Pro-housing coalition takes a ballot proposals victory lap

The housing-related ballot proposals passed last week with broad support across the city, winning 55 of the city’s 65 Assembly districts, according to a new report from one of their biggest supporters.

Every Assembly district that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani won voted in favor of the housing-related proposals, according to the report. But they also won six Assembly districts won by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo: the Upper East Side, Staten Island’s North Shore, Co-Op City/East Bronx, Flushing and Corona/Lefrak City. After studiously avoiding taking a position on the proposals publicly, Mamdani revealed he voted in favor of the four housing ones after casting his ballot on Election Day. 

“New Yorkers from the Bronx to Brooklyn have been suffering under skyrocketing housing costs for far too long,” said Amit Singh Bagga, campaign director of the Yes on Affordable Housing coalition and political action committee. “The success of these measures proves what we already knew: that we’ve been out of time and out of excuses.”

While there were six measures on the ballot for the general election, the coalition’s efforts centered on promoting proposals two through five, which pertained to the city’s development process. Those were created by a Charter Revision Commission convened by Mayor Eric Adams last year. Voters passed all four of them with a decisive margin on Nov. 4 despite opposition from the City Council and several labor unions, delivering a strong message about New Yorkers’ willingness to embrace development amid the city’s dire housing crisis.

Proposals 2 and 3 would create a shorter process for some moderate land use changes and some projects that include affordable housing, shifting the City Council’s power over the approval process to mayoral appointees. No. 4 would create a three-person appeals board consisting of the mayor, the City Council speaker and the local borough president with the power to reverse or modify City Council decisions on proposals that include affordable housing. This would significantly weaken member deference, the unofficial practice where the City Council often defers to the local member to decide whether a project is approved, pared back or killed. And No. 5 – the least controversial – would consolidate the city’s maps into a single, unified map. Critics, like the City Council, have argued that the proposals were written in a misleading manner.  

In a statement sent after results rolled in on Election Day, City Council spokesperson Mandela Jones downplayed the double-digit margins of support for the proposals, which the Council fought strenuously to oppose. “Mayor Adams’ 2025 ballot proposals continued the trend of underperformance that started with his 2024 ballot proposals significantly underperforming those of the past 15 years,” Jones said. He pointed out that most ballot proposals between 2010 and 2022 passed with more than 70% support. This year, the map proposal overwhelmingly passed with about 73% while the other three housing-related proposals respectively passed with around 58% of the vote.

While the City Council and the Charter Revision Commission waged dueling public education battles over the proposals, the coalition ran ads, rallied and recruited supporters. It spent nearly $2 million to advocate for the proposals. 

The report, released by the coalition this week, found that every Assembly district in the Bronx and Manhattan voted to pass the four proposals – something Bagga said encapsulates the diverse array of New Yorkers who think the proposals would lead to more housing and deeper affordability. The measures also won in three of the four Assembly districts in southeast Queens – an area known for having a high volume of homeowners.

New York City voters didn’t default approve all of the proposals on the ballot. No. 1, a state measure to retroactively legalize an Olympic sports complex on protected land in Adirondack Park, was rejected by 55% of city voters (though it passed state-wide.) No. 6, a measure to shift local elections to presidential election years, failed to pass with 53% of voters rejecting it.