"The report considered 76 rezoning measures and is said to be the first statistical analysis of the city’s current strategy. It said that on 86 percent of the lots that were rezoned, building capacity was reduced or limited, or limits were placed on the kind of structure that could be built.
On the remaining 14 percent of rezoned lots, rules were eased to allow for greater density. Despite the thrust of the rezoning of most of the lots, the cumulative effect of the changes was to add 1.7 percent to residential capacity."
So, what the Bloomberg administration has accomplished here is to reduce the value of property in those neighborhoods who had loud advocates for no development, but to increase exponentially the value of those areas who were not organized enough to lobby for lower-density development (or who were smart enough not to). The overall effect has NOT been the increase in units or development that was Bloomberg's stated goal, but instead a net neutral effect on housing in the city.
How is housing ever supposed to become affordable if supply stays the same while demand increases?
Well you also have to factor in the erasure of manufacturing zones that occurred in this same shell game. Down zone residential neighborhoods then upzone manufacturing zones. The effect is enormous in eliminating manufacturing landlords to convert to residential. For what? So that Park Slope owners (with very valuable property already) can't build up but Gowanus manufacturing landlords are incentivized to throw out the manufacturers and sell to some residential developers. Forget the jobs, no one in Park Slope wanted them anyway.
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