Mayor Mamdani Announces Launch Of Neighborhood Builders Fast Track

 

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani, Deputy Mayor Leila Bozorg, and HPD Commissioner Dina Levy have announced the new Neighborhood Builders Fast Track, a program intended to speed affordable housing development on City-owned land across New York City. The initiative will allow HPD to pre-qualify affordable housing developers and shorten the Request for Proposals process by about eight months for certain projects, cutting the developer selection timeline by nearly half. City officials said the first three sites slated for the program are 784-800 Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, 1337 Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, and 109-43 Farmers Boulevard in Queens.

According to the administration, the three initial sites could collectively yield as many as 300 affordable homes, including about 100 affordable homeownership opportunities at the Bronx and Queens locations. HPD said it expects the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track to help advance as many as 1,000 new homes over the next two years. The agency is also issuing a Request for Qualifications due May 8 for developers seeking to pre-qualify for the program, with an emphasis on nonprofit organizations and minority- and women-owned businesses.

The new fast-track program is part of a broader effort by the Mamdani administration to accelerate housing production on public land. Officials said the initiative will work alongside the Expedited Land Use Review Procedure, or ELURP, to reduce the overall pre-development process by more than two years. The administration also pointed to its LIFT and SPEED task forces, which are reviewing City-owned sites and affordable housing production procedures in an effort to identify additional opportunities for faster project delivery.

“Our city is facing a historic housing crisis — the last thing we need to do is tie ourselves in red tape,” Mamdani said. “The Neighborhood Builders Fast Track will speed up housing development and make it faster to build on city-owned land.”