Motivated by the current housing crisis, and in an effort to devise ways to solve it, Zarin & Steinmetz attorneys David Steinmetz and Lee Lefkowitz offer a unique public policy analysis, which will be published in the upcoming November/December issue of the New York State Bar Association Journal. David and Lee push for a new legal avenue to make rezoning efforts less onerous, which would ease the pathway for developers to build more – and affordable – housing in New York State. They suggest that legislative boards tasked with reviewing a rezoning petition should be held to the same judicial review as other land use determinations. Decisions on whether to rezone a property, they say, should be guided by empirical data and facts; and “arbitrary and capricious” decisions that deny a rezoning petition should be subject to judicial scrutiny. Read their piece here or download a copy here.