More than 100 groups, City Council members, community board members and state lawmakers are asking a state court to annul the City of Yes, taking particular aim at the final rezoning that is expected to add 80,000 homes in New York over the next 15 years.
A lawsuit filed in Staten Island state court on Wednesday alleges that the Adams administration violated city and state environmental laws by failing to do a comprehensive review of the impact of the zoning changes. Though the lawsuit is targeting City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, the legal team believes the other City of Yes zoning changes — City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality and City of Yes for Economic Opportunity — would be thrown out if the lawsuit succeeds.
A City Hall representative said the administration stands by its review process.
“When it comes to housing, there will always be those who say, ‘Not in my backyard,’ but we stand by the city’s thorough and transparent review process and will address any lawsuit when it is received,” a City Hall spokesperson said in a statement.
The complaint seeks to undo City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, a text amendment that made several zoning changes to increase housing throughout the city, including eliminating parking minimums in some parts of the city, allowing more housing in areas near transit and legalizing some accessory dwelling units.
But the lawsuit is taking an even bigger swing: An attorney for the plaintiffs says if this lawsuit succeeds, the other two City of Yes zoning changes will also be annulled.
The statute of limitations for this kind of challenge is four months, meaning that individual challenges to the first two City of Yes initiatives — the economic opportunity and climate-related plans, which were respectively approved in June 2024 and December 2023 — have passed.
Attorney Jack Lester, who is representing the plaintiffs, said the fact that these three actions should have been considered as a collective means that a successful challenge to City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, which was approved in December, will necessitate that all three are repealed.
The members of the City Council’s Common Sense Caucus, a group of Conservative City Council members who opposed the City of Yes, are named as plaintiffs in the suit. That includes Council members Robert Holden, Vickie Paladino, Joann Ariola and David Carr.
“The City of Yes was never really about solving the economic or housing crisis,” said Ariola, who is the Republican minority leader in the Council. “It was about clearing the decks for big developers to come into our communities and deceive us into thinking it would not have a negative impact on our communities or a negative environmental consequence.”
Speakers at the sparsely-attended conference reiterated arguments that City of Yes for Housing Opportunity would lead to the Manhattan-ization of quiet, suburban neighborhoods in the outer boroughs. City leaders have argued that the zoning changes in the text amendment were modest and would lead to a little bit of housing in every district. Changes to low-density neighborhoods allowed three- to five-story apartment buildings near transit and two to four stories of housing above businesses.
A spokesperson for the Real Estate Board of New York said, “reversing this plan would move New York City in the wrong direction by closing pathways to desperately needed new housing within all five boroughs.”
Many of the groups named are based in the outer boroughs, including the Queens Civic Congress, which is leading the suit. A few Manhattan and citywide organizations, including the Met Council on Housing and the Black Institute, are also listed as plaintiffs. Paul DiBenedetto, chair of Community Board 11 in Queens, is among the local community board members who have signed onto the lawsuit.
The complaint argues that the administration wrongly separated the zoning changes into three parts.
The result, according to the complaint, was to “cover up and conceal the full environmental impacts of City of Yes.” The three “form one piece of an integrated and coordinated public policy overhaul” and should have been considered together rather than presented separately to community boards, the lawsuit alleges.
The City Council approved City of Yes in November, projecting that the zoning changes would lead to the construction of 80,000 units over the next 15 years, down from a projection that more than 100,000 would be built. The Council secured a number of changes to the proposal before signing off on it, including securing parking minimums in some parts of the city and a $5 billion commitment in public funding.
Even with funding dedicated to improving local infrastructure, opponents argued that the new housing threatened to overwhelm water and sewer infrastructure.
The lawsuit alleges that the city didn’t take a “hard look” at how the changes under City of Yes for Housing Opportunity would affect many low-density districts. The city instead opted for a “generic” approach in its Environmental Impact Statement, studying “28 prototypical sites and 14 representative neighborhoods.”
That approach, as outlined in the city’s environmental review law, is applied to “programs and plans that have wide application or affect the range of future alternative policies.”
The groups also allege that the city failed to present any alternatives to the rezoning to “avoid and reduce the serious and critical negative environmental impacts of City of Yes.”
A reversal of the rezoning, a signature policy for Mayor Eric Adams, would be a significant blow to an already troubled administration.
Update: The story has been updated to provide more context about City of Yes’ statute of limitation.
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