NYC Council to vote on Bronx housing plan for ex-Rikers detainees in break from custom

The New York City Council is expected to vote Thursday on a proposal to build 58 specialized apartments for former Rikers detainees with severe medical problems on the campus of a Bronx hospital, despite intense opposition from the local member, four people familiar with the plan told Gothamist on Monday. And they all expect it to pass.

The vote would mark a rare break from the Council’s custom of siding with the local member on land-use decisions in their district — in this case, Councilmember Kristy Marmorato, a Bronx Republican. It would also serve as a rebuke to Mayor Eric Adams, who was once an ardent defender of the project, known as Just Home, before dropping his support earlier this month.

The feud over a relatively small housing proposal has come to symbolize larger political fights over who has the power to approve new housing development, a Council custom of deferring to local representatives on land-use issues and the need to address the city’s deep affordable housing crisis.

Councilmember Diana Ayala, deputy Council speaker and chair of the committee on general welfare, told Gothamist the vote on the project at Jacobi Hospital will be scheduled for lawmakers’ next stated meeting Thursday. She said the proposal to turn a vacant hospital building into supportive housing seems to have majority support.

“The idea of being able to create this housing on the campus of an existing hospital is unique, but it’s also genius because where else can you get better, faster care?” said Ayala, a Democrat representing parts of Manhattan and the Bronx. “Their needs would not be addressed in a shelter setting, or, god forbid, the streets.”

In addition to 58 units of supportive housing for formerly incarcerated people, Just Home would feature 25 affordable apartments for low-income tenants. It would be operated by the nonprofit Fortune Society, which provides housing and services to people leaving jails and prisons. The plan first received city backing in 2022.

Fortune Society CEO Stanley Richards told councilmembers that people eligible for the housing after leaving Rikers will be those with “complex medical needs,” such as late-stage cancer, that they could not manage inside city homeless shelters.

But the proposal has faced years of anger and skepticism from residents of the surrounding Morris Park neighborhood, including Marmorato, who say they fear living near people with criminal histories and don’t trust assurances from the city and Fortune Society that the site will only house medically frail individuals.

Marmorato did not immediately provide comment late Monday.

Ayala said she and many of her colleagues are willing to override the custom of “member deference” to approve the plan because they “take issue that some members won’t do their fair share when it comes to approving housing in their districts.”

Marmorato’s Council district has accounted for just 484 units of new affordable housing in the past decade, according to an analysis by the nonprofit New York Housing Conference, a policy group. The city’s 51 Council districts produced an average of about 2,100 units in that span.

The decision to hold the vote comes less than two weeks after Adams’ top deputy Randy Mastro instructed city agencies to drop their support of the plan ahead of a Council hearing last week.

The city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation owns the campus and approved the conversion of the vacant building to affordable housing last year, but the project requires sign-off from the Council before the redevelopment can begin.

At a Council hearing last Wednesday, Health and Hospitals Commissioner Mitchell Katz formally confirmed the administration’s about-face in written testimony, saying his agency was exploring a new location for Just Home.

No representative from Katz’s office showed up to testify or answer questions at the hearing, angering several councilmembers. Adams’ senior advisor Diane Savino told the Council that his administration was “committed to that project, [but] not at this location.”

Marmorato told Gothamist last week she had identified a new location for the supportive housing site, though she said she could not disclose it.

Adams’ reversal on the plan, which was offered with little explanation, triggered backlash from multiple councilmembers as it coincided with a push by the mayor to cut the Legislature out of some land-use decisions. As a result of a Charter Revision Commission appointed by Adams, voters in the November general election will be asked to weigh in on three ballot measures that would limit Council authority, including one that would establish a panel with the power to overrule their decisions.

Housing policy experts have blamed member deference for killing housing plans because lone lawmakers have effective veto power over land-use decisions in their districts.

“The mayor is pushing ballot proposals to build more housing because he says we’re the ones in the way of building more housing, and here he is playing games to block building more housing,” Councilmember Justin Brannan of Brooklyn said at the hearing.

City Hall spokesperson William Fowler in turn criticized the Council for not holding a hearing on Just Home in the nearly two years since the hospital agency approved it. City Hall did not immediately respond late Monday to questions about the expected vote this week.