City and developers at odds over outer borough housing.

City Hall wants to put a limit on multi-family developments in the outer boroughs, but the building industry claims the cap is incompatible with the need for affordable housing.

Citing lack of adequate public space as reason, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg created the Gross Management Task Force to come up with measures that would prevent residential builders from razing homes in Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. The Task Force is currently reviewing possible zoning changes to ensure that new developments fit in with the character of surrounding neighborhoods.

However, even residents of the affected communities admit that the issue is too complicated to warrant such a drastic solution as a crackdown on all multi-family housing developments.

Marie Bodnar, district manager of Community Board 3 on Staten Island, where public space is at a premium, said her working-class family had trouble finding affordable housing in the borough. There are too many people and the land is too expensive, she admitted. Still, the Community Board would like to see the character of its neighborhood preserved.

"We are not trying to hurt the building industry," Bodnar said. "We just want the government to do more to plan for the growth of this area. We'd like to see applications more closely reviewed, to have more inspections instituted."

According to a member of the Mayor's Task Force, there is virtually no way that the city's affordable housing shortage can be resolved without new development.

"It's a very subjective thing," said the source. "One man's over--development is another man's paradise. The City is in dire need of new housing and the places where it can be built are the places where they want to stop development. We are going out of our way to come up with innovative zoning solutions."

The Task Force is not expected to propose new legislation for several months, but so far, the building community has been trying to act responsibly. The Building Industry Association of New York City, a group of residential home builders based in Staten Island, Brooklyn and the Bronx, has set up its own team to deal with the over-development issue.

Its members have come up with such recommendations for the Mayor's office as a low density housing program, registration system for home builders to make sure only qualified companies are allowed to create multi-family dwellings and cancellation of the so-called "contextual zoning."

"All these issues can be addressed through reforms in zoning and those who are trying to stall development on Staten Island are just using this as an excuse," said Allen Cappelli, who serves as a consultant with the Building Industry Association.

"This runs counter to the City's real emergency, which is a lack of affordable housing. We have solutions to these problems and we have offered them to the Task Force. We hope they will adopt them and then work with us toward developing a real affordable housing agenda for all of New York."

The Mayor's office did not return calls.