GET STUFF BUILT: A REPORT OF THE BUILDING AND LAND USE APPROVAL STREAMLINING TASKFORCE (NYC GOV)

“Build Faster” With 100+ Concrete Reforms to Accelerate New Construction Approval Process by Half

“Build Everywhere” With Vision for 6,000 New Homes in Bronx, Ambitious Plan to Add Housing in All Five Boroughs

“Build Together” With State and Federal Policy Agenda Focused on Creating Affordable Housing

To my fellow New Yorkers:

New York City is emerging from two years of uncertainty into a transformative new era. Yet our city’s housing crisis remains. More than one-third of New Yorkers spend over half their income on rent, and last night thousands of children slept in a shelter bed.

The City’s decades-long housing crisis requires policies that respond with urgency and help New Yorkers secure safe, quality housing as quickly as possible. There’s no time for creaky bureaucracy, outdated policies, and endless documents that do not help New Yorkers.

That’s why I convened the Building and Land use Approval Streamlining Taskforce (BLAST), co-chaired by Maria Torres-Springer, Deputy Mayor for Economic & Workforce Development; Melanie La Rocca, the Chief Efficiency Officer; and Jessica Katz, the Chief Housing Officer— all of whom have years of experience with these issues. With 25 City agencies and scores of advocates, local communities, and experts, we identified 111 ways the City’s processes governing development are broken and, most importantly, how to fix them.

We’re streamlining approvals and services to support innovation and investment. We’re making the entire development process simpler and easier to plan for, especially for nonprofit and minority and women-owned businesses who often have less resources to tackle the bureaucracy and survive financial risks caused by these delays. And we’re reducing costs and barriers and accelerating our approvals process, without sacrificing environmental health, public engagement, or safety.

Through implementing the initiatives contained in this report—which has already begun—we will reduce the time to proceed through our development processes by 50 percent and improve the overall experience of the applicants who use these processes, as well as of the everyday New Yorkers impacted by them.

We are taking one step closer to turning New York into a “City of Yes.” Yes to more affordable housing. Yes to homeowners improving their property and building generational wealth. Yes to supporting our small businesses. And yes to city agencies efficiently delivering for New Yorkers.

Letter from Mayor Eric Adams

GetStuffBuilt

Link to the PDF document is here: