Thanks to all the Open New York members who joined!!

We’re proud to stand alongside @governor.ny.gov and @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social to celebrate 1 year of congestion pricing! 🥳 Traffic ⬇️ Air pollution ⬇️ Business ⬆️ Transit ridership ⬆️ Our leaders shouldn’t be afraid to pass bold policies that we know work.

NEW: NYC Mayor @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social is set to name Dina Levy as NYC’s new housing commissioner Levy will lead the Dept of Housing Preservation & Development She has worked as a top official at the NYS housing agency, the NYAG’s office and the nonprofit UHAB gothamist.com/news/mamdani...

tfw you find a mayor who understands you can build more housing AND protect tenants at the same time 😎

Details on the new LIFT (Land Inventory Fast-Track) and SPEED (Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development) Task Forces

OH MY ASS IS SO HAPPY TO HAVE VOTED YES ON 2-5

Exciting to see these two initiatives from NYC mayor’s office! I’m particularly excited about the opportunity presented by using city owned land… could offer the literal ground for thousands of new homes.

That's right

The best thing New York City can do for the climate: create more New Yorkers One of the best climate policy news of late: www.nbcnewyork.com/new-york-cit...

Holy shit it's real

Read @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social’s first executive orders, establishing two housing task forces: “WHEREAS, New York City is experiencing its worst housing shortage since 1968… that shortage must be addressed through the delivery of additional housing at all levels of affordability”

👏👏👏

In November, we saw a huge majority vote to change our outdated land-use system that's held back housing for decades. In 42 of 51 council districts, voters supported streamlining the approvals process, making it easier to build the housing we need.

Beyond policy wins, we built community through events like our summer happy hour, craft night, Pride picnic, Women & Femmes Meetup, Learning Studios, and the NYC premiere of Fault Lines, a documentary on America’s housing crisis.

And we're continuing to hire!

Right now, SEQR is really effective at blocking things that are good for the environment (dense infill housing, clean energy, transit) and really bad at blocking things that are bad for the environment (sprawl, highway expansions). This smart bill contains much-needed reforms.

Props to @srachelmay.bsky.social for pushing pro-housing legislation like this in Albany. We love to see it. www.cityandstateny.com/opinion/2025...

CEQA gets most of the publicity, but New York’s environmental review law (SEQR) is a copy-paste of CEQA, only unlike in California, there have been essentially zero reforms to this law.

2025 was our biggest year yet. From @YesOnAffHousing.bsky.social revolutionizing the housing approval system in NYC, to historic rezonings in Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn, here's a look at what we accomplished this year 🧵

Liam has his priorities straight: no New Yorker should have to sleep on the street or on the subway. Homeless New Yorkers deserve homes and services—that means building more affordable and supportive housing in every borough.

Richard Florida on NYC's economy: "The real risk to its prosperity isn’t capital flight; it’s the sky-high cost of living... Addressing the housing affordability crisis is essential to the city’s continued prosperity."

Are you a student in NYC with an interest in housing policy? Apply for a Fellowship with Open New York!

Want to join our team? Right now we’re hiring three part-time Fellows in Communications, Policy, and Development to join us this spring. Apply here: open-new-york.breezy.hr/p/9f2bf31f79...

You may not believe that building new housing lowers rents, but your landlord does:

We’re excited to announce that we’re expanding our team! In advance of next legislative session in Albany, we’ve brought on four new team members to deliver pro-housing wins for communities around the state.

Leila Bozorg is great and was literally a board member of Open New York, the largest YIMBY nonprofit in NYC. this is so awesome. NIMBYs in shambles rn

Fantastic pick.

Welcome to A New Era, Leila Bozorg!

We are thrilled to see Leila Bozorg appointed as Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning. She shepherded the passage of major rezonings including City of Yes, and served on the 2025 CRC which transformed our housing approval system. She's the housing leader NYC needs right now.

That’s right 💪

manhattan permitting numbers are always funny because the answer to "Since COVID, in absolute numbers, how much does one of the most in demand areas in America build?" is "around as much as Omaha and way less than Columbus"

You may not believe that new builds lower your rent but your landlord does.

Queens, a borough of 2.4 million people, permitted just 3,240 homes last year, a bit over 1 boatload. Austin, a city of less than a million people, permitted that same number every month last year. The results? Queens rents: ⬆️ 4.6% Austin rents: ⬇️ 3.1%

NYC is not building “boatloads of housing”. Last year, Manhattan permitted fewer units (2,347) than 1 boat (Icon of the Seas, 2,800 units)

Open New York’s 2026 NYC Policy Agenda is out now! Here’s how we plan to turn New Yorkers’ mandate for housing into action:

It’s this but for letting somebody legally live in your basement:

City of Yes opened the path to legalizing basement apartments, but the proposed @nycbuildings.bsky.social rules are... pretty ridiculous. Our friends at @chpcny.bsky.social printed out the exact dimensions, colors, and font sizes that would be required outside of every basement apartment:

This project will create more homes than San Fransisco built last year—in fact, 3x more.

In Lower Manhattan, the aging @nychousing.bsky.social HQ is being replaced with housing: 3,700 new apartments, with 900+ permanently affordable. This is finally a project of the appropriate scale for our housing crisis—it's more than the entire SoHo/NoHo rezoning that passed 4 years ago.

Don’t let a few wealthy homeowners make housing unaffordable for the rest of us. Show up in your community—even a few voices in support of new housing can completely flip that dynamic and help New York build the housing we need.

THIS ⬇️

One of the biggest drivers of high housing costs is that a small, highly motivated group of incumbent homeowners block new housing in their neighborhoods and almost no one is organized to push back. Young people bear the brunt of that imbalance. Be a housing fan.

This is 100% true. If you live in NYC, you should join your local community board — right now they’re much richer, older, whiter, more conservative, and more likely to be drivers+homeowners than the communities they represent. That distorts our politics on every issue, especially housing.

Zoning changes work.

City of @YesOnAffHousing.bsky.social

It's probably fine to lump together with City of Yes, but the charter commission housing reforms are worth acknowledging as a super impactful separate effort, beyond what anyone expected I think

I am pleased to report that the DSA YIMBY caucus is real

Congratulations to our neighbors in New Haven for taking a major step toward addressing their housing shortage. Worth noting: New Haven's inner core is now zoned for higher housing densities than 80% of Manhattan. We should take that as a challenge.