Today, Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani, Deputy Mayor Leila Bozorg and Deputy Mayor Julia Kerson released the Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development ("SPEED") report , a sweeping set of reforms to deliver affordable housing faster across New York City.
The reforms target every stage of the development process, including pre-development, permitting and lease-up, and will cut timelines for all affordable housing projects by eight months. For projects that require a zoning change, the reforms will reduce timelines by as much as two years.
"These delays are not inevitable. They are the result of broken systems and a failure of political will," said Mayor Mamdani. "New Yorkers cannot afford to wait years for affordable housing while projects sit trapped in bureaucracy. SPEED is about making government deliver - faster, fairer and at the scale this crisis demands."
"Our administration is tackling the housing crisis with the urgency that New Yorkers deserve. With these investments and procedural changes, we will cut months or even years off of the affordable housing development timeline - months that New Yorkers can spend in permanent housing instead of instability," said Leila Bozorg, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning. "I'm grateful for the work of the SPEED Task Force, agency partners, and everyone who helped identify ways to build a more effective government."
"This administration is clear-eyed in our mission to prove that government can deliver quickly and at scale," said Deputy Mayor for Operations Julia Kerson. "Whether overhauling permitting through SPEED or pursuing Alternative Delivery contracting, we're slashing project timelines in half. Faster, more efficient execution means more families in homes and better outcomes for New Yorkers across all five boroughs."
"With the housing crisis impacting New Yorkers every day, we must do everything we can to deliver affordable homes more quickly - and streamlining regulations through SPEED will help us do exactly that," said Department of City Planning Director Sideya Sherman. "By reducing the pre-certification timeline for many projects from two years to six months, we will get shovels in the ground and New Yorkers into homes faster - while maintaining a fair and thorough review process. These commonsense reforms are a critical part of our broader effort to meet the urgency of the moment and build a more equitable and affordable New York City."
"Our housing crisis demands that we move faster. The SPEED report lays out a vision for overhauling our affordable housing lease-up process that will significantly improve the timeline and user-experience for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who rely on the Housing Connect lottery system. By cutting application approval times in half - to under 100 days - families can move in sooner," said Dina Levy, Commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation & Development. "Together with permitting and development changes, we're cutting 8 months off the timeline from inception to move-in day. This will help us get more families into affordable housing faster, making a real difference for thousands of New Yorkers. We won't let red tape and outdated systems stand between families and the affordable housing they deserve."
"In the face of the ongoing affordability crisis and the city's anemic rental vacancy rate, this administration must continue to be unapologetically pro-housing," said Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani. "The Mayor's SPEED report is a comprehensive blueprint that will unlock strategies to facilitate the efficient and safe construction of more badly needed housing for New York City families. More than just reshaping the development process so that we are responsive to the challenges of construction while taking advantage of new opportunities, today's announcement sends a message to the industry that the five boroughs are the best place to plan their next building project."
"We are proud to be part of this whole of government response to tackle the housing crisis with creativity, urgency and bold initiative," said Department of Social Services Commissioner Erin Dalton. "We are cutting the red tape, reducing administrative burdens, and collaborating with key stakeholders to streamline processes and expedite connections to deeply affordable housing for vulnerable New Yorkers. We applaud the Mamdani Administration's commitment to creating affordable housing at an unprecedented speed and scale by leaving no stone unturned to create efficiencies across agencies and prioritizing the needs of housing insecure New Yorkers across the city."
The SPEED reforms will make City processes faster and more accountable across four stages of development: environmental review and planning; pre-development and financing; permitting and approvals; and marketing and lease-up.
As a part of the overhaul, the administration will cut the "pre-certification" process for many projects requiring zoning changes from roughly two years to six months. The City will also reduce the permitting timelines for both new construction and office-to-residential conversion projects by approximately five months.
To move New Yorkers into completed affordable housing more quickly, the City will also overhaul the City's housing lottery system. The Mamdani administration will implement immediate improvements while building a more flexible long-term system that is fair, transparent and easier to navigate.
The reforms will cut the time between construction completion and move-in in half - from 210 days to fewer than 100 days.
The reforms were developed by the SPEED Task Force, which Mayor Mamdani created by executive order his first day in office. The Task Force held roundtables with more than 100 industry experts, advocates, developers, builders and trade organizations and received more than 500 recommendations that informed the final reforms.
None of the reforms require legislative action or change the City's discretionary approval process for projects.
These reforms build on additional housing initiatives launched by the administration, including the City's first-ever Expedited Land Use Review Procedure (ELURP) and the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track program. Together, those initiatives will reduce the pre-development timelines for affordable housing projects by more than two years.
"We can't build the New York City of 2050 with an environmental review process from the last century," said NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn. "Reforming how we study the impacts of new rezoning initiatives and development projects on our transportation network will speed up the process of getting much needed housing built, and it will help us better understand the multi-modal transportation needs of New Yorkers."
"NYC Parks was proud to collaborate with sister agencies on the SPEED Task Force to increase efficiency for developers working near parkland or conducting tree work," said NYC Parks Commissioner Tricia Shimamura. "With the rollout of these reforms, this administration continues to ensure that government is delivering results for working New Yorkers."
"Solving our housing crisis will require reducing barriers at every stage of the pipeline, from permitting to lease-up," said City Comptroller Mark Levine. "These reforms target key points along the housing creation timeline to do exactly that. Recent efforts to spur housing creation in New York City-from last year's City Charter changes, to my office's NYC Housing Investment Initiative to finance new construction and preservation, to the SPEED reforms-are mutually reinforcing. I applaud this Administration's focus on addressing the housing crisis, and I look forward to continuing this work together to ensure New Yorkers can afford to live in the city we all love."
"It has long been clear that the only way out of our city's generational housing crisis is to build our way out. So any measure to responsibly shorten the time between the crafting of blueprints and the day a family moves into their new home is a measure we must take in order to meet this moment," said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. "I applaud the mayor's office for its efforts to build affordable housing all across this city as quickly as possible and I look forward to working with our city partners to continue delivering the kind of high-quality housing that Queens residents in all ZIP codes and of all socioeconomic statuses deserve."
"As a former tenant rights attorney and someone whose office helps neighbors deal with existential housing challenges every day, one thing has become clear: our city needs more affordable housing, and a lot of it," said City Council Majority Leader Shaun Abreu. "The new SPEED reforms will play a critical role in making that happen. Our city's housing crisis can't wait. Shortening the timeline to deliver on affordability as fast as possible will make a difference for every working family in New York. Thank you to Mayor Mamdani for his leadership on this initiative."
"This is how we overcome the city's housing crisis," said Council Member Justin E. Sanchez. "There are numerous factors preventing housing from being built, and ineffective bureaucratic policies have been a major part of the equation that is keeping families from the quality housing they need and deserve. To put it plainly, our local government has been in the way, and today this new administration is stepping up and getting out of the way by cutting red tape and clearing unnecessary barriers. I look forward to continuing to partner with the Mayor and working together to build thriving communities where housing is affordable and neighborhoods can reach their full potential."
"The SPEED Task Force recommendations announced today are the result of months of work informed by the expertise of more than a hundred outside experts and more than a hundred City staff representing over twenty agencies," said Pascale Leone, Executive Director of the Supportive Housing Network of New York (the Network). "We are excited to continue to help review progress, so that supportive and affordable housing can be built more quickly for the New Yorkers who need it most."
"Every month of delay in our housing crisis means higher rents, longer waitlists, and more New Yorkers priced out of the city they call home," said Annemarie Gray, Executive Director of Open New York. "The SPEED reforms recognize that bringing down timelines at every stage of development-from environmental review to permitting to lease-up-is essential to meeting the scale and urgency of this moment. Fixing the broken systems that have slowed housing production for decades is exactly the kind of work this crisis demands, and we commend the Mayor and his team for taking it on."
"We're encouraged to see the SPEED Task Force advancing recommendations that recognize the urgent need to modernize New York City's affordable housing systems," said Rachel Fee, Executive Director of the New York Housing Conference. "From housing lottery administration to homeless referrals and costly delays, these are issues that have long created barriers to getting New Yorkers into affordable homes faster. Every month of delay increases costs and makes it harder to address the housing crisis at the scale required. We appreciate the Task Force's focus on streamlining processes and look forward to working with the City to deliver more efficient housing production, leasing, financing and more."
"Given the scale of our crisis, no existing process should be safe from a deep examination with one question in mind: is it helping or hurting the efficient supply and preservation of affordable housing?" said Kim Darga, Vice President and Market Leader, Enterprise Community Partners. "From pre-development to permitting and approvals to housing placements, that is what the city has done with these SPEED recommendations. We applaud the effort, including the robust stakeholder engagement that culminated in such a sweeping set of reforms, which include key recommendations from Enterprise's Let's Move lease up report. This is a major step in the right direction, one that we must build on in the years ahead."
"New York's housing crisis is a crisis of speed as much as supply. Mayor Mamdani's SPEED reforms directly address that with streamlining permitting, slashing timelines, and modernizing the lottery system. This is the right approach, and Mayor Mamdani deserves credit for moving decisively and for committing to measurable results," said Steven Fulop, President and CEO of the Partnership for New York City.
"Many actions are needed to improve affordability in New York City, but none will be truly effective unless we can also make it less time-consuming and costly to approve, build, and move people into affordable housing," said Howard Slatkin, Executive Director of Citizens Housing & Planning Council. "To their great credit, this administration has made this a priority from day one, and it is great to see not only the first concrete steps emerging from the SPEED task force, but also a commitment to sustain an ongoing focus on improvement. CHPC looks forward to continued collaboration on ways to ensure that government processes advance our affordability goals rather than unintentionally impeding them."
"The City's SPEED initiative is a smart and necessary step forward, and we commend the Mamdani administration for taking action to cut red tape, modernize outdated building requirements, and improve how city agencies operate," said James Whelan, President of the Real Estate Board of New York. "By streamlining permitting and administrative processes, SPEED has the potential to significantly accelerate the delivery of much-needed housing and support a more efficient, responsive city government for New Yorkers."
"Every month matters in a housing crisis. The SPEED Task Force is taking on the exact delays that make it harder, slower, and more expensive to build affordable housing in New York City, from approvals and permits to financing, and everything in between. Cutting more than two years from the process is a big deal. It means more homes delivered faster, more jobs created sooner, and lower costs for the public and building industry professionals doing this work," said Carlo A. Scissura, Esq. President & CEO, New York Building Congress. "We applaud Mayor Mamdani and his team for focusing on the nuts and bolts of housing production. Building Congress members are ready to help turn these reforms into shovels in the ground and keys in the hands of New Yorkers."
"ANHD has long called for the city to prioritize affordable housing through the permitting process, to reduce development timelines by adding capacity at HPD and other agencies, and to remove administrative roadblocks that leave affordable units waiting vacant. That's because every delay means more New Yorkers waiting in shelters, living in overcrowded homes, and struggling in unsafe conditions," said Barika X. Williams, Executive Director, Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD). "With the recommendations in the SPEED report, the Mamdani administration has taken strides to streamline the process of affordable housing development across dozens of agencies, ultimately helping to ensure that more New Yorkers will have access to safe, stable affordable housing."
