures has, at times, become personal, the changes proposed would affect mayoral administrations and Councils beyond the officials now in office.
One of the three questions that the Council objects to asks whether the city should create a fast-track approval process for modest housing and infrastructure projects that bypasses either City Council or City Planning approval, depending on the project type. Another asks voters if the mayoral veto in the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or Ulurp, should be replaced by a three-member appeals board for certain projects. The third proposal takes aim at districts that have approved the least amount of affordable housing. Affordable housing projects in those districts would undergo a shorter review process, bypassing Council review.
The speaker said the Council’s opposition to the questions is not about losing the power to block housing or even member deference, the Council’s tradition of voting according to the local Council member’s position on land use actions. She noted that the Council has, at times, defied member deference — though it remains a rare occurrence.
The Council, she went on, uses its authority to demand deeper affordability and neighborhood investments.
“Developers do not automatically produce housing that is affordable to New Yorkers without being pushed to do so,” she said. “The city often fails to invest in our communities unless pushed to do so by the Council.”
If Wednesday’s press conference is any indication, the Council’s campaign around the ballot question will emphasize the potential of the mayor being handed more power, while
underscoring ties between the mayor and the Trump administration.
Proponents of the ballot questions, including Open New York and other housing groups, have launched their own campaign, aiming to spend $3 million on promoting the changes.
“The actual questions on the ballot still maintain community input and Council members’ authority when they are really trying to build more housing in their neighborhoods,” Annemarie Gray, executive director of Open New York, said after the Board of Elections’ vote. “These are very thoughtfully designed measures, to really target the worst actors and actually finally make a dent in our cost-of-living crisis.”
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