The benefit of hindsight only made more clear that it was a mistake for Albany lawmakers to allow the 421a tax abatement to expire in 2022. The program was responsible for the bulk of the resource most desperately needed: affordable housing. Now, it’s not exactly back, but is being replaced with the similar 485x, for which the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development has just released new rules. Along with those for 467m — around office to residential conversions — these rules will hopefully be finalized soon and allow developers to begin using them to deliver affordable homes for the many current and would-be New Yorkers that need them. These efforts join the City of Yes for housing opportunity zoning proposal, which will be before the City Council soon. Mayor Adams, under indictment, distracted and with depleted political capital, can’t captain this ship without help, but there are plenty of others working to keep it chugging along. Everyone should have an interest in getting this ship to dock. Are the proposals perfect? What is? Some Council members might think City of Yes goes too far, others not far enough. They can mull and debate these frustrations until they’re blue in the face, but soon will be time for a simple up-down vote, and there’s one clear correct choice. There was already a breadth of opinion as the necessary zoning change was making its way through the gauntlet of Community Boards and borough presidents, where there was predictable overblown howling about how it’d steamroll neighborhoods. Nonetheless, it got the sign-off of four out of five borough presidents and the approval of the City Planning Commission, because it is a desperately needed step forward, whatever its foibles. There’s nothing that says that the mayor and the Council can’t go back to tweak the rules if they want to. For now, we need to get the ball rolling if we ever hope to even approach the housing development necessary to bring the temperature down on this crisis, which if left raging threatens to consume the city’s working and middle class. And despite the fretting in some corners, nothing about these proposals represents a wild change for the city. A number of the ideas aren’t even new; they’re returning to prior approaches that worked, before a mid-century freakout over the city expanding too quickly. If you’ve ever seen housing built over a commercial strip or a denser housing near transit — and if you live in almost any neighborhood in the city you almost certainly have — then you’ve seen some of the types of developments the program is meant to facilitate. Anyone saying that there will suddenly be high-rises cropping up in the middle of sleepy outer-borough neighborhoods is lying. Speaking of those that have been keeping the ship going, new First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, elevated from deputy mayor for housing, economic development and workforce after the departure of former first deputy Sheena Wright, has done more than most to make City of Yes a plan on the edge of fruition. The new No. 2 at City Hall is a welcome leader amid the maelstrom of the Adams administration, not just for her focus on housing but her focus in general as her colleagues have been consumed by scandal. Godspeed, first deputy mayor.