New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has unveiled a plan to speed up the leasing process for nearly 10,000 apartments in the city.
Mamdani said his “SPEED” reforms will deliver affordable housing faster in the city. “SPEED” stands for Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development, ABC/Channel 7 reported.
According to the mayor’s office, the reforms target all stages of the development process, including predevelopment, permitting, and lease-up, and will cut timelines for all affordable housing projects by eight months.
Officials said that for projects needing a zoning change, the reforms will reduce timelines by as much as two years.
An Urgent Response
“These delays are not inevitable. They are the result of broken systems and a failure of political will,” Mamdani said. “New Yorkers cannot afford to wait years for affordable housing while projects sit trapped in bureaucracy. SPEED is about making government deliver faster, fairer and at the scale this crisis demands.”
Leila Bozorg, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning, said the program is an urgent response to a crisis.
“Our administration is tackling the housing crisis with the urgency New Yorkers deserve. With these investments and procedural changes, we will cut months or even years off the affordable housing development timeline – months that New Yorkers can spend in permanent housing instead of instability,” Bozorg said.
ABC & said the reforms seek to make the process faster and more accountable in four stages of development: environmental review and planning; predevelopment and financing; permitting and approvals; and marketing and lease-up.
It said that the precertification process for projects needing zoning changes will now take about six months, down from two years. The city will also reduce permitting timelines for both new construction and office-to-residential conversion projects by roughly five months.
Lottery System Overhaul
“When affordable housing is delayed, families remain in shelters longer, neighborhoods lose opportunities for growth, and costs continue to rise,” Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson said.
ABC 7 reported that another change is an overhaul of the city’s housing lottery system.
Mamdani said his administration will implement immediate improvements while building a more flexible long-term system that is fair, transparent, and easier to navigate.
The television station reported that these reforms could cut the timeline from construction completion to move-in by more than half, from 210 days to fewer than 100.
