Queens prepares for a housing boom amid multiple rezoning projects

Queens is preparing for a housing boom.

Multiple rezonings are paving the way for tens of thousands of new units, but some residents worry about how it could affect their communities.

12,000 new units in Jamaica

Southeast Queens is preparing for change as the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan clears a path for 12,000 new units of housing across 230 blocks. The rezoning plan modifies land use rules to allow for taller, denser development.

Announcing its approval in October, the City Council said: "The rezoning will map the largest Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) zone in the entire city, paving the way for nearly 3,800 affordable homes to be built on privately-owned sites."

Lifelong Queens resident Chelita Wilson is skeptical, having seen her neighbors priced out of Jamaica's existing high-rise apartment buildings.

"You have families who have worked so hard to be able to build and to give their children, their grandchildren better lives, only for it now to seem like it's out of touch and out of reach," she said.

15,000 new units in Long Island City

Jamaica is not the only area on the verge of major growth. The passage of rezoning plan OneLIC promises to transform western Queens with 15,000 new units of housing, the most for a neighborhood rezoning in the history of New York City, according to the Department of City Planning.

This comes as yet another project, City of Yes, prepares to inject 82,000 new homes across the five boroughs in what the city calls its largest zoning overhaul since 1961. The city says the zoning updates are a direct response to the urgent housing crisis.

"So many people want to move to Queens right now, and while the borough has the space, it doesn't necessarily have all the housing opportunities," Center for an Urban Future executive director Jonathan Bowles said. "We haven't seen the development, I think, in part because we haven't planned for it."

He considers rezoning projects overdue in Queens.

"Doing these rezonings really allows you to plan smartly about the growth of a neighborhood, to reduce negative impacts, to make sure there are these ancillary investments — whether they be schools or libraries or parks — that really need to happen," he said, "and also make sure that communities really benefit from those changes."

Rezoning trends across the U.S.

"Zoned in the USA" author Sonia Hirt says rezoning for more density is a trend across the country.

"In the 21st century, and especially in the last decade, I think you really see more ambitious attempts to rethink it," she said.

She says opponents frequently cite the need to preserve neighborhood character.

"Upzoning residential districts, permitting different kinds of homes, there appears to be always a resistance, even in communities that are supposed to be more change-oriented," she said.

Jenny Dubnau with the Western Queens Community Land Trust says her opposition lies in concerns about gentrification.

"They are for-profit market developers. We're not going to get our deeply affordable housing from them," she said. "We're not against development. We're just against unaffordable development that pushes us out of our communities."

She and fellow advocates are pushing for city-built housing on public land.

"With my tax dollars, I'd be happy to see that. I think that would be really great for the city of New York," she said.

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