Earlier this week, we testified at the City Planning Commission's marathon hearing on the proposed City of Yes for Housing Opportunity zoning reform proposal, which should help alleviate New York City's housing shortage while also putting in place policies that could help reduce driving while promoting the use of public transit and encouraging walking and biking.

Our full testimony follows below, and you can also view StreetsPAC Executive Director Eric McClure's delivery of our remarks on YouTube, beginning roughly at the 11-hour, 37-minute, and 30-second mark (yes, it was a very long hearing!).

StreetsPAC broadly supports the City of Yes proposal, but we want to speak specifically to the items that are most germane to StreetsPAC’s interest in reducing reliance on cars, making streets safer, and improving public transit.

First, we strongly support the initiative to eliminate parking requirements. These onerous mandates have impeded the creation of housing across large expanses of the city for decades, adding tremendous cost to new housing development and in many cases, compelling developers to build fewer units than zoning allows in order to avoid triggering expensive parking requirements. Eliminating these mandates will help spur housing growth, while also reducing the perverse incentive for car ownership and driving that the existing requirements create.

We’ll also note that there are significant misconceptions about what lifting parking mandates will mean in the real world. Ending parking mandates does not ban parking – far from it. Developers will build parking where there’s demand for it, but zoning won’t force its inclusion where it isn’t warranted.

We also strongly support the expansion of transit-oriented development, including growing the footprint of transit zones across the city as well as the town-center zoning initiative. Increasing density around transit, whether that be subway and commuter-rail stations, Select Bus Service routes, or the future path of the Interborough Express, and in walkable and bikeable neighborhoods, is a crucial policy for combatting climate change as well as spurring housing creation, and will make it much easier for New Yorkers to avoid the tremendous financial burden of car ownership should they so choose.

We urge the City Planning Commission to adopt the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity in full, but absolutely want to see these aforementioned aspects of the proposal move forward.