ADUs Could Help New York’s Housing Crisis. Will A NIMBY Backlash Prevent Progress?

As New Yorkers mull proposed zoning changes aimed at easing the city’s housing crisis, one type of residential unit is becoming a flash point.

Earlier this week, Mayor Eric Adams announced a $4M funding commitment for accessory dwelling units, which are second independent units on the same property as a primary home. While the city received more than 2,000 applications to be part of a pilot program launched six months ago, ADUs haven’t been getting such a warm reception from New York City residents.

“There's no stronger NIMBY in this city than middle-class homeowners,” Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso said onstage at Bisnow’s 2024 New York Affordable Housing event. “We're talking about an extension opportunity to expand your attic to a room, a basement into a studio apartment, a garage into a studio apartment, and even that is being challenged.”

ADUs could become more common if the current City of Yes for Housing Opportunity proposal is passed in its current form, flexing zoning rules that currently prohibit the unit type.

While the Adams administration waits for the proposal to pass through its hearing process, the city has been experimenting with a pilot program, culminating in Adams’ promise this week to provide funding to support the program’s expansion.

The initial program only had funding for 15 homeowners to create ADUs, NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development Deputy Commissioner for Development Kimberly Darga said at Bisnow’s event. But within two months, the program received 2,800 applications.

“It is clear to me that there are many people in New York City that believe that adding an accessory dwelling unit helps them out,” she said. “I have run a lot of different development programs at HPD. I don't get 2,800 applications for anything.”

The grant expanding the pilot will cut red tape around ADUs and fund homeowners’ creation of units, which can be backyard cottages, attic conversions, garage studios, basement apartments or in-law suites with separate entrances.

But it may not be as straightforward as NYC HPD hopes, with elected officials also voicing uncertainty, per reporting from Crain’s New York Business. And even with the thousands of applications submitted to HPD, many other members of the public are still vocal opponents to ADUs.

“I spent a day at the City of Yes Housing Opportunity public hearing,” Anita Laremont, a partner at law firm Fried Frank, said onstage. “There was not one positive comment about ADUs, which are the most, in that sense, innocuous of all of the proposals.”

Adams is going against his voter base — middle-class families in southeast Queens and central Brooklyn — in pushing the unit types, Reynoso said. But without that push, along with the proposal’s broader ask for every NYC neighborhood to do their part in adding to the housing supply, will be the preservation of the status quo, he said.

“What ends up happening is that development of affordable housing, or housing production in general, goes back to what it always has been — which is poor Black and brown neighborhoods doing all the work,” Reynoso said onstage. “We have to change that.”

One of the things that City of Yes hopes to solve is the uneven geographic distribution of new housing unit creation. Last year, 10 of NYC’s community districts added as much housing as the remaining 45 combined.

There’s a parallel between the conversation around ADUs and legalizing basement apartments, Darga said.

The city carried out a different pilot a few years ago, allowing for the conversions of select basements to legal apartments, she said. The idea was to benefit homeowners who wanted to house a family member or rent out the extra space, as well as to ensure that the housing type was safe for residents.

The basement pilot has received a similar public reception, even though the estimated 50,000 illegal basement apartments in NYC can be deadly when extreme weather events like Hurricane Ida hit.

“We know that even though people are housed in these spaces today, there is extreme local community backlash, and that is often around community character,” Darga said onstage.

There are also concerns about how proposed developments might strain existing infrastructure. But adding units like ADUs isn’t likely to significantly weigh on resources like sewers, schools or street space, experts said.

“This is really the crux of the challenge we have in terms of getting more housing approved through our process and when we need to rezone,” Laremont said.

Ultimately, what the Adams administration is facing with the City of Yes hearings is how to weigh local residents’ concerns against NYC’s overall needs, MSquared Director Ian Lundy said.

“There is, louder than I've ever heard it before, a contingent of New York that wants housing, that wants housing near transit, that wants to be able to live in areas they can't currently afford,” he said. “So there’s a question of how we change who we reach out to.”