Want Affordable Housing? Stop Overregulating Development

An editorial in the New York Sun scoffs at Mayor Bloomberg's desire to see more affordable housing built when the zoning code is as thick as a phone book and developers are nickel and dimed every step of the way.

1 minute read

January 12, 2007, 5:00 AM PST

By Christian Madera @http://www.twitter.com/cpmadera

"Mayor Bloomberg says he wants more affordable housing in New York City, but the plight of one developer hoping to build just that is becoming a scandal on Mr. Bloomberg's watch. Toll Brothers Inc., a Pennsylvania-based developer famous for sprucing up the Jersey suburbs with upper-middle-class subdivisions, has been waiting since 2004 for the Department of City Planning to certify the rezoning of a two-block slice of land along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn."

"It hasn't always been this way. In 1916, the zoning code book was a svelte 35 pages, which helps explain how the Empire State Building could be built in a mere 13 months. During the construction boom of the 1920s, buildings were going up at the incredible rate of one a working hour, and many of them offered apartments that the construction workers themselves could afford."

FULL STORY: Toll Barrier

Thursday, January 11, 2007 in The New York Sun

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