12 Neighborhoods on Fast Track for Affordable Housing
Starting January 1, 2027, rezonings that create affordable housing in 12 of New York City’s 59 community districts will move through a 90-day public review instead of the standard seven-month process. Together, these districts hold nearly a quarter of the city’s homes but produced about 1% of its new affordable housing over the past five years.
Is your property in a Fast Track district?
Type a New York City street address to see which community district it falls in and whether that district is on the 2026 Fast Track list. Click any district on the map for its production figures.
Being in a Fast Track district does not by itself change what can be built on a property. The streamlined review applies only to land use applications that require Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH), such as private or city-led rezonings that add affordable homes. Boundaries: NYC DCP community districts. Address data: NYC PLUTO 26v2.
Where the Fast Track applies
Five districts in Queens, three in Brooklyn, two in Manhattan and two on Staten Island. None are in the Bronx, which produced about a third of the city’s new affordable homes in the same period. Each card shows new affordable homes per 1,000 existing homes. The bar under each figure compares it with the citywide rate of 18.0, which would fill the bar.
Source: NYC Department of City Planning, Affordable Housing Fast Track Community District Summary, 2021–2026 cycle. Rank 1 = lowest rate of affordable housing development relative to housing stock.
Affordable housing has been concentrated in a few parts of the city
DCP ranks all 59 community districts by new affordable homes relative to their existing housing stock. The 12 lowest become Fast Track districts for the next five years.
New affordable homes per 1,000 existing homes, all 59 districts
2021–2026 cycle. Fast Track districts in blue. Dashed line: citywide rate.
Source: NYC DCP AHFT Community District Summary; APA Research calculation (affordable units ÷ housing units at start of cycle × 1,000).
Share of housing stock vs. share of new affordable homes
The 12 Fast Track districts compared with the 12 highest-producing districts.
By borough
New affordable homes in the 2021–2026 cycle and Fast Track districts per borough.
Source: NYC DCP AHFT Community District Summary; APA Research.
A shorter review path for affordable rezonings
The Fast Track comes from Ballot Question 2, one of three housing-related City Charter amendments approved by voters on November 4, 2025. It changes the sequence and the final decision-maker, not the requirement for public input.
Standard ULURP shown with typical statutory review windows after certification (Community Board 60 days, Borough President 30, City Planning Commission 60, City Council 50, Mayor 5). Actual timelines vary; pre-certification work is not shown. Source: NYC Charter; 2025 Charter Revision Commission Final Report; NYC Mayor’s Office.
What qualifies
Land use applications in a Fast Track district that are required to provide affordable housing under Mandatory Inclusionary Housing. Projects elsewhere, or not subject to MIH, keep the standard review.
Who decides
The Community Board and Borough President review at the same time over 60 days. The City Planning Commission then has 30 days to hold a final vote. The City Council does not vote on these applications.
What stays the same
Environmental review, landmark protections and construction standards are unchanged. The CPC must find that transit, sewer and other infrastructure can support the proposal and that it is consistent with the Fair Housing Framework.
About 14 months of set-up, then a five-year cycle
The 2026 list applies to applications from January 1, 2027 until DCP publishes the next list in October 2031.
The policy targets a citywide shortage and an uneven map of production
New York City has been under a declared housing emergency since 1960, the year rental vacancy first fell below 5%. The net rental vacancy rate now stands at 1.4%. The 2025 Charter Revision Commission estimated the city is about 500,000 homes short of a healthy market over the next decade and builds roughly 25,000 homes a year, about half of what it needs.
Where new affordable homes get built has also been uneven. In the 2021–2026 cycle, the 12 most productive community districts, seven of them in the Bronx, accounted for 51% of new affordable homes while holding about 15% of the housing stock. The 12 Fast Track districts, which include the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Bay Ridge, Bayside and much of Staten Island, produced 724 affordable homes in total, roughly 12 per district per year. Brooklyn Community District 5 (East New York) alone produced 5,794, about eight times as many.
Supporters argue that districts with long histories of rejecting new development discourage developers from proposing housing there at all, and that a more predictable review can change that calculation. The Fast Track also gives enforcement weight to the City Council’s Fair Housing Framework, which since 2023 has required housing goals for every community district but had no binding mechanism.
What could the Fast Track add?
DCP has not published a projection of how many homes the Fast Track will produce, and the outcome depends on how many rezoning applications developers and the City bring forward. The scenarios below are an APA Research illustration, not a forecast.
Affordable homes per five-year cycle in the 12 districts
Applies each rate to the 857,089 homes in the 12 Fast Track districts.
Source: NYC DCP AHFT Community District Summary; APA Research calculation. Illustrative only.
If the 12 districts produced affordable housing at the citywide average rate of the last cycle, they would add roughly 15,500 affordable homes over five years, about 21 times the 724 they produced. At the median district’s rate, the figure would be about 10,200. Even matching the 13th-ranked district, the first one not on the list, would mean about 1,700.
Because MIH projects are mixed-income, with most options setting aside 20% to 30% of residential floor area as permanently affordable, total housing built under these rezonings would be several times larger than the affordable count alone.
Several practical factors will shape the result: land and construction costs, financing conditions, the availability of public subsidy, and whether suitable sites exist, particularly in the districts that are largely low-density. Moses Gates of the Regional Plan Association has said he expects a learning curve, with developers wanting to see the process work before output ramps up.
Support and concerns
The charter changes passed with clear majorities, but local control remains the central point of disagreement.
The case for the Fast Track
- Spreads new affordable housing across all five boroughs instead of concentrating it in a handful of districts.Mayor Zohran Mamdani: every neighborhood must help deliver affordable housing.
- Cuts about four months from public review, lowering carrying costs and timing risk for mixed-income projects.
- Keeps Community Board and Borough President review, environmental review and landmark protections in place.
- Residents of these districts also face rising rents; DCP Director Sideya Sherman has argued the shortage affects families’ ability to stay in their communities.
- Self-correcting: districts that increase production can leave the list at the 2031 recalculation.
Concerns raised
- Removes the City Council vote on qualifying applications, which several Council members say reduces their leverage to negotiate with developers.Council Member Frank Morano (Staten Island) has said it could make his district a target for developers.
- The formula measures production relative to existing stock, which critics say penalizes dense, built-out districts.Council Member Gale Brewer has disputed the Upper West Side’s designation.
- Before the vote, then-Speaker Adrienne Adams challenged the ballot language, and the Council campaigned against the proposals; several unions also opposed them.
- A faster review does not supply land, subsidy or financing, so the effect on actual production is uncertain.
Sources: NYC Mayor’s Office; Brownstoner; City Limits; NBC New York; Wikipedia, 2025 New York City ballot proposals.
What to watch in the 12 districts
Rezoning pathways
Sites that would need a zoning map change to support mixed-income housing now face a shorter, more predictable public review, with the final decision at the City Planning Commission.
City-led actions
DCP has said it will look at each Fast Track district for possible city-led rezonings. One is already under way along two avenues south of Prospect Park in Kensington, within Brooklyn Community District 12.
Timing
The list applies to applications from January 1, 2027 and holds until the next recalculation in October 2031. Districts can move on or off the list as production changes.
- NYC Mayor’s Office: Mamdani Administration Puts 12 Neighborhoods on Fast Track for Affordable Housing (October 2026)
- NYC Department of City Planning: Affordable Housing Fast Track Community District Summary and Affordable Projects datasets, 2021–2026 cycle
- 2025 NYC Charter Revision Commission Final Report
- NYC Mayor’s Office: Block by Block housing plan (May 2026)
- Brownstoner: The 12 Neighborhoods NYC Is Targeting for More Affordable Housing
- NBC New York: 12 NYC neighborhoods on fast track for affordable housing
- City Limits: The 12 Communities Where the Charter Commission Could Fast Track Affordable Housing
- NYU Furman Center: What the Charter Revision Commission’s Ballot Proposals May Mean for Housing Production
- 2025 New York City ballot proposals (results)
- NYC Open Data: Community District boundaries; Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output (PLUTO) 26v2. NY Open Data: MTA subway lines.
Methodology. District rates are DCP’s: new affordable dwelling units in the cycle divided by housing units at the start of the cycle (2020 Census units plus net new units from April 2020 to June 2021). APA expresses them per 1,000 homes. Citywide totals sum all 59 districts (65,777 affordable units; 3,647,480 homes). Scenario figures multiply the 12 districts’ combined stock by the citywide aggregate rate (1.80%), the median district rate (1.19%) and the 13th-ranked district’s rate (0.19%). The address lookup matches the street and house number against PLUTO tax-lot addresses and interpolates between known lots on the same side of the street; results near district boundaries, for new addresses, or for addresses that differ from the tax-lot record may be approximate. Confirm eligibility with the Department of City Planning.