NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Eric Adams today announced that — since issuing his historic Executive Order 43 in August 2024 requiring city agencies to review their portfolios and identify potential city-owned sites for housing — the Adams administration has advanced plans for 9,750 new homes across 11 properties. After releasing his executive order, Mayor Adams established the City Housing Activation Task Force (CHAT) to bring together representatives from over 20 city agencies, select promising city-owned locations for housing, and help create homes on those sites.
The 11 projects advanced through CHAT include two new projects on city-owned sites unveiled for the first time today. Mayor Adams announced that his administration will begin public engagement and issue requests for proposals (RFPs) to create over 900 new homes at 390 Kent Avenue in Brooklyn as well as approximately 800 new homes at 1880 First Avenue in Manhattan; at least a quarter of the housing on each site will be affordable. Today’s announcement reinforces Mayor Adams’ ongoing commitment to creating new homes across the entire city, with over 426,000 homes already created, preserved, or planned through the Adams administration’s efforts to date. Today’s announcement also kicks off Mayor Adams’ “Affordable Autumn” initiative, a series of announcements throughout the season focused on the Adams administration’s work to put money back into the pockets of working-class New Yorkers and create a more affordable city.
“Where past administrations saw vacant lots and old office buildings, our administration saw housing. That’s why we issued a historic executive order requiring every agency to look for places where we could build homes and advanced nearly 10,000 new homes on city sites over the past year alone,” said Mayor Adams. “We have been clear that the only way out of our housing crisis is to build more housing, and that is exactly what we are doing. From creative initiatives like this one to ambitious plans like ‘City of Yes,’ our administration is using every tool we have to create the homes that New Yorkers need and proving we are the most pro-housing administration in city history.”
“In just one year since Mayor Adams’ executive order creating the City Housing Activation Task Force, we are already advancing nearly 10,000 new homes on city-owned properties,” said Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce Adolfo Carrion, Jr. “The two sites we are announcing today not only add to that accomplishment; they show that every city agency is dedicated to addressing our housing crisis, including the folks at DOT who keep us moving, at DCAS who keep the city running smoothly, and at NYC Health + Hospitals who keep us healthy. It is truly all hands on deck for housing.”
In the coming months, the Adams administration will begin the public engagement process to redevelop both the 390 Kent Avenue property and the 1880 First Avenue property into new housing. Ultimately, the city will issue two RFPs to create at least 1,700 homes across both locations through the CHAT initiative.
First, at 390 Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, the Adams administration will redevelop one of Williamsburg’s only remaining underutilized waterfront sites into 900 new units of housing, at least a quarter of which will be affordable. The 72-year-old building, which requires extensive repairs, currently houses operations by the New York City Department of Transportation and the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services. As part of the redevelopment of the site, the city will not only create new housing, but address its aging building stock by replacing the facility and provide public open space along the waterfront. Second, at 1880 First Avenue in Manhattan, the Adams administration will seek to redevelop a city-owned parking lot across from NYC Health + Hospitals (H+H) Metropolitan to create approximately 800 new homes, at least a quarter of which will be affordable; the project builds on the work of “Housing for Health,” which connects patients experiencing homelessness to permanent housing. Parking access for city employees who currently use the lot will remain continuous throughout construction and project completion.
With the two new projects announced today, the Adams administration is now actively advancing nearly 10,000 new homes across 11 city-owned sites through CHAT. These include:
- 390 Kent Avenue: This year, the Adams administration will begin the public engagement process, and then will ultimately issue an RFP to create over 900 new homes on the Williamsburg waterfront.
- 1880 First Avenue: Next year, the Adams administration will begin the public engagement process, and then will ultimately issue an RFP to create approximately 800 new homes in East Harlem on a parking lot next to Metropolitan Hospital.
- Grand Concourse Library: This past January, the Adams administration issued an RFP to redevelop the Grand Concourse Library in the Bronx with a brand-new library and 100-percent affordable housing. The administration is now actively reviewing proposals for the project, which is part of the city’s Living Library initiative to build more homes and libraries together.
- Gansevoort Square: This past January, the Adams administration issued an RFP to create up to 600 units of mixed-income housing and ground-floor retail space at Gansevoort Square.
- Coney Island West Parcel A: This past February, the Adams administration issued an RFP to create around 500 units of housing and ground-floor retail space across an 80,000-square-foot city-owned site located on Surf Avenue between West 21st and West 22nd Streets, west of the iconic Coney Island Amusement District.
- 100 Gold Street: This past March, the Adams administration issued an RFP to replace a deteriorating city-owned office building near City Hall with over 1,000 mixed-income homes.
- 395 Flatbush Avenue Extension: This past August, the Adams administration began public review on a plan to create over 1,200 new homes in the heart of Downtown Brooklyn.
- Hunter’s Point South Parcel E: This past June, the Adams administration issued an RFP to redevelop a previously-industrial site in Hunter’s Point South, Queens as approximately 900 new homes.
- Flushing Airfield: This past July, Mayor Adams unveiled a sweeping proposal to build approximately 3,000 new homes and 60 acres of public space on the site of the former Flushing Airport in College Point, Queens.
- Bloomingdale Library and Health Clinic: Also through the Living Library initiative, the Adams administration recently launched a community engagement process to redevelop the New York Public Library Bloomingdale Branch with a new library and up to 850 new homes, along with a replacement health clinic in the neighborhood. The city is expected to issue an RFP in the fall of 2025.
- New Utrecht Library: This week, as part of the Living Library initiative, the Adams administration kicked off public engagement to redevelop the New Utrecht Library into a state-of-the-art library branch and build new, 100-percent affordable housing on the adjacent city-owned parking lot.
Since entering office, Mayor Adams has made historic investments to create more affordable housing and ensure more New Yorkers have a place to call home. Earlier this year, Mayor Adams announced that his administration has created, preserved, or planned approximately 426,800 homes for New Yorkers through its work to date. Mayor Adams also announced that, in Fiscal Year 2025, the Adams administration created the most affordable rental units in city history and celebrated back-to-back-to-back record-breaking years for producing permanently-affordable homes for formerly-homeless New Yorkers, placing homeless New Yorkers into housing, and connecting New Yorkers to housing through the city’s housing lottery.
In addition to creating and preserving record amounts of affordable and market-rate housing for New Yorkers, the Adams administration has also passed ambitious plans that will create tens of thousands of new homes as well. Last December, Mayor Adams celebrated the passage of “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity,” the most pro-housing proposal in city history that will build 80,000 new homes over 15 years and invest $5 billion in critical infrastructure updates and housing.
The Adams administration is also advancing several robust neighborhood plans that, if adopted, would deliver nearly 50,000 homes over the next 15 years to New York neighborhoods. In addition to the Bronx-Metro North Station Area Plan, the Midtown South plan, and the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan — all of which have already been passed by the New York City Council — the Adams administration is also advancing plans in Jamaica and Long Island City in Queens.
Building on the success of City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, Mayor Adams unveiled his “City of Yes for Families” strategy in his State of the City address earlier this year to build more homes and create more family-friendly neighborhoods across New York City. Under City of Yes for Families, the Adams administration is advancing more housing on city-owned sites, creating new tools to support homeownership, and building more housing alongside schools, playgrounds, grocery stores, accessible transit stations, and libraries.
Further, the Adams administration is actively working to strengthen tenant protections and support homeowners. The “Partners in Preservation” program was expanded citywide in 2024 through a $24 million investment in local organizations to support tenant organizing and combat harassment in rent-regulated housing. The Homeowner Help Desk, a trusted one-stop shop for low-income homeowners to receive financial and legal counseling from local organizations, was also expanded citywide in 2024 with a $13 million funding commitment.
Finally, Mayor Adams and members of his administration successfully advocated for new tools in the 2024 New York state budget that are already helping spur the creation of urgently needed housing. These tools include a new tax incentive for multifamily rental construction, a tax incentive program to encourage office conversions to create more affordable units, lifting the arbitrary “floor-to-area ratio” cap that held back affordable housing production in certain high-demand areas of the city, and the ability to create a pilot program to legalize and make safe basement apartments.
