“A scam.”

That’s how Manhattan District 1 Council Member Christopher Marte characterized the SoHo-NoHo-Chinatown rezoning plan, which he’d vehemently opposed, and which was enacted in December 2021, immediately prior to his taking office.

Contrary to the promises of politicos and city planners, the downtown upzoning plan has thus far delivered less-than-nothing on the affordable housing front, according to a new report from Village Preservation, “The Rezoning of SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown: Taking Stock at the One-Third Mark.”

Three years and four months since the New York City Council passed the contentious rezoning plan—lifting restrictions on development in the area—not a single unit of affordable housing has been built, although the city had projected the construction of at least 127 affordable units during this time, and at least 382 affordable units within ten years.

The city projections were part of a legally required city planning study to assess the ten-year impact of the proposed rezoning. That study became the rationale for approving the plan.

Yet the Village Preservation report says that where housing units were projected to rise, instead, corporate offices have been built. Rent-stabilized housing units—eight so far—have been lost.

Indeed, not a single unit of any kind of housing has been built, although luxury housing developments—with no affordable units—are underway. The city had projected the completion of at least 610 housing units by now.

Marte declared the report “confirms what we knew all along: the promises of affordable housing were a smokescreen for luxury development and commercial expansion….The city lied to the public and now the only thing rising in SoHo, NoHo, and Chinatown is the rent.”

Village Preservation Executive Director Andrew Berman agreed, describing the report’s findings as ”shocking, [but] not at all surprising.” He said that every prediction made by critics of the plan—that it would incentivize commercial over residential development and the demolition of existing affordable housing—has come to pass.

In an interview with the Village Star-Revue, Berman further condemned the city’s record of vastly over-projecting the affordable housing that would allegedly be built in the wake of developer-friendly legislation.

City planning department predictions, “worse than flipping a coin,” Berman noted, have been typically less than ten percent reliable. “Clearly, the city is using dishonest representations because [what they’re selling] would never be supported by New Yorkers. So they tell us ‘black is white’ and ‘up is down.’ And that’s the way they get these things approved.”

Critics of the de Blasio upzoning plan had been subject to stinging attacks by then-Deputy Mayor Vicki Been, who had cast plan opponents as foes of affordable housing—and potential racists standing in the way of housing equity.

Speaking to the Village Star-Revue, preservationist Lynn Ellsworth, whose Coalition for a Human-Scale City had fought the upzoning, recalled how Been had claimed the plan as a racial equity tool. Been had touted the rezoning as a response to the killing of George Floyd, contending that it would desegregate and diversify an affluent white neighborhood, although it contained no provisions to do so.

Ellsworth asserted that the actual impetus for the plan had been the real estate developers—and de Blasio donors—with Edison Properties, which owned two parking lots in SoHo and NoHo, and stood to profit from lifting of development restrictions. She also characterized the upzoning plan and the campaign that led to its adoption as part of a coordinated attack on historic districts by the real estate lobby.

Ellsworth and Berman both decried what they described as a pattern of false predictions by the city planning department, most recently in the city’s advocacy for “City of Yes.”

“The city continues to make false promises about similar rezoning plans, which it continues to push,” Berman observed. The stark findings presented by the Village Presentation report “should be a warning to all New Yorkers and policymakers,” he declared.