On October 1, 2026, the Department of City Planning announced the 12 community districts eligible for the Affordable Housing Fast Track, one of three housing-related amendments to the New York City Charter approved by voters last November and intended to remove barriers to residential development.

The 12 community districts (CDs) listed below have, in the past five years, permitted the least amount of affordable housing units as a percentage of those districts’ total housing units:

Brooklyn

• CD 10 — Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights
• CD 12 — Borough Park and Kensington
• CD 18 — Canarsie and Flatlands

Manhattan

• CD 7 — Upper West Side
• CD 8 — Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island

Queens

• CD 4 — Corona and Elmhurst
• CD 5 — Ridgewood, Maspeth, and Middle Village
• CD 10 — South Ozone Park and Howard Beach
• CD 11 — Auburndale, Bayside, and Douglaston
• CD 13 — Queens Village, Bellerose, and Rosedale

Staten Island

• CD 2 — Mid-Island
• CD 3 — South Shore

Source: NYC Department of City Planning

Discretionary land use applications for projects that include the development of affordable housing pursuant to the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program in any of these 12 community districts will be subject to a modified, shorter version of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) known as the Expedited Land Use Review Procedure (ELURP). ELURP for such qualifying projects would be capped at 90 days, rather than six to seven months under ULURP, and would remove City Council review.

“Every New Yorker deserves a home they can afford, and every neighborhood must be part of delivering it,” said Mayor Zohran Mamdani in a press release. “The Affordable Housing Fast Track gives us a new tool to cut through red tape and make sure our housing growth is shared more fairly across all five boroughs.”

The Affordable Housing Fast Track will be in effect in these 12 community districts for a five-year period beginning January 1, 2027. The Department will review all 59 community districts’ rates of affordable housing development every five years, and the 12 community districts in which the Affordable Housing Fast Track applies will be updated accordingly.