Hiding in plain sight: the desegregating impact of applying the “fast track” affordable housing approval process to the 12 communities districts that have had the lowest production.
Oct. 1, 2026 — New York City’s Department of City Planning has released the list of the 12 community districts that have had the lowest rates of affordable housing production. These are the community districts where, for the next five years, affordable housing proposals that need zoning changes or other formal land use approvals will be “fast tracked” pursuant to an amendment to the City Charter that voters approved in Nov. 2025.
Fast tracking will compress the review process and, critically, vest final approval in the City Planning Commission, not the City Council. So “member deference,” a custom long-identified in New York City and other municipalities as stymieing affordable housing development, will not be available in these circumstances.
Below is a table of the demographics of the 12 community districts selected pursuant to the Charter-mandated process. The data actually reflect “community district tabulation areas” (CDTAs), which are approximations of the geography of community districts.
Nine of 12 of the lowest producing districts (highlighted in red or yellow) have non-Hispanic Black populations less than a third of the citywide Black population (per the 2020-2024 American Community Survey, the source for all the data here, the citywide non-Hispanic Black population is 20.4 percent). Seven of those nine (highlighted in red) have non-Hispanic Black populations less than a quarter of the citywide non-Hispanic Black population.
I have reached out to City Planning, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the Mayor’s office, and the City Council Speaker’s office for comment as to whether, given the demographics of the participants in New York City’s housing lottery process (heavily Black and Hispanic): (1) they expect the fast track to have a desegregating impact; and (2) whether that is a positive development for the city. I will supplement this article with any responsive answer.
| Single-race, non-Hispanic | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White | Black | Asian | ||
| BK 10 | 51.7% | 2.4% | 22.9% | 19.3% |
| BK 12 | 60.1% | 3.1% | 18.6% | 13.1% |
| BK 18 | 20.4% | 57.3% | 5.9% | 8.7% |
| M 7 | 62.3% | 6.4% | 10.9% | 14.8% |
| M 8 | 72.8% | 3.2% | 10.2% | 9.3% |
| Q 4 | 5.3% | 5.8% | 34.5% | 52.4% |
| Q 5 | 46.3% | 2.0% | 10.1% | 38.3% |
| Q 10 | 19.9% | 12.5% | 23.2% | 26.1% |
| Q 11 | 34.9% | 2.2% | 45.1% | 14.1% |
| Q 13 | 8.7% | 51.6% | 18.9% | 13.6% |
| SI 2 | 59.4% | 3.1% | 20.4% | 13.6% |
| SI 3 | 76.1% | 0.7% | 8.3% | 12.3% |
| Note 1: In the column for the percentage of Black, non-Hispanic residents in a CDTA, red highlighting indicates a percentage is less than a quarter of the citywide percentage of non-Hispanic Blacks; yellow highlighting indicates a CDTA less than a third of the citywide percentage. | ||||
| Note 2: The Department of City Planning flags any estimate where the “coefficient of variation” (sampling error relative to the size of the estimate) is greater than or equal to 20 percent as “not statistically reliable enough for most applications.” The only cell in this table to which the flag applies is the one for non-Hispanic Blacks in SI 3. | ||||
| Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 five-year estimates, as tabulated by the NYC Department of City Planning for Community District Tabulation Areas (CDTAs), available through the Population FactFinder of the NYC Department of City Planning at https://popfactfinder.planning.nyc.gov. | ||||