City of Yes for Housing Opportunity

Approved by the City Council on December 5, 2024, City of Yes for Housing Opportunity (COYHO) is a citywide zoning text amendment aimed at roughly 80,000 new homes over 15 years. It doesn't rezone any single neighborhood by itself — instead, it changes the rules that apply everywhere, as-of-right. The provisions most relevant to an individual property owner:

  • Universal Affordability Preference (UAP): an as-of-right 20% floor-area bonus in R6 through R10 districts for buildings that dedicate the additional floor area to permanently affordable units, averaging around 60% AMI across no more than three income bands. This is one of the more immediately usable tools in COYHO — no separate rezoning required.
  • Parking mandate elimination: full elimination of required parking in high-transit areas (much of Manhattan, large parts of Brooklyn and Queens near subway service) and citywide elimination for accessory dwelling units, conversions, and transit-oriented development. Removing parking requirements can free up meaningful buildable area on tight urban lots.
  • Transit-Oriented Development (TOD): allows 3–5 story residential buildings on lots of 5,000+ sq ft within a half-mile of many transit stops (a quarter-mile for some outer commuter-rail stations) in lower-density R3–R5 districts.
  • Town Center zoning: as-of-right 3–5 story apartment buildings along many commercial corridors, with added affordability incentives for larger projects.
  • Office and commercial conversion eligibility: expanded citywide to buildings that existed as of December 31, 1990 — a far more permissive cutoff than prior rules, and a major driver of the conversion activity discussed in our 467-m guide.
  • Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs): legalized in owner-occupied one- and two-family homes in lower-density districts, subject to size and configuration limits.

In its first year, COYHO reportedly enabled close to 17,600 new homes to be permitted citywide — up more than 20% year-over-year — with a substantial share coming from new high-density districts and expanded conversion eligibility.

The 12.0 FAR Cap Repeal — and What It Doesn't Automatically Do

In May 2024, the state legislature amended New York's Multiple Dwelling Law to eliminate the decades-old 12.0 Floor Area Ratio ceiling that had capped residential density citywide since 1961 — a change with particular relevance to prime Manhattan sites that had long bumped up against that limit. COYHO then created two brand-new high-density residential zoning districts to make use of that headroom: R11 (max residential FAR 15) and R12 (max residential FAR 18).

R11 and R12 are not mapped anywhere by default. They only apply where a separate, subsequent rezoning action specifically maps them onto a site — and only within Mandatory Inclusionary Housing areas. A Manhattan property owner should not assume their FAR increased to 15 or 18 without confirming their site was actually included in an adopted rezoning.

Five Major Neighborhood Rezonings Recently Approved

Beyond the citywide changes, NYC has approved a wave of large neighborhood-specific rezonings since 2024, each adding meaningful density within its footprint:

  • Bronx Metro-North Station Area Plan (approved August 2024) — roughly 7,000 homes enabled near four new Metro-North stations
  • Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan, Brooklyn (approved May 2025) — about 21 blocks across Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, and Bed-Stuy, with heights up to roughly 18 stories in places and about 4,600 homes enabled
  • Midtown South Mixed-Use Plan, Manhattan (approved August 2025) — 42 blocks (roughly 23rd–41st Streets, 5th–8th Avenues) converted from manufacturing-only to mixed-use, enabling about 9,500 homes
  • Jamaica Neighborhood Plan, Queens (approved October 2025) — the largest rezoning in the area in over 20 years, spanning about 230 blocks and enabling roughly 12,000 homes
  • OneLIC, Long Island City, Queens (approved November 2025) — enabling an estimated 14,700–15,000 homes

Collectively, these five plans are projected to add more than 50,000 units of housing capacity. If your property sits within or near one of these rezoning areas, its permitted density — and its development-site value — may have changed materially in the last two years, independent of anything COYHO did citywide.

How to Check Your Own Property

You don't need to guess. A handful of official tools let you check your site's current zoning and whether it falls inside an active or recently completed rezoning:

  • ZoLa (Zoning and Land Use Map) — zola.planning.nyc.gov — search by address or BBL to see current zoning district, FAR, and lot data
  • ZAP (Zoning Application Portal) — zap.planning.nyc.gov — status of active land-use and rezoning applications
  • NYC Rezoning Commitments Tracker — tracks neighborhood-level rezoning progress and public commitments
  • NYC Department of City Planning's City of Yes pages — for the citywide provisions and their current status

These tools tell you what's mapped today. They don't tell you what a site is worth under that zoning — that requires translating the allowable FAR into buildable square footage and benchmarking it against current land sale comparables, which is the subject of our guide on how to value a development site.

Why This Matters for Value, Not Just Zoning

Every additional unit of FAR a site gains — whether through the Universal Affordability Preference, a new TOD allowance, or inclusion in a neighborhood rezoning — directly increases the buildable square footage a developer can underwrite, and therefore what they can pay for the land. An owner who hasn't rechecked their zoning since before 2024 may be sitting on meaningfully more development value than they think, particularly in or near one of the five major rezoning areas above.

Zoning and density rules continue to change. Some provisions above — particularly newly mapped R11/R12 districts and the boundaries of ongoing neighborhood plans — are still being finalized. Confirm current zoning directly through ZoLa or a qualified land use professional before making decisions based on assumed density.