Expedited Land Use Review Procedure and Affordable Housing Appeals Board Rulemaking

Online comments: 8

• Anonymous

  To the CPC and whom it may concern, I wish to express broad support for the proposed rules as written. I would like to emphasize the preservation with respect to the allowance of 2 commercial FAR, providing commercial uses within residential provides benefits to the tenants and landlords by providing services near where people live and generating income to landlords.

  I would also like to propose that the 60-day DCP administrative review (as part of the pre-certification process) be shortened for ELURP to 30 days. As noted in the “Get Stuff Built” report and New York Housing Conference’s reports, ULURP has historically suffered greatly from the pre-certification review loop and shortening the timeline here can help address one of the sources of major delays. With a 60 day cycle, several rounds of feedback can easily add up to 12+ months of pre-certification project. With ELURP, these projects are often less complicated and require a shorter amount of review so expediting the review in the context of these smaller projects can help get them get delivered faster.

  Thanks for your consideration.

  Comment added August 6, 2026 1:32am

• Howard Slatkin, Executive Director, Citizens Housing and Planning Council

  When an AHAB-eligible application is certified into public review, the rules should require the Department to disclose that the application is AHAB-eligible. This is important because an unambiguous understanding of AHAB eligibility may reshape the manner in which parties to the ULURP process participate during public review (a feature of the design of the appeal process). It appears that this disclosure is already practice for the Department and Commission, but this should be incorporated formally into the rules to ensure that the practice is sustained.

  Comment added September 3, 2026 4:14pm

• Maddie DeCerbo

  attached.

  Comment attachment
  20260909-REBNY-Comments-ELURP-AHAB.pdf

  Comment added September 8, 2026 11:01am

• Nate Bliss

  Latent Urban Ventures supports ELURP as an important opportunity to unlock housing sites through modest zoning changes that have historically been too costly, uncertain, or time-consuming to pursue through ULURP. Our comments urge DCP and CPC to provide clear, early guidance on eligibility, FAR calculations, affordability requirements, environmental review, existing DOB filings, and the timeline for reaching formal review. With predictable and transparent implementation, ELURP has the potential to become a meaningful housing-production tool—not merely a shorter public-review process. Full comments attached.

  Comment attachment
  Latent_CPC-Comment-Letter.pdf

  Comment added September 8, 2026 11:49am

• Gregory Christopher Baggett

  TO: The City Planning Commission and Department of City Planning

  FROM: A. Philip Randolph Square Neighborhood Alliance

  RE: Public Comment on ELURP/AHAB Implementing Rules

  I am writing as a Harlem resident and a member of Manhattan Community Board 10, and, more to the point, as founder of the A. Philip Randolph Square Neighborhood Alliance; we work at the intersection of land use, housing, and the public realm. These comments reflect the Alliance’s views and not an official position of Community Board 10. We come before you today to comment on the proposed rules implementing the Expedited Land Use Review Procedure (ELURP) under Charter § 197-e and the Affordable Housing Appeals Board (AHAB) under § 197-g.

  The Alliance supports these reforms and wants to see them implemented in a way that actually delivers more housing in Harlem, not just on paper. Our neighborhood has some of the most walkable, transit-rich blocks in the city, and for decades that density potential has gone underused because land use review here has been slow, discretionary, easy for a small number of vocal opponents to stall, and in Harlem underdevelopment has been the default reaction to change. ELURP’s 90-day track and AHAB’s ability to review Council decisions that block affordable housing are exactly the kind of structural fixes that can change housing and densification outcomes in Harlem.
  With that support, we have a few specific concerns about the implementing rules:

  1. Don’t let the Chapter 15 “directly facilitates” test become a loophole. The rule defining when a project “directly facilitates the development of additional affordable housing” for AHAB purposes will determine whether AHAB has any teeth. If that definition is drawn narrowly — for example, requiring a project to be 100% affordable, or excluding mixed-income buildings that still add substantial affordable units and overall density — it will exempt most of the rezonings and text amendments that actually shape a neighborhood like Harlem. We’d urge DCP to define this test based on the net increase in affordable units and density a project enables, not on rigid project-type categories that a Council member could design around.

  2. Keep the new ELURP fees from becoming a barrier for smaller and mission-driven developers. Community-based nonprofits and smaller affordable housing developers are often the ones proposing modest infill and disposition projects in Harlem. If the Subchapter B fee schedule is not scaled to project size, it risks pricing out exactly the kind of small-scale density projects ELURP was designed to speed up, while larger, well-capitalized applicants absorb the cost easily.

  3. Don’t let pre-application requirements eat the time savings. Applying the existing Section 10-01 pre-application process to ELURP filings makes sense for consistency, but DCP should make clear there are firm, published timelines for pre-application review itself. ULURP’s slowness has often come as much from informal pre-certification back-and-forth as from the formal clock. If pre-application review can run indefinitely before the 90-day ELURP clock starts, the reform loses much of its value.

  4. Preserve meaningful advisory input without letting it function as a veto. We want to be clear that we don’t think speeding up review means silencing the Community Board. Harlem’s Board has real local knowledge about infrastructure strain, displacement risk, and where added density is welcome versus where it needs support (schools, open space, anti-displacement protections). ELURP’s concurrent 60-day advisory review preserves that voice; we’d ask that DCP’s implementing guidance make clear CPC decisions should include a substantive written response to Community Board and Borough President recommendations, so “advisory” doesn’t become a euphemism for “ignored.”

  5. Keep environmental and racial equity review intact. Given Harlem’s history with urban renewal and displacement, we’d ask DCP to confirm explicitly in the rule text that ELURP’s shortened timeline does not shorten, undermine, or bypass CEQR or Racial Equity Report obligations. Speed and rigor aren’t mutually exclusive, and skipping either safeguard would undermine trust in the process precisely where it’s most needed.

  Thank you for the opportunity to comment. We would welcome the chance to see a revised draft that addresses the AHAB definition issue and the fee-scaling question in particular, since those two provisions will do the most to determine whether this reform produces real housing in neighborhoods like Harlem.

  Ever,
  Gregory C. Baggett, president
  A. Philip Randolph Square Neighborhood Alliance

  Comment added September 9, 2026 8:38am

• LAYLA LAW-GISIKO

  PUBLIC COMMENT. PROPOSED ELURP and AHAB Rulemaking

  BY LAYLA LAW-GISIKO

  The proposed rules implementing the Expedited Land Use Review Procedure (“ELURP”) and the Affordable Housing Appeals Board (“AHAB”) should be evaluated not simply as administrative housekeeping, but as rules governing when New York City’s ordinary participatory land-use process ceases to apply.

  The voters approved the Charter amendments establishing ELURP, the Affordable Housing Fast Track, and AHAB. The question now is how those powers will be implemented, defined, and bounded.

  The proposed rules create a system in which a land-use application can be administratively classified into a procedure that eliminates City Council review, and once the statutory conditions for ELURP are satisfied, use of that expedited procedure is generally mandatory, not optional.

  The proposed rules themselves state that applications falling within Charter §197-e(b) “must proceed under ELURP.” They also provide that “shall” and “must” denote mandatory requirements. The Charter is even clearer with respect to Affordable Housing Fast Track applications: qualifying applications that ordinarily would be reviewed under §197-c “shall be instead reviewed” pursuant to ELURP.

  That has profound consequences because ordinary ULURP provides a sequential process involving the Community Board, Borough President, City Planning Commission, and City Council. ELURP instead runs the Community Board and Borough President reviews concurrently and generally ends with the City Planning Commission. The proposed rules expressly state: “The City Planning Commission’s decision is final.”

  This is particularly concerning for the Affordable Housing Fast Track under Charter §197-f. Unlike the ordinary 30-percent-density ELURP category, §197-f contains no maximum project acreage, no maximum number of units, no maximum square footage, no maximum project cost, and no exclusion for projects requiring a full Environmental Impact Statement. Indeed, the proposed rules expressly accommodate an EIS for §197-f applications and extend CPC review from 30 to only 45 days.

  The Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses redevelopment demonstrates why this matters. NYCHA’s own planning documents anticipated that the redevelopment would require a zoning map amendment, a Mandatory Inclusionary Housing designation, and a Large Scale General Development special permit, and expressly stated that these approvals would proceed through ULURP, including City Council review. The same project contemplates replacement of 2,056 NYCHA apartments, approximately 3,500 additional homes, roughly 1,000 additional permanently affordable apartments, multiple buildings and community facilities, and 99-year ground leases connected to the federal disposition process. ([New York City Government][1])

  Yet if Manhattan Community District 4 is placed on the forthcoming list of the twelve districts with the lowest rate of affordable-housing development, and the future land-use application meets the other §197-f conditions, the very approvals NYCHA previously described as going through ULURP could instead be required to proceed through ELURP.

  That is not merely acceleration. It is full rerouting that would cut the community entirely out of the process.

  And because the NYCHA disposition and 99-year ground lease are themselves being processed through NYCHA Board and HUD approvals (although State Law Sect 130 Public Housing Law, mandates ULURP prior to disposition and demolition), a large public-housing redevelopment could conceivably combine a major long-term disposition process with a zoning approval process that never reaches the City Council. ([New York City Government][1])

  The proposed rules therefore require considerably stronger safeguards governing scale, aggregation, eligibility determinations, modifications, publication of interpretations, and the treatment of large public projects.

  —

  I. ELURP does not merely shorten ULURP

  The ordinary ULURP structure is deliberately sequential.

  A Community Board receives 60 days. The Borough President then receives 30 days. The City Planning Commission receives 60 days. The City Council then receives approximately 50 days to hold hearings, negotiate, modify, approve, or reject an application. ([New York City Government][2])

  ELURP changes that architecture.

  The Community Board and Borough President receive applications concurrently. They generally have 60 days. CPC then has 30 days—or 45 days for an Affordable Housing Fast Track application requiring an EIS—and CPC’s determination is final.

  The difference is therefore not simply:

  200 days versus 90 days.

  It is:

  **Community Board → Borough President → CPC → City Council**

  versus:

  **Community Board + Borough President → CPC → END.**

  That matters to participatory democracy because participation is not measured solely by whether members of the public are allowed three minutes at a hearing.

  A participatory land-use system also depends upon multiple decision points, including the involvement of the City Council Member representing an area.

  It permits one public institution to react to another. A Borough President can review a Community Board’s recommendation. The Council can examine CPC’s decision. Council members can conduct hearings, request information, negotiate modifications, develop conditions, and be held politically accountable by voters for the final result.

  ELURP eliminates the principal elected legislative stage.

  The Community Board remains advisory. The Borough President remains advisory. CPC, a non-elected body, becomes final.

  The 2025 Charter Revision Commission itself described the effect plainly: under ELURP, CPC’s decision would be final, with “no subsequent review by the Mayor or the City Council.”

  That is a transfer of decision-making authority, not simply an improvement in administrative efficiency.

  The rules must provide safeguards so that final decisions are made according to clear guidelines.

  —

  II. Once an application qualifies, ELURP is generally mandatory

  This feature deserves far more attention.

  The proposed rules do not establish an expedited process that an applicant may simply elect to use.

  Section 14-02 states that applications within the specified categories that otherwise would fall under §197-c “shall be reviewed pursuant to the expedited review procedure.” The Statement of Basis and Purpose is even more explicit: land-use actions within §197-e(b) “must proceed under ELURP.”

  For the Affordable Housing Fast Track, Charter §197-f(b) says applications satisfying the enumerated conditions “shall be instead reviewed” through ELURP. ([American Legal Publishing][3])

  There is no general provision allowing a Community Board, affected Council member, Borough President, or even the applicant to say:

  What if a project technically qualifies, but its scale and complexity warrant ordinary ULURP?

  Once the legal classification is made, the classification determines the democratic process.

  There is one important exception. Charter §197-e(l)(2), repeated in proposed Rule §14-02(e), provides that an ELURP application filed in conjunction with an application remaining subject to §197-c may adhere to ordinary ULURP. ([American Legal Publishing][4])

  That exception is significant, but it creates another policy problem.

  It means the procedural route can depend upon how a large development is packaged into applications.

  If every required action is treated as qualifying under §197-f, the Charter says those actions shall instead use ELURP.

  If an ELURP action is joined to a genuinely non-ELURP §197-c action, the package may remain in ULURP.

  The proposed rules contain no meaningful anti-segmentation standard explaining when related phases, parcels, zoning actions, special permits, or applications must be treated as one project for determining the appropriate review procedure.

  The procedure should not turn on strategic application architecture.

  —

  III. The Affordable Housing Fast Track creates the large-project problem

  The ordinary density-based ELURP provision is at least facially directed toward smaller changes. For certain medium- and higher-density rezonings, the maximum residential floor-area increase is capped at 30 percent, and, with the exception of Affordable Housing Fast Track applications, projects requiring an EIS are excluded.

  But §197-f is fundamentally different.

  A project qualifies if, among other things, the property is in one of the twelve designated community districts; the property is or would become subject to MIH or an equivalent mandatory affordability program; the application is filed within the statutory window; and DCP confirms that “a primary purpose” of the application is to facilitate additional housing and affordable housing. ([American Legal Publishing][3])

  There is no corresponding maximum:

  acreage;

  number of buildings;

  number of apartments;

  amount of floor area;

  market-rate component;

  capital value;

  duration of construction; or

  degree of physical transformation.

  Nor does an EIS disqualify the project.

  The proposed rule expressly provides that the ordinary EIS prohibition does not apply to applications meeting §197-f. For those projects, a Notice of Acceptance of a Draft EIS can satisfy the environmental-review certification requirement, and CPC merely receives 45 days rather than 30.

  This produces a striking result.

  A project can be environmentally consequential enough to require a full EIS and still be procedurally treated as sufficiently appropriate for an expedited land-use process that eliminates Council review.

  The rules themselves underscore the unresolved scale problem in another way. The proposed amendments make the land-use fee schedule applicable to both §197-c and §197-e applications, while retaining a “Supplemental Fee for Large Projects” covering developments from 500,000 square feet through 2.5 million square feet and above.

  The fee provision does not itself make such a project ELURP-eligible. But it highlights the fundamental drafting problem: nothing in the proposed rules creates an absolute project-size safeguard for Affordable Housing Fast Track applications.

  —

  IV. The undefined “primary purpose” test gives DCP enormous gatekeeping power

  For §197-f applications, DCP may not certify the application until it determines that “a primary purpose” is facilitating additional housing and affordable housing.

  But the proposed rules provide no quantitative test for making that determination.

  They do not say that affordable housing must constitute a particular percentage of the new units.

  They do not establish a minimum affordable floor-area ratio.

  They do not explain how DCP should assess a project containing thousands of market-rate apartments alongside affordable housing.

  They do not distinguish between housing as one major component of a complex redevelopment and housing as the predominant purpose of the development.

  That omission matters because the “primary purpose” determination is not merely descriptive.

  It can determine whether the Council has jurisdiction to vote.

  —

  V. Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea demonstrates the problem

  The Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea redevelopment is precisely the type of project that exposes the weakness of a process built without a meaningful scale test.

  NYCHA currently describes the plan as replacing all 2,056 existing NYCHA apartments and constructing approximately 3,500 additional homes, including approximately 1,000 new permanently affordable apartments, together with healthcare facilities, community centers, retail, grocery space, and outdoor facilities. ([New York City Government][5])

  This is not a small infill development.

  It is a multi-campus, multi-phase transformation of a substantial portion of West Chelsea.

  NYCHA’s Final Scope of Work identifies the anticipated local land-use approvals as:

  1. a zoning map amendment permitting up to 12 FAR along avenues and 8 FAR in midblocks;
  2. a zoning text amendment designating the sites as Mandatory Inclusionary Housing Areas; and
  3. a Large Scale General Development special permit allowing, among other things, distribution of floor area without regard to zoning-lot lines or district boundaries and modifications to yards, courts, building separation, height and setback requirements. ([New York City Government][1])

  Most importantly, that document expressly states:

  – “These land use approvals are subject to New York City’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP).”

  It then describes the expected four levels of review, including a City Council review and vote. ([New York City Government][1])

  That was the procedural framework under which the project was publicly described.

  The Charter has since changed.

  How FEC could be rerouted

  Charter §197-f requires DCP to identify, by October 1, 2026 and every five years thereafter, the twelve community districts with the lowest rate of affordable-housing development. The first eligibility period begins January 1 following publication of that list. ([American Legal Publishing][6])

  If Manhattan Community District 4 is on that list, a future FEC land-use application would already appear capable of satisfying several important elements of §197-f.

  The project documents propose making the sites Mandatory Inclusionary Housing Areas. The development undeniably includes substantial additional housing and affordable housing. And its anticipated zoning and special-permit approvals are exactly the kinds of approvals that otherwise fall under §197-c. ([New York City Government][1])

  DCP would then have to determine that a primary purpose of the application is facilitating additional housing and affordable housing.

  If those statutory conditions are met, the Charter does not say that the project **may request** Affordable Housing Fast Track treatment.

  It says the application **“shall be instead reviewed”** through ELURP. ([American Legal Publishing][3])

  Thus a major redevelopment initially described to residents and the public as proceeding through ULURP could potentially be rerouted before final land-use review into a process ending at CPC.

  The existence of the EIS would not prevent that result because §197-f applications are expressly exempted from the general EIS exclusion.

  That is precisely why the lack of a megaproject safeguard matters.

  —

  VI. The disposition makes the FEC example even more consequential

  FEC also demonstrates why large public projects require special consideration.

  NYCHA’s project documents treat the disposition of the public-housing property and the City’s zoning review as separate approval tracks.

  The Final Scope states that NYCHA intends to seek federal RAD/Section 18 approvals and that NYCHA Board approval would include one or more 99-year ground leases to the PACT partner, with the disposition executed pursuant to HUD approvals. The document separately identifies the zoning map amendment, MIH amendment, and LSGD special permit as the local land-use approvals. ([New York City Government][1])

  The concern is not that the proposed ELURP provision for small City-property dispositions itself applies to FEC. That provision is narrowly written for certain City-owned parcels and other specified transactions.

  The concern is instead the combined architecture.

  A major NYCHA redevelopment can have:

  HUD/NYCHA disposition and 99-year ground-lease approvals on one track

  while its rezoning and special permits proceed on a separate City land-use track.

  If that City land-use track is subsequently converted from ULURP to §197-f ELURP, the Council could lose its land-use vote even though the project involves an extraordinary long-term redevelopment of public-housing land.

  In practical terms, the result could be that neither the 99-year ground-lease decision nor the zoning approval receives the kind of full Council land-use review that the public reasonably associates with a redevelopment of this magnitude.

  That outcome should be confronted directly in these rules rather than discovered after an application has been certified.

  —

  VII. The rules contain additional procedural loopholes

  The scale problem is compounded by several drafting choices.

  CPC may make a “minor modification” to an ELURP application without the referral required for a larger modification, but the proposed rules do not define “minor.” Because CPC is the final decision-maker, the difference between minor and major determines whether Community Boards and Borough Presidents get another opportunity to review a changed proposal.

  Section 14-09 goes further. It provides that ambiguities in the rules are to be “definitively interpreted” in written opinions of the Director of City Planning. The rule contains no explicit requirement that every such opinion be contemporaneously posted in a searchable public repository.

  This is particularly troubling because these interpretations could concern the boundary between ULURP and ELURP.

  The agency administering the expedited system should not develop a body of decisive interpretive precedent that is difficult for Community Boards, elected officials, applicants, journalists, or the public to locate.

  And the already-adopted Affordable Housing Fast Track methodology adds another layer of finality: the Director’s determination of the twelve eligible community districts is declared final, and later corrections to the underlying data do not invalidate that list or decisions relying upon it. ([American Legal Publishing][7])

  The cumulative result is substantial administrative power over who enters the expedited system, when the clock begins, what ambiguities mean, and whether the Council participates at all.

  —

  VIII. AHAB creates a second route around ordinary Council finality

  Even if a large project does not qualify for §197-f and therefore remains in ordinary ULURP, the proposed AHAB rules create another significant change.

  AHAB consists of the Mayor, Council Speaker, and affected Borough President or their designees. If the Council rejects or modifies an eligible affordable-housing application, the applicant itself can trigger AHAB review within five days. The Board must then hold a public meeting and take final action within fifteen days of the request, with as little as five days’ public notice.

  The proposed rules define eligible applications broadly. They can include applications involving new MIH, land previously subject to MIH, an Affordable Housing Building with a government agency as applicant or co-applicant, or an Affordable Housing Building already subject to binding affordability restrictions. An “Affordable Housing Building” need contain only “one or more” income-restricted dwelling units.

  For a project such as FEC, which proposes MIH and substantial affordable housing, this means the alternatives may be:

  **ELURP → no Council vote**

  or, if ordinary ULURP applies:

  **Council vote → potential AHAB appeal.**

  The Council therefore loses final authority through two different mechanisms.

  —

  ## IX. Why this undermines participatory democracy

  The policy problem is not that every project must take as long as possible.

  Nor is it that affordable housing should not receive priority.

  The problem is that procedural speed has been substituted for a theory of proportional review.

  A two-block rezoning and a decade-long redevelopment of thousands of homes do not implicate the same public interests.

  A project involving private property and a project involving public-housing land do not raise the same fiduciary or democratic questions.

  A project requiring a Negative Declaration and a project requiring an Environmental Impact Statement do not present the same level of complexity.

  Yet §197-f can place all of them into essentially the same final land-use structure.

  And because ELURP is mandatory once the qualifying criteria are met, this is not merely an option available where all stakeholders agree that expedited review is appropriate.

  It can operate **against the wishes of the affected community, the Community Board, the Borough President, and the local Council member.**

  The Community Board still speaks.

  The Borough President still speaks.

  But neither decides.

  And the institution whose members are directly elected from the affected neighborhood may never vote.

  That is a meaningful contraction of participatory government.

  —

  X. Recommended changes

  Before adopting the rules, CPC and DCP should address the loopholes that remain within their rulemaking authority and clearly identify any deficiencies that can only be corrected through Charter amendment.

  1. Define “primary purpose.” Establish objective criteria for §197-f determinations, including the relationship between affordable housing, total residential development, market-rate development, commercial uses, and the overall project.

  2. Adopt an aggregation and anti-segmentation rule. Related phases, parcels, rezonings, text amendments, and special permits forming one redevelopment plan should be evaluated together for procedural eligibility.

  3. Require a public ELURP eligibility determination before certification. Every application should have a memorandum identifying the precise Charter provision relied upon, project acreage, existing and proposed floor area, unit counts, affordable-unit counts, environmental-review status, every related discretionary action, and the reasons ordinary ULURP does or does not apply.

  4. Create heightened disclosure for large public projects and NYCHA property. The public should receive a single document identifying every City, State, federal, disposition, financing, zoning, ground-lease, and development approval and specifying which elected body, if any, votes on each.

  5. Define “minor modification.” A final CPC should not be able to determine the scope of its own power to alter an application without objective standards.

  6. Publish every Director interpretation. Every written opinion under §14-09 should be posted immediately in a permanent, indexed and searchable online repository.

  7. Require aggregation of the 30-percent test. The rule should prevent a large rezoning from satisfying a supposedly modest threshold merely through multiple zoning districts or project components.

  8. Address megaprojects explicitly. To the extent CPC concludes that the Charter prevents it from excluding large §197-f projects by rule, it should say so plainly. The City should then consider whether the Charter requires amendment to preserve ordinary ULURP for projects above an objective threshold, for example, projects involving an EIS, major public land, very large acreage, or development measured in millions of square feet.

  —

  ## Conclusion

  The central flaw in the proposed implementation is not that ELURP exists.

  It is that the rules do not adequately distinguish expedited housing development from expedited megaproject governance.

  The Charter Revision Commission described ELURP as a way to simplify review of modest projects and preserve ordinary review for larger ones.

  Yet the implementation now before CPC creates a pathway under which a project involving thousands of apartments, major rezoning, an EIS, public-housing land, long-term ground leases, multiple phases, and billions of dollars of development can potentially reach exactly the same endpoint:

  60 days of advisory review, followed by CPC, with no City Council vote.

  Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea makes the issue concrete. NYCHA publicly described its anticipated rezoning and LSGD approvals as going through ULURP and receiving a Council vote. ([New York City Government][1]) If the project later satisfies §197-f, the new Charter says those qualifying applications **shall instead** proceed under ELURP. The proposed rules provide no large-project exception, and an EIS does not prevent Affordable Housing Fast Track treatment. ([American Legal Publishing][3])

  That means procedural expectations surrounding a major public redevelopment can change **after years of planning and environmental review but before the land-use application is finally certified.**

  For projects of this magnitude, that is not simply expedited review.

  It is a reassignment of governmental authority.

  And where the reassignment is mandatory, the standards determining eligibility must be exceptionally narrow, objective, transparent, and resistant to manipulation.

  The City should not allow rules designed to accelerate housing production to become rules by which large-scale redevelopment can be engineered around the ordinary democratic land-use process.

  [1]: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nycha/downloads/pdf/fsow-508.pdf “FSOW”
  [2]: https://www.nyc.gov/html/mancb10/downloads/pdf/ulurp_info.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com “rules include provisions relating to the notice and conduct of a Community Board public hearing. ULURP provisions also govern the quorum, vote and content for a Community Board recommendation. If a Community Board fails to act within its time limit or waives its right to act, the application proceeds to the next level of review.”
  [3]: https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/newyorkcity/latest/NYCcharter/0-0-0-7598 “Section 197-f. Affordable housing fast track.”
  [4]: https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/newyorkcity/latest/NYCcharter/0-0-0-873?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Section 197-e. Expedited land use review procedure.”
  [5]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nycha/about/pact/chelsea-fulton.page “Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Redevelopment Project”
  [6]: https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/newyorkcity/latest/NYCcharter/0-0-0-7598?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Section 197-f. Affordable housing fast track.”
  [7]: https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/newyorkcity/latest/NYCrules/0-0-0-155229?utm_source=chatgpt.com “§ 13-06 Determination and Posting of Community District List.”

  Comment added September 9, 2026 1:13pm

• Barak Wrobel

  September 9, 2026

  City Planning Commission
  c/o Calendar Information Office
  120 Broadway, 31st Floor
  New York, NY 10271
  Via [email protected] and rules.cityofnewyork.us

  Re: Comments on Proposed Rules — Expedited Land Use Review Procedure and Affordable Housing Appeals Board (proposed 62 RCNY Chapters 14 and 15); Public Hearing September 9, 2026

  Dear Chair Sherman and Members of the Commission:

  I submit these comments in my individual capacity as a land use attorney with approximately twenty years of experience in New York City zoning, including eight years in City service and twelve in private practice. They are directed to proposed Chapter 15, and specifically to the eligibility standard in proposed § 15-05 and the notice and request procedure in proposed § 15-06, which together determine whether and when a Council disapproval or modification may be reviewed by the Affordable Housing Appeals Board under Charter § 197-g.

  The proposed rule is well constructed. Section 15-05 ties Board jurisdiction to applications that involve Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, a governmental applicant or co-applicant, or an Affordable Housing Building “subject to binding restrictions at the time of land use approval,” and the Statement of Basis and Purpose correctly explains that private applications relying on incentives alone, without a binding restriction, do not directly facilitate affordable housing within the meaning of the Charter. I do not ask the Commission to change that standard. I offer two comments intended to make it administrable and predictable in the circumstances where it will actually be applied.

  1. Section 15-05(d) should state that a restrictive declaration required as a condition of the Commission’s approval satisfies the “at the time of land use approval” requirement.

  Section 15-05(d) reaches an Affordable Housing Building “subject to binding restrictions at the time of land use approval,” and § 15-01 defines an Affordable Housing Building by reference to a regulatory agreement, restrictive declaration, or similar instrument with a governmental entity. For a private applicant that commits to affordable housing outside MIH — for example, by binding itself to Universal Affordability Preference floor area — the question is what instrument can satisfy that definition at the land use stage, and when it must be in place.

  In practice a restrictive declaration is sometimes executed and recorded before the Commission votes, but at least as often the Commission reports approve applications on the condition that a declaration be recorded before the approval is effective or before permits issue. Both practices are long-standing and both produce a binding restriction. Under the second practice, however, the declaration is not of record on the day the Commission acts. An applicant in that position cannot be certain whether its building is “subject to binding restrictions at the time of land use approval” within the meaning of § 15-05(d), and the Council, when it takes up the application, will have an incentive to argue that it is not.

  A related question arises from the sequence of the instruments themselves. For a project using the Universal Affordability Preference, the affordability instrument is HPD’s UAP restrictive declaration, which HPD approves only on the basis of DOB-ready plans and a DOB job number. It cannot exist at the land use application stage, because it cannot be prepared until the project is designed to a level of detail that a ULURP application does not require and the Commission does not review. The question, then, is whether the Department will accept a new declaration, created for this purpose at the time of land use approval and running in favor of the City, that binds the owner to provide the UAP floor area and to execute HPD’s UAP restrictive declaration when the project reaches that stage — in lieu of the HPD declaration itself — as the “binding restriction” that qualifies the project under § 15-05(d). Section 15-01 defines an Affordable Housing Building by reference to “a regulatory agreement, restrictive declaration, or other similar instrument” with a governmental entity, and a declaration of that kind fits the words. But because it would be a commitment to execute HPD’s instrument rather than that instrument itself, and because it would be a new instrument rather than one the Department has previously accepted, applicants cannot assume the answer. If the answer is no, no private UAP project can qualify under § 15-05(d), because the instrument the rule appears to contemplate cannot be produced at the time the rule requires it.

  The Charter does not require the narrower reading. As the Statement of Basis and Purpose notes, § 197-g(b)(2) reaches applications that directly facilitate affordable housing “including, but not limited to” those implementing MIH; an application the Commission has approved subject to a recorded affordability restriction directly facilitates affordable housing whether the recording precedes or follows the vote by a few weeks. I recommend that the Commission:

  (a) Amend § 15-05(d) to read, in substance: “the development of an Affordable Housing Building subject to binding restrictions at the time of land use approval, including conditioning Commission approval or the issuance of any permit thereunder on a to be executed and recorded regulatory agreement.”

  (b) Provide, in § 15-05 or § 15-06, that where the Commission’s report identifies an application as satisfying § 15-05 and states the instrument and the condition on which that determination rests, the report is conclusive for purposes of the Department’s notice under § 15-06.

  (c) Amend § 15-01 to state that “Affordable Housing Building” includes a building for which a restrictive declaration in favor of the City, executed and recorded at or as a condition of the land use approval, commits the owner to provide affordable floor area under the Universal Affordability Preference or another affordable housing provision of the Zoning Resolution and to execute the HPD restrictive declaration required thereunder, notwithstanding that the HPD instrument has not been executed at the time of land use approval; and state the form of such declaration or authorize the Department to prescribe it.

  (d) Specify the minimum content of a qualifying declaration — parties, the affordable floor area or unit count committed, the affordability term, the obligation to execute the HPD restrictive declaration, and the recording requirement — so that the Department is not evaluating bespoke declarations for the first time under the five-day clock in § 15-06.

  2. The phrase “involve or relate to” in § 15-05(a) and (b) should be defined, and the eligibility determination should be made and published before the Council acts, not after.

  Section 15-05(b) extends eligibility to applications that “involve or relate to” parcels previously made subject to MIH. The Basis and Purpose explains the policy — a follow-up action on an MIH-mapped site may facilitate affordable housing as much as the original mapping did — and I agree with it. But the rule does not say whether a subsequent action on an MIH parcel qualifies when the action itself does not touch the affordable component: a bulk special permit, a parking waiver, a City Map change, or a modification of a prior restrictive declaration on a site whose MIH obligation is already fixed. The Department will read the phrase broadly and the Council narrowly, and the first contested appeal will be litigated over it.

  The procedure compounds the problem. Section 15-06(a) requires the Department, “[f]ollowing an action by the City Council eligible for review by the Board,” to notify the Board members and the applicant of that action “as soon as practicable, and in no case later than one day after such action,” and § 15-06(b) allows the applicant or any two Board members to request review within five days of the Council’s action. The notice obligation is thus triggered only by an eligible action, which means the Department must decide whether the action was eligible under §§ 15-04 and 15-05 before it knows whether notice is owed. Yet Chapter 15 nowhere assigns that determination to anyone or fixes when it is made. By default it falls to the Department, after the Council has voted, at the moment of maximum political pressure. And because the five-day request period in § 15-06(b) runs from the Council action rather than from the notice, an applicant whose application the Department considers ineligible receives nothing at all: it is not told that the Department has so concluded, has no means under the rule to contest that conclusion, and watches the request period expire while it waits. An applicant should not learn whether it has recourse to the Board at the end of the process. It should know at the beginning — before it decides how to structure its application, what to commit to, and how to negotiate with the Council — and the Council should know, when it takes up the application, whether its disapproval will be final. I recommend that the Commission:

  (a) Define “involve or relate to” in § 15-01 to mean any application, including a subsequent or related application, for a land use action on a zoning lot or portion thereof that is or would become subject to MIH, irrespective of whether the application itself modifies the affordable housing requirement, provided the application facilitates the development of housing on that zoning lot.

  (b) Add a provision requiring the Department to make a written determination under § 15-05 no later than certification pursuant to Charter § 197-c(c) (or, for non-ULURP applications, no later than referral), and permitting an applicant to request that determination earlier, during pre-application review, on the basis of the application as proposed. The determination should be stated in the certification and carried into the Commission’s report, updated as necessary to reflect a declaration executed or required as a condition of approval under Comment 1.

  (c) Conform § 15-06 so that the Department’s post-Council notice identifies an action already determined to be eligible at certification, and provide that where an application was determined eligible at certification and the Council disapproves or modifies it, notice under § 15-06(a) is mandatory and the applicant’s five-day period runs from receipt of that notice.

  The § 15-05 analysis turns on facts that are fixed by the time of certification — whether MIH is being mapped or already applies, who the applicant is, and what instrument binds the affordable housing — so making the determination then imposes no additional burden on the Department. It removes a source of dispute that would otherwise arise in every appeal, and it lets applicants and the Council alike proceed knowing the rules of the process before it starts.

  Conclusion

  Chapter 15 will determine whether the Affordable Housing Appeals Board operates as a predictable safeguard or as a case-by-case contest over jurisdiction. Confirming that a purpose-built declaration executed at or as a condition of approval satisfies § 15-05(d), and requiring the eligibility determination to be made no later than certification and stated in the Commission’s report, would go a long way toward the former. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these comments with Department staff.

  Respectfully submitted,

  Barak Wrobel

  Comment attachment
  AHAB_Rule_Comments_Wrobel544868909.1.docx

  Comment added September 9, 2026 5:55pm

• Susan Palmer Marshall

  Written Testimony — ELURP and AHAB Proposed Rules — Susan Marshall

  Dear Chair and Commissioners:

  I am writing as a New York City resident and as someone who has been deeply involved in neighborhood and land-use issues in Chelsea. I currently serve as President of the Council of Chelsea Block Associations (CCBA) and as a Director of the 300 West 18th & 19th Streets Block Association. I am submitting these comments in my individual capacity as a city resident, and not on behalf of either organization.

  I live directly across the street from Fulton Houses. My perspective on land-use policy is therefore informed both by living in a neighborhood experiencing significant development pressures and by years of participating in community review of projects that can have substantial impacts on surrounding residents.

  I support the City’s efforts to produce more affordable housing and to eliminate unnecessary delay and bureaucracy in the land-use process. At the same time, I am concerned that an expedited process must not become a process in which meaningful community participation and accountability are diminished.

  I recognize that the underlying Charter amendments establishing ELURP and AHAB were approved by voters in November 2025. My concern today is with how those changes are implemented through these rules—and, in particular, whether the implementation preserves meaningful public participation, local knowledge, transparency, and accountability in land-use decision-making.

  The proposed ELURP process retains Community Board and Borough President review, but those reviews remain advisory, while the City Planning Commission’s subsequent decision is final. That makes it especially important that the Community Board process be more than a procedural step that an application passes through on its way to a final decision.

  Community Boards are one of the principal places where the City’s land-use process incorporates the knowledge and experience of people who actually live in affected neighborhoods. They hear from residents, property owners, tenants, civic organizations, and other stakeholders who understand the cumulative and often very local consequences of development. That information may not be apparent from an application, a planning analysis, or an environmental review.

  For that reason, I urge the Commission to ensure that the rules preserve the substance of community participation, not simply its existence on the timeline. Community Boards should have clear, timely information about applications; adequate opportunity to understand and discuss them publicly; and assurance that their recommendations and the issues they raise will be meaningfully considered as part of the CPC’s final decision.

  I am also concerned about the broader shift in the balance of authority that these changes represent. Expediting review may be appropriate for genuinely modest projects, but the designation of an action as eligible for an expedited process should not itself become a mechanism for reducing public scrutiny of decisions with significant neighborhood consequences. The rules should be clear and narrowly applied, with transparency about why an application qualifies for ELURP and what avenues of public review remain available.

  The same principle applies to AHAB. Affordable housing is an urgent and essential citywide priority, but it should not be framed as being in opposition to meaningful democratic land-use review. We should be able to pursue both: building the affordable housing New Yorkers need and maintaining a land-use process in which affected communities, boroughwide interests, and citywide interests are all able to be heard and considered.

  The purpose of an expedited process should be to eliminate unnecessary delay—not to diminish the ability of communities to understand, evaluate, and respond to decisions that will shape their neighborhoods.

  I therefore urge the Commission to adopt rules that preserve meaningful community participation, transparency, and accountability as these new Charter provisions are implemented.

  Thank you for considering my comments.

  Sincerely,
  Susan Palmer Marshall
  Chelsea Resident

  Comment attachment
  Written-Testimony-—-ELURP-and-AHAB-Proposed-Rules-—-Susan-Marshall_09.09.26.pdf

  Comment added September 9, 2026 5:56pm