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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 23h

What must we assume for the Borough President's decision to be right?

1. Market-rate housing has some benefit
2. Affordable housing (as in proposal) has some benefit
3. Shadows have manageable costs (or massing can be adjusted)

I'll let you decide!

Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 23h

What must we assume for the community board decision to be the right one?

1. The value of market housing is small
2. The value of the affordable housing is small
2. The developer can profitably build with the higher affordability requirements
3. Shadows are highly harmful

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 23h

Key concerns by CB:

- Insufficient affordability requirements. Request: 30% of units for 40% of AMI or less
- Shadows on public school (recommendation: height should be <=60 ft)

The approval by BP mentions suggest some changes to limit shadows and mentions filtering effects (image below)

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 23h

Let dive more into this 2025 rezoning, just east of the botanic garden in Brooklyn: 73-97 Empire Boulevard

- Current: One-story retail
- Proposal: 261 Units, 52 affordable
- Community Board (CB): Disapprove, recommending two-floor commercial
- Borough president (BP): Approve

(image DHClegal.com)

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 1d

New housing in NYC: Four large boroughs, four different paths.

Manhattan is declining, Bronx and Queens are ascending.

This shows the status of units in development, removing buildings without change in status in the last five years.

Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 1d

This from a website of people who opposed this rezoning, so this is "success" to them.

Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 1d

261 residential units (78 rent stabilized) become 0 residential units, in Crown Heights.

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 2d

Yet another advantage of NYC not using metered parking: The friendships it creates!

Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 3d

It's not just zoning. There's so many other forms of code that could be ... better

See: Sydney Apartment guide (found by db_econ), part 4 (www.planning.nsw.gov.au/policy-and-l...)

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 3d

Thank you for your service. I've included you in this starter pack.

bsky.app/starter-pack...

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 3d

I don't know how the district came about.

A possible scenario: If neighbors don't want anything new, they don't have to say that. They instead say "let's set FAR at what's used nearby".

From that moment on, any new development can only happen with neighborhood approval.

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 3d

This block around the museum are R7A with FAR of 4.0, and that happens to be basically what was built more than 100 years ago, see image below (showing % of FAR used).

And if the available FAR is used around 100%, there's zero incentive to develop anything new.

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 3d

This mid-rise neighborhood had a lot of construction before 1900.

But why didn't it change since then?

Is it a historic district? No.
Is it in a low-demand neighborhood? Super-duper no

The real answer: It has the "right" zoning Floor-Area-Ratio, and that stops development.

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 3d

Why does NYC have neighborhoods with lots of old buildings? Let me introduce you to "indirect historic districts".

I recently went to the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. Nothing much has changed nearby since the 1900s.

Note: Chart from 1900 to 1940 (!!)

Why? 🧵

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 4d

Many people believe that NYC is a city of apartment buildings, but that's just not true.

There's around 766,000 residential lots with buildings on them.

78% (594,000) have 1-2 units.

The median floor-area-ratio in the city 1.0, which corresponds to 1-2 floors.

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 5d

And yes, this lacks nuance.

In *theory* we might be able to build barebones dense housing at much smaller cost, run by government or NGOs.

But (at least in the US) there’s few clear success stories of this and lots of failures where costs are higher than market.

Let me know if you disagree!

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 5d

We can bring down the final rent people pay, through vouchers, MIH, or other policies (not saying all these policies are good necessarily).

But even such subsidized housing would and should still look roughly the same. That "luxury housing"? That's just reasonable housing in a high-demand location.

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 5d

In high-demand locations, the optimal space usage is have tall buildings with small apartments and lots of amenities

Real estate agents know how to sell this as "luxury housing" because that sounds better than "smaller than a townhouse".

That housing is expensive mainly because of its location!

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 5d

"Luxury Housing" isn't a real thing

It's a marketing term.

These are usually small-ish apartments, just with nice amenities.

There's no magic "non-luxury housing" that costs much less, while still being desirable to live in.

(inspired by @resnikoff.bsky.social)

🧵

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 7d

Also note that the later-passed LL97 proscribes emissions targets (-40% for 2030 and -80% for 2050). Hitting those targets will likely require electrifying. I'll look more into LL97 for details.

Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 7d

Why so much regulation around gas in NYC?

In NYC, most heating uses steam, and most steam heaters use gas.

Local Law 84 gives us data on fossil fuel type for big buildings: More than 70% of buildings use gas and not oil, and only 10% of buildings use neither gas nor oil.

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 8d

Lots of talk about gas and boilers in NYC recently. Some context.

80% of residential buildings are heated by steam (per "demystifying steam" report from 2019).

And many of these boilers are old, around 15% are older than 40 years. Graph created by me, using LL87 dataset.

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 10d

This is a crucial point: Even omitting the cost, this regulation could end up *increasing* risks.

There was no attempt to provide any data here.
There is also no clear way to measure impact, since this uses no permits.

So we won’t even be able to find out if this worked.

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 11d

Are we running out of surface parking lots in NYC?

Do not worry! There's around 8,000 of them left.

(circle area proportional to lot area).

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Chris Goldammer @floorarearatio.bsky.social · 12d

386 parking lots turned into 17,969 housing units (NYC, 2018-2024).

I've failed you by not providing a map, as I should.

Circle area proportional to building area.

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