On his first day in office, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed three executive orders to fulfill his housing agenda, including the development of the Land Inventory Fast Track.
LIFT is described as a “multi-agency effort to identify city-controlled land that is suitable for housing.”
Exactly eight months later, the mayor has broken ground on his large-scale affordable housing project, which will ultimately utilize more than 100 city-owned sites to build an estimated 50,000 new affordable homes for New Yorkers.
Along with the ground-breaking is a new interactive tracking tool, aptly called the LIFT Tracker, which is a map available to any member of the public, showing real-time progress on these housing projects and available land across the city.
“Too many New Yorkers are being priced out of their homes. We have a responsibility to use every tool we have to build the affordable housing our city needs,” Mamdani said in a press release.
“The LIFT tracker brings transparency to that work and makes clear that City-owned land is not sitting idle — it is becoming homes, libraries and community space across the five boroughs.”
In addition to supporting Mamdani’s “Block by Block” housing plan, which charts a path to creating 200,000 new affordable homes over the next decade, LIFT also highlights opportunities to build public amenities, like libraries and other neighborhood services.
The mayor’s office said it will “maintain an aggressive pace,” issuing requests for proposals to develop housing on five or more new city-owned sites each year during his time in office.
A recently adopted city budget makes this effort possible; It invests a historic $22 billion in affordable housing over the next five years, including $5 billion in capital funding for affordable housing over the next two years, according to the mayor’s office.
“On his first day in office, Mayor Mamdani charged us with exploring how we can best use city-owned land to deliver the housing that New Yorkers need — and we are delivering,” Leila Bozorg, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning, said in a press release.
“We have already taken tangible steps forward on more than a dozen projects on public land that will create more than 5,000 new homes, and we are bringing unprecedented public transparency and engagement into this project with the release of the new LIFT tracker. We’ll continue our work to advance housing on public sites across the five boroughs, using every tool at our disposal to speed up these projects and identify creative ways to maximize our resources.”
One such project is The Orion, a new development in Hunter’s Point South, a long-vacant Queens site. The mixed-use building will include affordable housing, a daycare center, workforce development support, an indoor community pool, and commercial retail space.
According to the mayor’s office, it will provide approximately 1,000 new homes in the area, 650 of which will be income-restricted.
“With our city in the midst of an unprecedented housing crisis, The Orion … is exactly the kind of investment we need in neighborhoods like Long Island City, where the cost of living continues to rise,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. said in a statement.
“We must leave no stone unturned as we seek to increase our city’s housing supply, and I am thrilled that this long-vacant lot will be turned into beautiful new homes for hundreds of Queens families.”
On the morning of August 3, Mamdani joined partners and members of the press to speak at a groundbreaking ceremony of another new project, Casanova Residence in the Bronx.
“This is a 100% affordable housing project that will transform the lives of hundreds of New Yorkers here in the Bronx,” Mamdani said, later noting the “intentional city government disinvestment” of the Hunts Point community, which he called “neglect.”
“The people of this neighborhood refused to let destruction become their norm,” he rallied. “The livable, walkable streets where we stand today are proof of residents coming together … to demand something better.”
And now, Mamdani promised, it’s time for the city to deliver, with the new development featuring 96 affordable homes, 58 units for those with a history of homelessness, case management, financial literacy and work training courses, legal referrals, and more supportive services.
Residents will also have free broadband internet access in the building, on-site laundry, a fitness center, and more community spaces.
“This project is just one example of our broader efforts to rewrite the relationship between city government and the people of the Bronx,” Mamdani said.
“I stand here today with a commitment to bring that era of disinvestment to an end. This groundbreaking here at Casanova Residences stands as proof of what this commitment will look like.”
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Featured Image: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
