HPD-Owned Vacant Tax Lots

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A key pillar of the Administration’s Housing Blueprint is the creation and preservation of affordable housing. In fiscal year 2022, maximizing every available resource and pursuing development of affordable housing on both public and privately-owned sites, HPD, NYCHA, and HDC financed 21,951 affordable homes and completed renovations for 2,600 public housing units through PACT. While the supply of remaining lots in HPD’s jurisdiction is dwindling and many of those vacant lots and buildings face significant development challenges, we continue to press forward on every suitable HPD-owned site, as well as sites owned by other city agencies, to provide urgently needed new affordable apartments paired with upgraded public amenities.

These efforts are evident in our progress over the past year to push more of our public sites into use for affordable housing. Since November 2017:

  • The number of vacant lots in our jurisdiction has decreased overall from 1,009 lots to 810 lots, representing a 20% reduction. This decrease is largely due to the successful closing and conveyance of lots for affordable housing development, in addition to transfers to other City agencies of lots programmed for non-residential uses.
  • There has been a 68% increase in lots programmed for future affordable housing development. This is driven by the successful resolution of issues on lots facing significant challenges that now have a path towards development for affordable housing, ongoing planning initiatives in the Rockaways, and the demolition of buildings to create now-vacant lots for affordable housing development as part of ongoing planning initiatives at Willets Point.
  • When looked at together, overall, there has been a 20% increase in the number of lots subject to an existing RFP/RFQ or designated for development.
  • We have reduced the number of lots facing significant development challenges by 73% through the resolution of complicated site conditions, and the transfer of sites to other agencies, where appropriate.
  • Pursuant to analysis of sites in the flood plain, we have reduced the number of lots categorized as resiliency challenges by 95% and incorporated many of those lots in the Edgemere CLT RFEI process initiative.
  • Accordingly, our lots classified as programmed for non-residential uses have increased by 6%, and we are continuing to work with our partner agencies, primarily Parks and DOT, to effectuate those transfers.

Note: The number of vacant lots is constantly in flux due to routine administrative processes related to active development projects and initiatives, such as: tax lot mergers and subdivisions; street demappings; and acquisitions that are part of planning processes underway, such as Willets Point.

Tax lots are not equivalent to development sites or development projects, and many projects require multiple tax lots. For example, the Brownsville RFP’s three projects comprise 50 lots (12 recently transferred to HPD). More than 170 tax lots are part of the New Infill Homeownership Opportunities Program (NIHOP) & Neighborhood Construction Program (NCP) RFQ, which creates development projects made up of clusters of tax lots that are proximate (but rarely adjacent) as a way to increase the feasibility of these small and traditionally difficult-to-develop sites.