FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History
Abstract
Lower income New York City residents are faced with a housing emergency. Concurrently, commercial and luxury residential development is expanding. New York is considering adopting an approach to the housing shortage which has been taken in several other cities. The plan advocates amendment of the City\u27s zoning ordinance to require developers of commercial and luxury residential projects to provide the City with lower income housing units. This Note examines the proposed requirement that commercial developers provide lower income housing units. It addresses the question of the validity of such a requirement in the context of New York City\u27s statutory authority to use zoning ordinances to place conditions upon proposed development projects. By analogy to the limitations on this authority, this Note recommends a shift in emphasis to bring such a program into compliance with New York law
