New York City Council Secures $500 Million for Housing in Rezoned Bronx Districts

An apartment building in the Bronx, New York, in this file photo. (Petr Svab/The Epoch Times)

In the latest phase of its campaign for affordable housing for lower-income New Yorkers, the city council voted on Aug. 6 to rezone the sites of Metro-North train stations scheduled for construction in the Bronx, setting aside land for an estimated 7,000 new housing units.

The four planned stations are in the Bronx neighborhoods of Morris Park, Hunts Point, Parkchester/Van Nest, and Co-Op City. Along with its rezoning plan, the city council secured commitments from the municipal government for a $498.5 million investment in critical infrastructure in those districts.

Of that total, $11.5 million will be used to refurbish schools and redesign sidewalks and streets adjacent to Metro-North stations. Roughly $96.7 million will be used to fix up playgrounds and parks in the area.

The rezoning vote and funding are a victory for a city council that is often embroiled in court battles with Mayor Eric Adams and suffered a setback just last week when a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled for the mayor in a dispute over housing vouchers.

Members of the council described the investments as essential to their efforts to stem the city’s housing crisis.

Affordable housing is in scarce supply in a city where the median home listing price stands at $825,000 and the median sale price at $776,100, according to realtor.com figures.

Council member Rafael Salamanca, chair of the council’s committee on land use, said the vote and allocation of funds have special meaning for him as a lifelong Bronx resident.

“With the city experiencing a heightened housing crisis, thanks to the Bronx Metro-North, there will be an addition of 7,000 new units of desperately needed housing built in our borough,” Salamanca said in a statement.

Salamanca identified overhauling stormwater drainage, repairing and redesigning roadways, and investing in parks and schools as the primary goals of the nearly half-billion-dollar investment.

The city council has fought hard for what it sees as the rights of lower-income New Yorkers in a constricted housing market that increasingly favors wealthy buyers. In May 2023, the council passed several bills to expand the city’s Family Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement (FHEPS), making it easier to qualify and help participants move from shelters into long-term housing.

But Adams and lawyers for his administration argued that, by law, oversight of social services was a prerogative of the state and the municipal agencies to which the state delegated this power, not the city council.

The city council pursued legal action to try to force the implementation of the laws expanding FHEPS, but in his Aug. 1 ruling, Judge Lyle E. Frank agreed with the mayor and blocked the city council’s lawsuit.

The mayor’s office did not respond by publication time to a request for comment.