By Xiao Liu, Volunteer Blog Writer at Mentor A Promise
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| House construction design, architectural blueprints and planning for building dream homes By pornthip |
On November 12, 2025, the New York City Council approved the Long Island City Neighborhood Plan (OneLIC), [1] which aims to improve zoning regulations to accommodate more than 14,000 new homes, over 4,000 of which will be permanently income-restricted and affordable. [2]
In addition to this rezoning, OneLIC is also committed to fostering quality employment opportunities by expanding the space available for businesses and community services [3]. This blog examines how the plan may help alleviate homelessness in Long Island City (LIC) and what lessons from it could be applied across New York City (NYC) as a whole.
With convenient transit access, economic diversity, and a remarkable waterfront, LIC has become one of the most vibrant communities in NYC. Nevertheless, this vibrancy has not been evenly experienced across LIC, with notable disparities in housing, services, and local investment. It was within this uneven landscape that the OneLIC plan was developed.
This uneven landscape is not unique to LIC. The entirety of NYC has faced recurring housing crises throughout its history, driven at different times by rapid population growth, restrictive zoning practices, and economic instability. These pressures have repeatedly pushed vulnerable residents, including new immigrants, into homelessness. Today, the city’s tight vacancy rates and rising rents continue to make it increasingly difficult to secure stable housing.
Citywide, including in LIC, new housing construction has fallen short of demand, vacancy rates are at unprecedented lows, and the number of people experiencing homelessness continues to rise. [4] Thus, there has been a pressing need for more housing options, especially affordable and family-sized homes that can support stable lives and enable both residents and newcomers to remain rooted in their neighborhoods.
However, providing more housing options alone is not enough to help people in need break the cycle of homelessness. If individuals cannot secure and maintain stable employment that provides a reliable income, they will struggle to afford rent and deposits. If youth in need lack access to enriched educational programs, they may not be adequately prepared for an increasingly competitive world, limiting their ability to obtain quality jobs and potentially placing them at renewed risk of homelessness due to poverty. Likewise, when opportunities for community connection are limited, people in need have fewer avenues for upward mobility because they lack the social networks that enable such progress.
With these issues in play—strained educational resources, limited access to essential community services (such as childcare and community centers), inadequate social infrastructure (for example, many sections of the LIC waterfront remain inaccessible to the public), and a lack of new local job creation—some citizens may be able to escape homelessness temporarily, but it’s easy for them to slip back into the cycle of poverty and homelessness.
In this context, the OneLIC plan was developed with the aim of comprehensively addressing these challenges by considering the full set of relevant issues and the ways they reinforce one another. The plan is intended to serve as an insightful and promising pilot for alleviating homelessness across NYC from a long-term perspective. There are two main lessons that can be drawn from the plan for future action across the City. The first concerns identifying where to begin when drafting the plan—specifically, determining the City’s most pressing needs—and the second relates to the strategic perspectives that must be carefully considered during its development. These two lessons are discussed below.
Lesson 1: Launching the Planning Process By Listening To What Communities Still Need
Planning is a dynamic process, rooted in careful investigation rather than ideas made up on a whim. We develop plans because we have goals to achieve in order to meet real and reasonable needs. In the context of city planning, the needs of residents and community organizations should form the core of the plan and serve as the driving force for urban development. Put another way, a city development plan should be built upon those needs.
OneLIC serves as a strong example of integrating a development plan with a comprehensive set of community-informed strategies designed to meet the neighborhood’s existing needs. [5] In preparing the plan, the relevant city office spent nearly two years closely listening to and engaging with the communities involved, whose residents shared their hopes and ideas to inform the creation of OneLIC.
The data was gathered through “workshops, walking tours, town halls, and thousands of comments from residents, workers, and community organizations,” according to Daniel R. Garodnick, Director of the New York City Department of City Planning and Chair of the New York City Planning Commission [6].
After analyzing the data, the relevant office identified and summarized requests from LIC communities, such as a broader range of housing options for families with children and older adults; improved lighting, wayfinding, and public gathering spaces along the waterfront; more sustainable and resilient development; and expanded access to local employment opportunities for area residents [7]. Taken together, these requests reflect a multi-tiered approach to issues tied to existing inner-city poverty, including homelessness. Rather than treating these issues as isolated from one another, the plan—grounded in perspectives shared by residents—began with a comprehensive understanding of city development.
This type of contextualized plan truly responds to the voices of community members, enabling broader infrastructure investments from NYC to be effectively leveraged. From this, one key takeaway emerges: for future development plans—whether aimed at city growth or at addressing poverty and homelessness—across different areas of the City, it is essential to engage a broad cross-section of stakeholders through events, surveys, online and in-person outreach, and sustained conversations before any decisions are made, in order to develop a well-informed, sustainable plan.
Lesson 2: Champion Long-Term Vibrancy, Resilience, and Affordability
As discussed in our last blog, Building The Beacon Begins With Understanding Homelessness: A Shift In Perspective, homelessness in America is rooted in structural factors that produce disparities across many areas, including housing, education, and job opportunities. In this sense, addressing the issue requires a comprehensive plan that supports the long-term vibrancy, resilience, and affordability of the community or city affected.
After gathering essential input from a wide range of stakeholders and community members and considering relevant sociopolitical factors, OneLIC outlined five goals and strategies for comprehensive urban development. They are [8]:
With convenient transit access, economic diversity, and a remarkable waterfront, LIC has become one of the most vibrant communities in NYC. Nevertheless, this vibrancy has not been evenly experienced across LIC, with notable disparities in housing, services, and local investment. It was within this uneven landscape that the OneLIC plan was developed.
This uneven landscape is not unique to LIC. The entirety of NYC has faced recurring housing crises throughout its history, driven at different times by rapid population growth, restrictive zoning practices, and economic instability. These pressures have repeatedly pushed vulnerable residents, including new immigrants, into homelessness. Today, the city’s tight vacancy rates and rising rents continue to make it increasingly difficult to secure stable housing.
Citywide, including in LIC, new housing construction has fallen short of demand, vacancy rates are at unprecedented lows, and the number of people experiencing homelessness continues to rise. [4] Thus, there has been a pressing need for more housing options, especially affordable and family-sized homes that can support stable lives and enable both residents and newcomers to remain rooted in their neighborhoods.
However, providing more housing options alone is not enough to help people in need break the cycle of homelessness. If individuals cannot secure and maintain stable employment that provides a reliable income, they will struggle to afford rent and deposits. If youth in need lack access to enriched educational programs, they may not be adequately prepared for an increasingly competitive world, limiting their ability to obtain quality jobs and potentially placing them at renewed risk of homelessness due to poverty. Likewise, when opportunities for community connection are limited, people in need have fewer avenues for upward mobility because they lack the social networks that enable such progress.
With these issues in play—strained educational resources, limited access to essential community services (such as childcare and community centers), inadequate social infrastructure (for example, many sections of the LIC waterfront remain inaccessible to the public), and a lack of new local job creation—some citizens may be able to escape homelessness temporarily, but it’s easy for them to slip back into the cycle of poverty and homelessness.
In this context, the OneLIC plan was developed with the aim of comprehensively addressing these challenges by considering the full set of relevant issues and the ways they reinforce one another. The plan is intended to serve as an insightful and promising pilot for alleviating homelessness across NYC from a long-term perspective. There are two main lessons that can be drawn from the plan for future action across the City. The first concerns identifying where to begin when drafting the plan—specifically, determining the City’s most pressing needs—and the second relates to the strategic perspectives that must be carefully considered during its development. These two lessons are discussed below.
Lesson 1: Launching the Planning Process By Listening To What Communities Still Need
Planning is a dynamic process, rooted in careful investigation rather than ideas made up on a whim. We develop plans because we have goals to achieve in order to meet real and reasonable needs. In the context of city planning, the needs of residents and community organizations should form the core of the plan and serve as the driving force for urban development. Put another way, a city development plan should be built upon those needs.
OneLIC serves as a strong example of integrating a development plan with a comprehensive set of community-informed strategies designed to meet the neighborhood’s existing needs. [5] In preparing the plan, the relevant city office spent nearly two years closely listening to and engaging with the communities involved, whose residents shared their hopes and ideas to inform the creation of OneLIC.
The data was gathered through “workshops, walking tours, town halls, and thousands of comments from residents, workers, and community organizations,” according to Daniel R. Garodnick, Director of the New York City Department of City Planning and Chair of the New York City Planning Commission [6].
After analyzing the data, the relevant office identified and summarized requests from LIC communities, such as a broader range of housing options for families with children and older adults; improved lighting, wayfinding, and public gathering spaces along the waterfront; more sustainable and resilient development; and expanded access to local employment opportunities for area residents [7]. Taken together, these requests reflect a multi-tiered approach to issues tied to existing inner-city poverty, including homelessness. Rather than treating these issues as isolated from one another, the plan—grounded in perspectives shared by residents—began with a comprehensive understanding of city development.
This type of contextualized plan truly responds to the voices of community members, enabling broader infrastructure investments from NYC to be effectively leveraged. From this, one key takeaway emerges: for future development plans—whether aimed at city growth or at addressing poverty and homelessness—across different areas of the City, it is essential to engage a broad cross-section of stakeholders through events, surveys, online and in-person outreach, and sustained conversations before any decisions are made, in order to develop a well-informed, sustainable plan.
Lesson 2: Champion Long-Term Vibrancy, Resilience, and Affordability
As discussed in our last blog, Building The Beacon Begins With Understanding Homelessness: A Shift In Perspective, homelessness in America is rooted in structural factors that produce disparities across many areas, including housing, education, and job opportunities. In this sense, addressing the issue requires a comprehensive plan that supports the long-term vibrancy, resilience, and affordability of the community or city affected.
After gathering essential input from a wide range of stakeholders and community members and considering relevant sociopolitical factors, OneLIC outlined five goals and strategies for comprehensive urban development. They are [8]:
- Creating more housing for people at a range of income levels
- Creating a connected, resilient, and accessible waterfront from Gantry State Park to Queensbridge Park
- Meeting the infrastructure and community needs of a growing neighborhood while reducing climate impacts
- Supporting the diversity and vitality of Long Island City’s unique and thriving economy
- Making it easier for Long Island City residents to access neighborhood resources and amenities
Looking closely at these strategies, we can anticipate that, in the years ahead, there may be
Moreover, the goal is not to simply copy and paste the OneLIC model. Instead, strategies should be adapted to the specific conditions of the area in question. For example, in LIC, the waterfront is a unique geographic feature, so the plan was developed by considering both the opportunities and challenges associated with it, ultimately seeking to maximize community well-being by leveraging this distinct asset.
Taken together, the approval of OneLIC is encouraging news for advancing solutions to homelessness and other forms of social disorganization. It offers a blueprint for future development plans across NYC that can, hopefully, be paired with a well-developed suite of community-informed strategies designed to respond to communities’ existing needs.
- More income-restricted and affordable housing to accommodate residents and newcomers
- Additional publicly accessible gathering spaces along the waterfront to support neighborhood connection
- Partnerships with residents to explore ways to improve quality of life at Queensbridge Houses by repairing and upgrading nearby apartments, mitigating crime, increasing access to fresh and affordable food, and enhancing connectivity with surrounding neighborhoods
- New school facilities to address seat shortages
- Expanded support for small businesses and local programs to spur economic development and generate more job opportunities
- Improvements to sewer, transportation, and waterfront infrastructure to create a more convenient and climate-resilient LIC
- Affordable Housing: Create financial incentives for real estate developers to prompt the expansion of housing options for households across different income levels, thereby reducing residents’ concerns about being unable to afford a home
- Social Networking: Develop more publicly accessible gathering spaces for residents from different communities to connect and gain social networking resources that support upward social mobility
- *Note: Research has shown (1) that social networks often function as racialized “leashes” that can perpetuate segregation, and (2) that a “parallel universe” exists between white and minority communities, in which impoverished white residents have greater access to upward-mobility opportunities because their predominantly white networks contain more social resources than those available within the networks of impoverished minorities [9] [10]
- Education: Encourage the inclusion of schools in new developments by creating zoning incentives and refining space planning for potential school sites, while also constructing additional facilities to address overenrollment
- *Note: Quality education helps homeless children break the homelessness cycle by improving future employment and earnings, providing safe and stable learning environments, and connecting them to supportive adults and services—factors that research shows reduce long-term poverty and housing instability [11] [12] [13]
- Public Safety: Look for crime mitigation strategies—such as improving sidewalk lighting and wayfinding—to enhance public safety, thereby encouraging more New Yorkers to walk on the streets, which also benefits local businesses
- *Note: A 2016 study reported that installing extra lighting in developments managed by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) led to almost a 40% decline in nighttime crime and generated positive economic effects for surrounding communities [14]
- Local Business & Job Creation: Promote business growth by increasing industrial density, expanding support for artists and small enterprises, and linking local businesses to City programs—actions that collectively help generate more job opportunities, which are essential for supporting long-term housing stability
- Environmental Resiliency: City development should integrate environmental protection so that economic prosperity and environmental resilience reinforce rather than contradict each other
Moreover, the goal is not to simply copy and paste the OneLIC model. Instead, strategies should be adapted to the specific conditions of the area in question. For example, in LIC, the waterfront is a unique geographic feature, so the plan was developed by considering both the opportunities and challenges associated with it, ultimately seeking to maximize community well-being by leveraging this distinct asset.
Taken together, the approval of OneLIC is encouraging news for advancing solutions to homelessness and other forms of social disorganization. It offers a blueprint for future development plans across NYC that can, hopefully, be paired with a well-developed suite of community-informed strategies designed to respond to communities’ existing needs.
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