Dive Brief: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration on Thursday unveiled 12 neighborhoods selected for the city’s “fast track” initiative to increase and more evenly distribute affordable housing development throughout the city.
Rezoning proposals aimed at creating affordable housing in the 12 neighborhoods call for reducing the land use review process to 90 days compared with the typical seven-month review period, starting Jan. 1, 2027.
The 12 neighborhoods combined produced 724 of the 63,870 affordable homes — just 1.1% of the city’s new affordable housing — in the past five years, according to the city.
Dive Insight: New York City last year recorded a historically low housing vacancy rate of just 1.4%.
New York City voters approved a number of measures to speed up housing production in November 2025, including a fast-track program to address the uneven distribution of affordable housing development in the city.