NEW YORK — Hundreds of New Yorkers testified during a marathon City Council hearing Tuesday reviewing the Adams administration’s sweeping “City of Yes” plan, which aims to boost the city’s housing supply by overhauling decades-old zoning regulations.

The hearing, hosted by the Council’s zoning and franchise subcommittee, marked the panel’s second session in as many days on the “Zoning for Housing Opportunity” plan. On Monday, the subcommittee heard testimony from Dan Garodnick, Mayor Eric Adams’ city planning director, and Adolfo Carrión, his housing preservation and development commissioner.

Tuesday’s hearing focused instead on public testimony, and City Councilman Kevin Riley (D-Bronx), the subcommittee’s chairman, kicked it off by noting that more than 700 people had signed up to speak their minds, including 300 in person.

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, a Democrat who had advisory input on the plan, was among those to testify. He offered a ringing endorsement of the City of Yes, arguing it will drastically increase the city’s ability to build housing quickly.

“Finding a home in New York City is something akin to ‘The Hunger Games,’” Levine said, noting that apartment vacancy rates in the city are at historic lows while rents are at historic highs. “This would be a game changer for our housing crisis.”

Plenty of the New Yorkers who testified, though, didn’t share Levine’s views. Opponents expressed a wide variety of critiques of City of Yes: that it doesn’t include sufficient infrastructure or affordable housing guarantees, that it could dramatically alter the character of suburban neighborhoods, or simply that the plan is too dense. The issue of lifting — but not banning — parking minimums proved especially contentious for outer borough representatives.

Paul DiBenedetto, the chairman of Community Board 11, which spans Auburndale, Bayside, Douglaston and other eastern Queens neighborhoods, argued the “top-down approach” of the City of Yes will benefit only real estate developers.

“(It is) a Robert Moses-style approach to zoning, written by developers for developers,” DiBenedetto testified.

“(It) will promote uncontrolled development and ultimately destroy the balanced residential character of many New York City neighborhoods,” said Alfred Brand of Queens’ Kew Gardens Civic Association.

He added that it includes “no provisions” for substantial affordable housing development or infrastructure funding, echoing concerns raised by Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) this month.

Ronda Wist, a Yorkville resident and one-time land use director for the City Planning Department, said she was “disappointed” by Zoning for Housing Opportunity.

“If the city wants to add housing that will support existing communities it must partner with other agencies and entities,” she said. “Otherwise, this document is simply a real estate road map to promote $4 million apartments and ghost stores, make a few more developers even richer and neighbors even less diverse.”

But many who testified voiced their support of City of Yes, describing it as an imperfect but “much-needed reform.” The support echoes a pair of recent surveys that found 71% and 81%, respectively, agree with the overall plan. Representatives of housing organizations, developers and houses of worship all spoke strongly in favor of the proposal.

“The mayor is wrong about almost everything, but he’s right about this,” said Brooklynite MacKenzie Fillow. “We need to build more housing in every neighborhood. Upzoning in a piecemeal fashion is inadequate and lets the most politically connected neighborhoods opt out.”

Jacob Brooks, who is affiliated with Open New York, agreed.

“Gentrification happens because new residents compete with existing residents for older and limited housing stock,” he said. “If we’re able to say yes to more housing, we can build a city that’s big enough for all of us.”

Among other matters, the City of Yes plan would change zoning regulations to allow for two-to-four stories of apartments to be built on top of commercial spaces and encourage development of single-room apartments with shared kitchens and bathrooms, so-called SROs. It would also allow more empty office buildings to be transformed into homes and let owners of one- and two-family residential buildings turn their garages, attics and potentially basements into housing.

Many of the zoning regulations that currently prevent such development date to the 1960s. The mayor’s office has said between about 58,200 and 109,000 new units of housing could be built by 2039 if the plan passes.

The Council’s Democratic majority, who need to sign off on the plan for it to become law, has generally been supportive of it.

However, many members representing outer boroughs, including all of its Republican representatives, have been skeptical.

During one particularly tense moment Vickie Paladino, a Queens Republican and outspoken critic of City of Yes, lashed out at Jackson Chabot, the director of advocacy and organizing for Open Plans, after he testified about the detrimental effects of parking mandates.

“You’ve only lived here for eight years. You don’t know a thing about New York or how we work, OK?” she told the Cincinnati native. “How dare you come to this panel with your so-called expertise.”

“Yes, I might be a relative newbie,” he responded, “but so many other people that are testifying today want to live in New York City as well, regardless of whether they were born here or if they moved here more recently than not.”

Mayor Adams also touted City of Yes during his weekly news conference Tuesday, striking an optimistic tone in the face of some Council pushback and saying he has spoken directly to Council members about the plan.

“I’m excited that many of them, some of the issues that are troubling, some of the Council people, I think they’re fixable, and I think that we could come and land the plane,” he said.

_____

(With Josephine Stratman.)

_____

©2024 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.