We ran RunEnvelope’s zoning engine over 324,483 tax lots in Queens. 1,650 privately owned sites have at least 20,000 square feet of as-of-right room for housing and are built to half of it or less.
square feet across 1,650 sites. 126.6M of it needs no affordability program.
The unit count of the largest apartment scheme on each site, minus the 15,765 homes there today. A ceiling, not a forecast.
of the room for housing on the 3,740 lots analyzed sits on 1,328 lots built to less than a quarter of their largest housing scheme, or not built at all.
Commercial and office holds the most room for housing in Queens: 65.1M square feet on 1,255 lots, 41% of the total.
City Planning land use codes as recorded in PLUTO.
Built floor area as a share of the lot’s largest housing scheme.
| Built to | Lots | Room for housing |
|---|---|---|
| Nothing built | 304 | 25.9M sf |
| Under 25% | 1,024 | 75.4M sf |
| 25 to 50% | 517 | 40.5M sf |
| 50 to 75% | 269 | 14.1M sf |
| 75 to 100% | 70 | 1.6M sf |
| At or above 100% | 18 | 0M sf |
Queens Community District 12 leads with 30.2M square feet of room for housing and 393 sites.
| Community district | Lots | Room for housing | Sites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queens Community District 12 | 572 | 30.2M sf | 393 |
| Queens Community District 8 | 166 | 21.3M sf | 127 |
| Queens Community District 1 | 421 | 16.8M sf | 156 |
| Queens Community District 14 | 256 | 16.4M sf | 144 |
| Queens Community District 2 | 677 | 15.3M sf | 148 |
| Queens Community District 7 | 433 | 14.7M sf | 148 |
| Queens Community District 6 | 193 | 11.3M sf | 104 |
| Queens Community District 3 | 172 | 8.5M sf | 112 |
| Queens Community District 11 | 74 | 5.2M sf | 64 |
| Queens Community District 4 | 115 | 4.4M sf | 58 |
| District family | Room | Sites |
|---|---|---|
| Residential (R) | 93.2M sf | 1,036 |
| Commercial (C) | 43.5M sf | 450 |
| Mixed manufacturing and residential (MX) | 20.9M sf | 164 |
| Manufacturing (M) | 0M sf | 0 |
Counted by the lot’s zoning district. Manufacturing districts mostly do not allow housing, so their room is small by definition. District reference.
The quick way to underwrite a lot is to multiply its area by the residential FAR in PLUTO. On the 2,191 analyzed lots where both allow housing, that gives 165.8M square feet. The engine’s largest residential-only building, with no affordability program, comes to 171.9M: 3% more in total. The total hides the lot-by-lot picture: the engine lands within 10% of the simple number on 1,589 lots, more than 10% above it on 529, and more than 10% below it on 73.
More can come from rules PLUTO’s single figure does not capture, such as the higher FAR on a wide street or a commercial district’s residential equivalent. Less can come from a lot too small or narrow for the height and setback rules to fit the full FAR. Each example below links to the lot’s page with its scenarios.
| Lot | PLUTO FAR x area | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| 248-27 Jericho Turnpike R4 · 20,000 sf lot · wide street | 20,000 sf FAR 1 | 30,000 sf Max Apartments |
| 35-35 24 Street R5 · 33,400 sf lot · wide street | 50,100 sf FAR 1.5 | 66,800 sf Max Apartments |
| 33-53 10 Street R5 · 38,850 sf lot · wide street | 58,275 sf FAR 1.5 | 77,700 sf Max Apartments |
| Lot | PLUTO FAR x area | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| 24-29 Jackson Avenue C5-3 · 7,085 sf lot · wide street | 70,850 sf FAR 10 | 14,170 sf Shared Housing (SRO) |
| 139-04 Hillside Avenue C4-4D · 6,525 sf lot · wide street | 39,280 sf FAR 6.02 | 33,178 sf Shared Housing (SRO) |
| 59-01 Main Street R5B · 27,260 sf lot · wide street | 40,890 sf FAR 1.5 | 37,437 sf Max Apartments |
Examples are drawn from our published Queens lot pages, which pass extra data quality checks, and ranked by the ratio of the two numbers. Each is a single screening result: open the lot page for its scenarios, and treat it as a reason to look closer, not a conclusion.
Our soft sites study counted 1,387 sites in Queens from PLUTO alone. The engine assessed 1,122 of them (the rest are public, missing a built area, or failed a check). PLUTO puts their unused residential floor area at 79M square feet. The engine finds 80.1M for residential-only buildings, 97.9M once mixed-use schemes with homes count, and 107.7M with the affordable and senior housing schemes.
RunEnvelope precomputes its zoning analysis for every tax lot in PLUTO 26v2: the same engine as a report, run in screening mode from the City’s recorded lot dimensions rather than a surveyed outline. For each lot we use:
| Engine could not compute (error, or no zoning district) | 2,172 |
|---|---|
| Public, institutional or open space | 9,244 |
| Condominium or co-op | 2,408 |
| Buildings present but no built floor area recorded | 1,763 |
| Largest scheme above the district's maximum FAR | 382 |
| Less unused floor area than the floor | 304,774 |
| Analyzed: one and two family homes | 158 |
| Analyzed: all other private lots | 3,582 |
| Tax lots in Queens | 324,483 |
Each lot is counted once, in the first class that applies, top to bottom. Public and institutional land, condominiums and co-ops follow the same rules as the soft sites study.
It counts what the zoning permits, not what will be built. Landmarked buildings and lots in historic districts are included in these totals (the lot pages leave them out). It cannot see who lives or works on a lot, leases, ground conditions, financing or whether anyone wants to sell. PLUTO’s built floor area comes from tax records and is least reliable on large, irregular lots. Treat any single lot as a lead worth checking.
Computed October 25, 2026 against PLUTO 26v2 by scripts_seo/borough_research.py. Reuse with attribution and a link to this page.