Christopher Marte Stands Firm in Defense of New York Tenants

NEW YORK, NY - The City Council passed Mayor Eric Adams' City of Yes plan Thursday, but not before a Manhattan councilmember showed some real backbone by pushing back against the developer boondoggle.

On December 5th, the New York City Council voted to approve the highly debated City of Yes for Housing Opportunity zoning plan. The surface-level idea suggested by Mayor Eric Adams is to build 80,000 new housing units in the next 15 years to help remedy the city's housing crisis. But with that initiative has come very intense debate. To many, it was nothing but a give-in for developers, not an honest solution to the problems of affordability.

Although the ostensible nature of the effort is being brazenly overlooked by its supporters, it was met with equally bold opposition. One of the plan’s denouncers, District 1 Councilmember Christopher Marte, was the sole vote against the plan among Manhattan councilmembers. Marte, who has built his City Hall career on protecting tenants' rights and the preservation of our city, stated that Adams’ plan "puts profits over people." Marte pointed to the lack of mandates for truly affordable housing, damage to livability in neighborhoods that might come from lost open space, and rent increases.

Marte's opposition focused on the fact that the plan relied on incentives for developers, rather than firm affordability requirements. He cited how previous voluntary programs had, more often than not, failed to provide promised affordable housing. Marte felt office-to-residential conversions and new developments under the plan would predominantly house market-rate tenants, continuing to push working-class New Yorkers further out of the city.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, hailed it as a "landmark reform" — while critics like Marte say the plan does little to alleviate the housing crisis for the city's most vulnerable populations, branding it a "developer boondoggle" that benefits real estate interests at the expense of meaningful action on affordability.

Marte's disapproval underlines his commitment to the needs of tenants and his resistance to policies that he feels will only increase inequality. His sole vote against approval of the plan in Manhattan is a reminder that the struggle for affordable housing in New York City is far from finding its resolve.