Bayside Project Gets Council Nod as New Housing Appeals Board Shifts Queens Politics

New ballot measures are forcing a rethink of New York City’s notorious housing logjams—sometimes over reluctant politicians’ protests.

When the City Council convened to vote on a modest proposal—just 248 apartments in Bayside, Queens, with a smattering of affordable units and care beds for seniors—few expected the local council member, Vickie Paladino, to play along. Her district, historically allergic to new development, has stymied projects before. Yet this time, something changed: Paladino, though “really not happy about any of this,” lent her yes vote. The culprit? Last November’s ballot measures, designed by reformers with a decidedly Yes-In-My-Backyard (YIMBY) bent, have begun to bite.

The newly-minted appeals board, as established by the 2025 Charter revisions, gave Paladino a clear message: deny this project outright, and a three-person panel—a majority drawn from the mayor, the Council speaker, and the borough president—could override her. The appeals board, which would advance projects rejected by recalcitrant council members if two out of three members agree, provides perhaps the first substantive check on “member deference,” the unwritten rule that allows any single elected official to block housing in their backyard.

Until now, the arithmetic of city housing politics rested squarely on “no.” Member deference, which weaponised hyper-local opposition, ensured that developments—especially those with affordable-housing quotas—struggled to find daylight unless they courted and pleased the local council member. As a result, thousands of units stalled or vanished in negotiations, while home prices escalated and the city’s shelter population ballooned to more than 65,000.

This Council vote, then—wrenched by a reform some politicians decried as undemocratic—heralds a new era. The passage of these ballot initiatives, by healthy margins in a general election, reflected a citywide sense of urgency. The housing shortage here is acute enough to attract national headlines: median rents for a one-bedroom now hover around $3,500; vacant units scrape historic lows after the pandemic’s brief lull; nearly 80,000 tenants face eviction proceedings in Housing Court.

The immediate upshot is a whiff of unpredictability in the intricate dance between developers, politicians, and communities. Now that district vetoes are fungible, advocates for affordable housing are emboldened. Annemarie Gray of Open New York—a group that lobbied hard for the changes—reckons, “No neighborhood is too rich for affordable housing.” Even holdouts like Paladino admit, ruefully, that “this is what the props were designed for—to force our hand on unpopular projects.”

Second-order effects are both starker and fuzzier. In the short run, more “as-of-right” zoning applications could materialize, encouraged by the prospect of an appeals process that makes obstruction harder. Developers, for years allergic to the risk of spending millions just to be stonewalled, may dust off plans for sites in New York’s low-rise fringes. Before long, the mere threat of override might convince even recalcitrant council members to negotiate, rather than flatly refuse.

But not everyone cheers. Some critics, mostly from safe districts, grumble that the new system centralises power, limiting a community’s leverage to extract public goods from developers—a school here, a park there. The appeals process, they warn, could become a rubber stamp if the mayor and the Speaker share policy aims or party loyalty. Others fret about judicial challenges or the board’s true willingness to override entrenched local resistance, especially when political winds shift.

Old habits in new frames

Nationally, New York’s experiment offers a test case in curbing a political phenomenon—with its roots in the suburbs, but now a near-universal problem—that economists call the “Not In My Back Yard” trap. Blue cities from Seattle to Boston have toyed with similar ideas, but none have handed so much formal power to cross-district appeals. In theory, the Charter reforms could help New York match the construction booms of Tokyo or Houston; in practice, cultural aversion to density, local organising, and regulatory entanglement will check the most optimistic projections.

Other world capitals stare at New York’s tepid pace of housing construction with bemusement. In London, where local councils still exert immense control, citywide authorities have faltered in their push for affordable dwellings. In contrast, cities elsewhere—Berlin, Vienna, Seoul—routinely outbuild Gotham on a per-capita basis, thanks in part to more muscular national or regional policies. What New York’s reforms may offer, then, is not a panacea, but a prod: a mechanism to tilt the balance, ever so slightly, toward shelter for those who need it most.

The real test is still ahead. As the Queens vote shows, politicians seldom embrace constraints on their own fiefdoms without a fight. But when even stalwarts like Paladino fold rather than risk being sidelined by their peers, a subtle reordering is afoot. Pessimists will see a new procedural layer and reckon little will change. Optimists spy an overdue correction to a status quo that cannot solve a housing emergency by dithering.

We are sceptically hopeful. Institutional inertia is a powerful thing, and the pull of the status quo remains—to say nothing of the legal challenges that could yet await. But by embedding a mechanism for override, New Yorkers have signalled their broad intent: in a city famed for energy and flux, stasis must no longer be the outcome of parochial politicking.

No reform, however clever, can conjure instant housing or peace among the city’s fractious tribes. Yet for the first time in decades, New York’s land use politics seem poised to produce not just stalemate, but buildings—potentially just in time to stave off decline. ■