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Executive Summary
The
Department's July, 1996 report, "Zoning to
Facilitate Housing Production," is part of
an ongoing effort to keep the Zoning Resolution
compatible with the housing needs of the city
and encourage housing production through simpler,
more effective zoning regulations. The report
was prepared in consultation with a wide range
of housing providers throughout New York City.
Two
items concern developments for special needs populations.
The first would remove a major impediment to the
production of low income housing by reducing their
parking requirements. This reduction is supported
by 1990 census data on auto availability for low
income households. The second item would facilitate
evolving forms of housing for the elderly by creating
a new housing category that addresses the social,
health and administrative needs of senior housing
and provides for floor area and density incentives.
These incentives are in recognition of the importance
of communal spaces in elderly housing and the
smaller unit sizes typical of elderly residences.
In both proposals, references to obsolete government
programs would be eliminated.
Two
items would amend the density regulations. There
would be a new method of calculating density that
would result in essentially the same number of
units in residential buildings as is currently
allowed, but would greatly simplify the Zoning
Resolution and close existing loopholes with room
counts. The second item would encourage the production
of apartments above ground floor commercial or
community facility space in lower and medium density
districts by allowing the floor area devoted to
residential use in a mixed building to contain
the same number of units as can be achieved in
the same amount of floor area in a purely residential
building.
More
practical building designs would be permitted
by allowing a reduction in the depth of required
setbacks at certain building heights, allowing
greater coverage for buildings on small corner
lots to facilitate buildings with single-loaded
corridors, and, for buildings on narrow lots subject
to height limitations, allowing an additional
story to be set back from the front building wall
where it would have minimal impact on the streetscape.
Conversions
of non-residential buildings would be facilitated
by eliminating a requirement that results in excessively
large unit sizes.
The
proposal would allow parking for residences to
be located off-site on vacant lots in certain
districts as a way to reduce the costs of underground
parking garages or to provide parking opportunities
for rehabilitated buildings that do not have room
on their lots for parking.
Provisions
to allow modest enlargements of single and two-family
detached and semi-detached residences are proposed
to save homeowners the expense of applying for
costlyvariances.
Other
items involve clarifications to the Resolution
that would resolve conflicts or ambiguities stemming
from recent zoning text amendments.
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