Review the City of Yes carefully

To the editor:

(re: “Less parking, more housing in the City of Yes?” April 25)

The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity initiative will not benefit the people of New York and should be voted down.

My primary reasons are:

• According to the city’s housing, preservation and development department, there is currently a surplus of 280,000 unrented apartments in the city.

This is because the current laws make it more lucrative to landlords to leave the apartments vacant.

Perhaps the mayor and the council should focus on changing these regulations, thereby making those apartments available.

• Allowing what will be basically “unchecked” development will mean that the city’s antiquated infrastructure — which already cannot handle flooding in increasingly major rain events — will have even more impermeable surfaces for runoff, making flooding and erosion problems worse.

• I believe there is semantics problem with what the mayor refers to as “affordable” housing. Affordable housing to most of the general public means housing that is affordable to them for rental and living.

I believe that the mayor is misusing the term because what he is referring to as affordable housing is housing and development that is affordable to developers and builders to build. Eliminating the requirement that new buildings have to have parking garages for the tenants greatly reduces the cost of construction (is one such item).

There is already a glut of luxury housing in New York City. Yet, under City of Yes, 80 percent of construction will be for more luxury housing.

Every element of City of Yes must be reviewed carefully. The impacts of increased construction and density on every neighborhood’s quality of life will be enormous.

Jane Sokolow

EDITOR’S NOTE: The New York City Housing and Vacancy survey, conducted by the U.S. Census on behalf of the city, found there to be 61,000 vacant apartments in 2021 — although city officials cited to news outlets those numbers could be as high as 89,000. Landlords have stated many apartments remain un-rentable because they require extensive renovations, which state law passed five years ago, limit their ability to recoup those expenses — especially in rent-stabilized units.