New York City voters have approved Mayor Eric Adams’ controversial ballot proposals on fast-tracking housing production with a stamp from Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who announced his support for the proposals on Election Day.
According to the NYC Board of Elections (BOE) unofficial results, New Yorkers voted ‘No’ on proposal 1 (54.56%), an upstate environmental and land development issue, and on proposal 6 (53.08%), which would have moved local elections to even-numbered years.
The BOE said that New Yorkers voted ‘Yes’ for proposal 2 (58.32%), to fast-track affordable housing projects; for proposal 3 (56.75%), which changes the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) process; for proposal 4 (58.30%), establishes an Affordable Housing Appeals Board; and for proposal 5 (73.25%), which would digitize a City Map and create a borough map office.
Mamdani’s homegrown message of improving affordability for New Yorkers and implementing a rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments on the campaign trail resonated with voters, clinching him a win in this year’s mayoral election over former Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. In the weeks leading up to Election Day and during the mayoral debates, Mamdani evaded taking a firm stance on the ballot measures. However, he confirmed that he voted in favor of proposals 1 – 5 on Nov. 4. He also voted against proposal 6, he said.
“We urgently need more housing to be built across the five boroughs, and we also need to ensure that housing is high quality, creating high-quality union jobs,” Mamdani told City & State after he left the polling place.
Amit Singh Bagga, the campaign director for YES on Affordable Housing and principal of Public Progress Solutions, explained that the Mayor and city government play a massive role in determining affordability levels based on a community’s needs and identifying opportunities to build “taxpayer-financed subsidized” or “affordable” housing, referring to proposal 2.
“When it comes to modest increases in density [of housing],” said Bagga, referring to proposal 3, “City Hall, the Mayor, city government in general, is not going to have a direct impact on how many units get proposed. That will really be communities working with housing organizations as well as developers to determine where such housing can be built and what that looks like.”
Bagga said, most importantly, he expects that Mamdani’s incoming administration will take on the responsibility of oversight to make sure that housing is indeed being built in 12 community districts across the city that produce the least amount of affordable housing.
“Every New Yorker from the Bronx to Brooklyn knows that our housing affordability crisis is a house on fire and we just elected a Mayor, both in the [democratic] primary as a candidate as well as in the general with a record number of voters, to elect a man that has made housing affordability the centerpiece of his agenda,” said Bagga. “New Yorkers have not only sent Zohran Mamdani to City Hall with a mandate, they have also sent him with a mandate to solve this problem as top of the list. So we fully expect a Mamdani administration to utilize the tools in its toolbox and take aggressive action.”
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and many city councilmembers had slammed the housing ballot proposals as “misleading” and refused to support them going into the general election. They also doubled down, stating that the charter revision process, a series of public hearings that produced the proposals, was misused by Mayor Eric Adams to block ballot access and weaken democracy.
“New Yorkers desperately need more housing that is affordable to them, but the solution isn’t to take away communities’ power to secure more affordability and essential public goods from developers and the City. These misleading ballot proposals permanently change the City’s constitution to weaken democracy, lasting beyond the next mayor when we inevitably have a mayor who is bad on housing, equity, and justice for communities,” said council spokesperson Benjamin Fang-Estrada in a statement on Election Night. “This will leave our city without the checks and balances of democracy to protect New Yorkers and ensure outcomes that prioritize them, not simply profits.”
Mamdani acknowledged that there were plenty of council members in opposition to the housing ballot proposals, promising to work with them to deliver for their respective communities once in office.
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