Over recent decades, major global cities have competed to attract talent, investment, businesses and visitors. But their success has produced a paradox: the more attractive they become, the harder they are to live in. Housing has therefore become essential infrastructure for competitiveness, social cohesion and the future of cities. New York is one of the clearest examples.
The city reached a breaking point: the 2023 municipal survey put the rental vacancy rate at just 1.4%, the lowest level since 1968. Faced with this emergency, New York decided to act on one of the structural causes of the problem: the shortage of supply and planning rules that made it difficult to build new housing.
In December 2024, the City Council approved City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, the most significant citywide planning reform in decades. Its philosophy could be summed up in an idea as simple as it was ambitious: "a little more housing in every neighbourhood." To make this possible, the plan eased the conversion of offices into homes, made it easier to build small residential buildings near public transport, reduced parking requirements and allowed new residential formats in areas that had previously been highly restricted.
One of the most interesting tools is the Universal Affordability Preference. In medium- and high-density zones, developers can build at least 20% more if the additional homes are permanently set aside as affordable rentals for households earning around 60% of the Area Median Income. The distinction matters: affordability isn't framed only as a burden placed on the project, but as the trade-off for an increase in buildable area that can help preserve its economic viability.
Early indicators are promising, though it's still too soon to credit the reform alone. In its first year, more than a hundred developments applied to use this incentive, with a projected 5,400 homes, around 900 of them affordable. Office conversions, meanwhile, accounted for more than 12,000 homes in the pipeline, including over 3,000 designated as permanently affordable. And by October 2025, authorised housing had risen by 22.8% compared with the same period the previous year.
The change of mayor hasn't meant abandoning this course. Zohran Mamdani had described City of Yes as "a step in the right direction," but also considered it insufficient. In May 2026, his administration unveiled Block by Block: The Housing Plan for a New Era, with the goal of building 200,000 new affordable homes and preserving 200,000 more over the next decade.
Mamdani isn't replacing City of Yes: he's building on it
The new agenda broadens the ambition and combines several instruments. It envisages $22 billion in capital investment in housing over five years, of which $5.6 billion will go towards upgrading the public housing stock managed by the New York City Housing Authority. At the same time, it proposes more housing near public transport, streamlined procedures, new financing tools, stronger support for affordable homeownership and tighter oversight of landlords who fail to meet their maintenance obligations.
So, Mamdani isn't replacing City of Yes: he's building on it. He keeps the increase in supply and the planning reform in place, but adds greater public investment, stronger tenant protections and far more demanding affordability targets. It is, in a sense, a combination of carrot and stick: incentives to build, public capacity to intervene, and firmness in the face of non-compliance.
New York has understood that the challenge can't be solved by choosing between market and public sector, between building and protecting, between density and cohesion. Cities need to build more and build better, protect the existing housing stock, and direct incentives towards the common good. This is also the conversation Barcelona needs to have: fewer preconceptions, and more instruments capable of producing real housing.