We ran RunEnvelope’s zoning engine over 125,829 tax lots in Staten Island. 720 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 720 sites. 56.3M of it needs no affordability program.
The unit count of the largest apartment scheme on each site, minus the 2,008 homes there today. A ceiling, not a forecast.
of the room for housing on the 1,482 lots analyzed sits on 694 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 Staten Island: 26.2M square feet on 367 lots, 43% 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 | 224 | 18.6M sf |
| Under 25% | 470 | 34.7M sf |
| 25 to 50% | 97 | 4.8M sf |
| 50 to 75% | 44 | 2M sf |
| 75 to 100% | 8 | 0M sf |
| At or above 100% | 10 | 0M sf |
Staten Island Community District 2 leads with 26.8M square feet of room for housing and 248 sites.
| Community district | Lots | Room for housing | Sites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staten Island Community District 2 | 401 | 26.8M sf | 248 |
| Staten Island Community District 1 | 501 | 18M sf | 241 |
| Staten Island Community District 3 | 580 | 15.5M sf | 231 |
| District family | Room | Sites |
|---|---|---|
| Residential (R) | 33.5M sf | 594 |
| Commercial (C) | 26.8M sf | 126 |
| 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 812 analyzed lots where both allow housing, that gives 53.5M square feet. The engine’s largest residential-only building, with no affordability program, comes to 51.5M: 3% less in total. The total hides the lot-by-lot picture: the engine lands within 10% of the simple number on 677 lots, more than 10% above it on 86, and more than 10% below it on 49.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 215 Bay Street R6 · 14,039 sf lot · wide street | 34,115 sf FAR 2.43 | 64,579 sf Max Apartments |
| 263 Bay Street R6 · 7,940 sf lot · narrow street | 19,294 sf FAR 2.43 | 30,966 sf Max Apartments |
| 465 Bay Street R6 · 20,547 sf lot · wide street | 49,929 sf FAR 2.43 | 80,133 sf Max Apartments |
| Lot | PLUTO FAR x area | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| 12 Prospect Street C4-2A · 10,000 sf lot · narrow street | 30,000 sf FAR 3 | 20,000 sf Shared Housing (SRO) |
| 450 Front Street C4-2A · 17,973 sf lot · narrow street | 53,919 sf FAR 3 | 35,946 sf Shared Housing (SRO) |
| 358 St Marks Place C4-2 · 12,750 sf lot · narrow street | 30,983 sf FAR 2.43 | 28,050 sf Max Apartments |
Examples are drawn from our published Staten Island 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 487 sites in Staten Island from PLUTO alone. The engine assessed 423 of them (the rest are public, missing a built area, or failed a check). PLUTO puts their unused residential floor area at 35.1M square feet. The engine finds 33M for residential-only buildings, 46.7M once mixed-use schemes with homes count, and 47.4M 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) | 1,989 |
|---|---|
| Public, institutional or open space | 5,371 |
| Condominium or co-op | 236 |
| Buildings present but no built floor area recorded | 586 |
| Largest scheme above the district's maximum FAR | 195 |
| Less unused floor area than the floor | 115,970 |
| Analyzed: one and two family homes | 396 |
| Analyzed: all other private lots | 1,086 |
| Tax lots in Staten Island | 125,829 |
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.