NYC releases map of city-owned sites where 50,000 new homes are in the works
Settlement Housing Fund and Kalel Companies are redeveloping the Grand Concourse library at 155 East 173rd Street into a mixed-use tower with 113 affordable homes. Image courtesy of Secchi Smith.
New York City has released an interactive map identifying more than 100 city-owned sites where it plans to build over 50,000 new homes. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg on Thursday released the Land Inventory Fast Track (LIFT) Tracker, a tool providing New Yorkers with the first detailed look at the administration’s plans to develop underutilized, city-owned properties. The LIFT task force identified the sites after Mamdani established the group on his first day in office to find city-owned properties suitable for residential development.
“Too many New Yorkers are being priced out of their homes. We have a responsibility to use every tool we have to build the affordable housing our city needs,” Mamdani said. “The LIFT tracker brings transparency to that work and makes clear that City-owned land is not sitting idle—it is becoming homes, libraries, and community space across the five boroughs.”
The Mamdani administration plans to issue five or more new requests for proposals (RFPs) each year to redevelop city-owned land for housing.
LIFT was created to help address the city’s housing crisis. Currently, a majority of households are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Nearly one in three households are also severely rent-burdened, spending more than 50 percent of their income on housing.
In addition, the city’s rental vacancy rate currently sits at a historic low of 1.4 percent, underscoring the severity of the housing shortage and the increasing unaffordability of living in the five boroughs.
With a campaign platform centered on affordability, Mamdani signed a series of executive orders on his first day in office, including one establishing LIFT, as part of an effort to use every tool at the city’s disposal to follow through on that pledge.
The city owns or leases more than 15,000 properties, which together span roughly the size of Brooklyn. More than half are dedicated to parks and cultural resources, including libraries and museums.
Roughly 38 percent host active services such as schools, hospitals, firehouses and other essential infrastructure that require uninterrupted service, making their replacement or relocation necessary before the properties could be converted to housing, a process that would be both difficult and expensive.
Still, the task force has identified more than 100 city-owned sites suitable for housing development. These include The Aurea, announced earlier this month, which will bring 131 new homes to a former NYPD parking lot in the East Village, and The Orion, unveiled Wednesday, with nearly 1,000 homes on a vacant waterfront lot in Long Island City.
Another approach has been building affordable housing atop libraries. Highlights include plans to replace the Upper West Side’s Bloomingdale Library with a new branch topped by 850 apartments, as well as proposals for the Bronx’s Grand Concourse Library and Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst Library, among others.
In addition to identifying sites suitable for housing, the city has also created tools to speed up the construction of those homes. In March, Mamdani launched the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track to accelerate the delivery of affordable housing on city-owned land.
Through the program, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development can pre-qualify affordable housing developers and shorten the pre-development request for proposals (RFPs) process by eight months for certain projects, cutting the time needed to select a developer nearly in half.
That month, the city announced the first three sites to be developed under the program: 784-800 Myrtle Avenue in Bed-Stuy, 1337 Jerome Avenue in Mount Eden and 109-43 Farmers Boulevard in Jamaica. The projects are expected to deliver 300 new affordable apartments, including 100 affordable homeownership units at the Bronx and Queens sites.
These projects, along with many others, can now be viewed through the city’s new interactive tool, allowing New Yorkers to track the administration’s progress toward delivering new homes.
The plan builds on the administration’s broader housing strategy, which includes $22 billion in affordable housing investments over the next five years, including $5 billion in capital funding for new affordable homes over the next two years.
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