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New York Times
21-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
New York City's Housing Crisis Will Be on the November Ballot
New York City residents will be able to vote this November on several ballot measures that would make it easier to build apartments and diminish the power City Council members wield over development in their districts. A special city panel, known as a Charter Revision Commission, voted on Monday to place five measures on the ballot. Most of them are intended to remove some political and bureaucratic barriers to development that have made New York's housing shortage difficult to fix, the commission said. One measure would create a 'fast track' by giving the City Planning Commission, instead of the City Council, the authority to approve or reject affordable housing projects in the 12 community districts that have allowed the least housing to be built. A majority of the City Planning Commission's members are appointed by the mayor. Another measure would make it easier to build 'modest' developments, such as those that would be up to 30 percent bigger than the current rules allow. A third would create an appeals board that could overrule a decision by the Council to reject or modify an affordable housing development. The board would need an agreement between two of its three members: the mayor, the Council speaker and the president of the borough where the development was proposed. Richard R. Buery Jr., a former deputy mayor who is the chair of the commission, said the measures would help make New York a 'more equitable and affordable city.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
17-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
N.Y.C. Panel Withdraws Proposal to Switch to Open Primaries
The primary elections that New York City uses to pick its mayors will remain unchanged, after a special panel that had been formulating a switch to an open primary system said on Wednesday that it would not put the proposal on the ballot this fall. Under the proposal, all registered voters, regardless of their party affiliation, could participate in primary elections. The 13-member panel, called a Charter Revision Commission, said it had decided not to put the proposal before voters because there was no consensus among civic leaders as to what the new primary model should look like. Richard R. Buery Jr., the chairman of the commission, which was created by Mayor Eric Adams, said in a statement that he was 'personally disappointed' in the decision and hoped the issue might be revisited in the future. 'I hope civic leaders will build on the progress that we have made this year, develop greater consensus and advance a proposal to voters prior to the next citywide election,' Mr. Buery said. In a 135-page report released earlier this month, which outlined the open-primary plan and other proposals, the commission acknowledged that some members of the panel felt that this year was not the right time to introduce such a major change. One reason to delay a move to an open primary system, the report said, was that New York had only recently enacted a big change to its elections — ranked-choice voting — that some voters still struggled to understand. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
