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City of Yes vs. Rezonings

Visuals in this post: Construction Costs Funding Mix City of Yes vs. Rezonings Expansion Rankings
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Transit & Housing June 2026

City of Yes vs. Two Decades of Rezonings

Projected housing units from the citywide City of Yes for Housing Opportunity zoning text amendment, adopted December 2024, compared with each major NYC neighborhood rezoning since 2004. All figures are projections made at adoption, what the city expected each rezoning to produce, not what was actually built.

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City of Yes projects more than six times the homes of the largest neighborhood rezoning since 2004

Projected new homes at adoption for the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity text amendment and for each major neighborhood rezoning from 2004 to 2024. Every figure is what the city expected at the time of the vote, not what was built.

  • City of Yes for Housing Opportunity (2024)
  • Prior neighborhood rezonings, 2004–2024
Source: NYC Dept. of City Planning and City Limits Note: Hudson Yards, the largest prior rezoning, was projected at 12,600 homes against the 82,000 projected for City of Yes.

City of Yes alone projects more homes than all 13 prior neighborhood rezonings combined

Each square is 1,000 projected homes. The 13 major neighborhood rezonings adopted between 2004 and 2024 projected 70,848 homes together; the 2024 City of Yes text amendment projects 82,000 over 15 years.

1 square = 1,000 projected homes
Source: NYC Dept. of City Planning and City Limits Note: projections at adoption, not units built. City of Yes is a 15-year modeling estimate.

The 13 major neighborhood rezonings of 2004–2024 projected 70,848 units combined. City of Yes alone projects 82,000, about 16% more than every major neighborhood rezoning of the past two decades put together.

The data behind the chart Projected new homes by rezoning.
#RezoningAdoptedProjected homes

Projections are not built units. These figures are what the city expected at adoption, and history cuts both ways. The 2004 Downtown Brooklyn rezoning anticipated roughly 1,000 housing units; more than 11,000 were built within 12 years. Greenpoint-Williamsburg has added 26,000+ units against a roughly 10,800-unit projection. Several de Blasio-era rezonings, including Inwood and Jerome Avenue, have so far built far less than projected. City of Yes's 82,000 is likewise a 15-year modeling estimate, not a commitment.

Mixed projection types. Figures combine environmental impact statement (EIS) incremental-unit estimates (e.g., Inwood's 4,348 by 2032; Hudson Yards' 12,600 in the FGEIS) with plan-announcement figures (e.g., East New York's "nearly 6,000 units over 15 years"). Greenpoint-Williamsburg is shown at the 10,800 figure officials cited at adoption; the FEIS net-new figure was about 7,914.

Scope. The comparison covers major neighborhood rezonings only. Smaller upzonings with their own unit projections, 125th Street (2008), Hudson Square (2013), and others, are excluded, as is Greater East Midtown (2017), a commercial rezoning. Adams-era neighborhood rezonings adopted in 2025, after the City of Yes vote, are also outside the comparison window.

City of Yes figure. The 82,000-units-over-15-years projection is the NYC Department of City Planning estimate for the version the City Council adopted in December 2024 (31–20 vote), which scaled back the original proposal.

What's next. The Mamdani administration's first neighborhood rezonings, the "South of Prospect" plan covering the Coney Island Avenue and McDonald Avenue corridors in Brooklyn, announced May 2026 alongside White Plains Road in the Bronx, have no published unit projection yet; a draft proposal is expected in 2027. They are excluded from this chart.

Sources: NYC Department of City Planning plan pages, press releases, and EIS documents (Downtown Brooklyn FEIS 2004; Hudson Yards FGEIS 2005; Greenpoint-Williamsburg FEIS 2005; Coney Island press release, 2009); City Limits, "Six Down, One to Go" (2020) and Bay Street coverage (2019); Bronx Metro-North analysis (2024); City of Yes adoption record (2024); Gothamist (2026).