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For months, the campaign to pass charter reforms to speed the construction of housing have flown well under the radar of most New Yorkers, drowned out by coverage of the mayor’s race.
Now those reforms are front and center as Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani’s stubborn refusal to take a position on them has focused attention on the many contradictions in his ambitious affordability program — which envisions building 200,000 affordable units over the next decade using union labor — and whether he is willing to make tough choices and confront the economic realities of his platform.
The housing charter proposals — measures 2, 3 and 4 — are designed to speed the development of more affordable housing by bypassing City Council approval for some projects and allow others rejected by the Council to be approved by a panel composed of the mayor, City Council speaker and borough president.
The reforms have wide backing from housing groups, elected officials including city comptroller Brad Lander — whom Mamdani cross-endorsed in the primary — and most of the borough presidents as well as real estate interests. They are being opposed by the Council because they would reduce its power, and by some unions that see the Council’s leverage over projects as the best way to win guarantees that projects are unionized both in construction and in staffing.
But those requirements come at a cost, pushing up the price of construction. And while Mamdami’s housing plan asserts that the city can build affordable units for $500,000 apiece using union construction workers, many projects built with less costly non-union labor already cost more than that.
Using union labor puts the cost of an affordable unit at a minimum of $800,000, according to the Real Estate Board of New York, with the price tag likely to reach $1 million in most of Manhattan or the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront.
Read more about the challenges that a Mayor Mamdani’s housing agenda could encounter here.
Weather ☀️
Sunny, with a high near 54.
MTA 🚇
In the Bronx and Upper Manhattan, overnight downtown D trains will skip 167 St, 161 St-Yankee Stadium and 155 St. Find all the MTA’s planned changes and the latest delays here.
The MTA pledged Monday to install more turnstile armor at almost every subway gateway by the end of this year.
Transit officials credited the barriers to fare evasion — including sharp-edged fins and crescent-shaped sleeves — for contributing to double-digit drops at stations where they are already in place. Fare and toll evasion last year cost the MTA close to $1 billion, according to a September report from the Citizens Budget Commission.
“Stations with this equipment have experienced a 20 to 30% decrease in fare evasion — a 20 to 30% decrease just by changing the infrastructure at specific stations,” Demetrius Crichlow, president of New York City Transit, said Monday during an MTA committee meeting. “So it has proven that it is worth the investment.”
The additional barriers will be rolled out at all but the 20 stations where the MTA is testing four different designs for modern fare gates. The new designs include taller doors designed to keep farebeaters from scaling turnstiles and will be tested at stations that include 14th Street-Union Square, 42nd Street-Port Authority Bus Terminal, Forest Hills-71st Avenue and Crown Heights-Utica Avenue.
MTA subway fare-evasion data shows that 11% of subway riders didn’t pay the fare in the third quarter of 2025 — up from 9.9% in the second quarter of the year. But transit officials have repeatedly touted a recent reversal in a fare-evasion trend that had been climbing for several years, citing measures that include posting private security guards near emergency exits in stations.
— Jose Martinez
Things To Do
Here are some free and low-cost things to do around the city this week.
Wednesday, Oct. 29: Check out the Spooky Walk-Through event at St John’s Recreation Center in Brooklyn. Free, from 5 to 8 p.m.
Wednesday, Oct. 29: Celebrate a season of murals in gardens at the NYC Parks Arsenal on the Upper East Side. Free, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Friday, Oct. 31: Don’t miss the Village Halloween Parade. The parade will run up 6th Ave from Spring St to 16th St. Free, from 7 to 11 p.m.
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