It’s a bad day to own a car in New York City. The city is drastically escalating its war on rats, and the casualties are officially your favorite street parking spots.
Officials are planning to eliminate nearly 30,000 legal street parking spaces across the five boroughs to make room for roughly 66,000 “Empire Bins“—the massive, sealed curbside trash containers replacing loose black garbage bags.
Now, the massive clean-up initiative has officially hit its next major milestone in Brooklyn.
How the Empire Bins Actually Work
The program is nothing new. Dubbed the “Empire Bin” during the Adams administration, it began as a pilot program in West Harlem (Manhattan Community District 9) in the summer of 2023.
These massive curbside containers can hold dozens of trash bags at once, replacing the piles of garbage bags that have long lined NYC sidewalks. Building staff access them with key cards, and they’re emptied by DSNY’s new side-loading collection trucks.
The rollout is focused on medium- and high-density residential buildings with more than 30 units.
Buildings with 10 to 30 units will have a choice: receive an Empire Bin or use smaller “wheelie bins,” which are already required for all residential properties with one to nine units across the city.
Mamdani stated:
In the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, no New Yorker should have their sidewalks covered in garbage. By finishing the job on containerization, we will ensure New York City’s streets remain the envy of the world.
The Big Move in Brooklyn Right Now
As of July 1, 2026, the Department of Sanitation (DSNY) officially opened a month-long signup and registration window for residential buildings with 10 or more units in Brooklyn Community District 2, which will soon be the second district in the city to have its trash fully containerized.
Building owners and managers in these heavily trafficked neighborhoods have until July 31, 2026 to register online. DSNY plans to install roughly 1,700 bins across the district by this fall.
If you live, work, or park in these specific areas, expect major street transformations soon:
- Downtown Brooklyn
- DUMBO & Vinegar Hill
- Brooklyn Heights
- Fort Greene & Clinton Hill
- Boerum Hill & Fulton Ferry
- Brooklyn Navy Yard
In a new twist, DSNY will also use Brooklyn to pilot shared Empire Bins, allowing multiple smaller properties on a single block to share one container.
What This Means for Parking & Which Neighborhoods Will Take the Biggest Hit
Of course, there’s one catch: those garbage bags may be gone, but the bins replacing them need somewhere to go.
The city estimates it will install about 66,000 Empire Bins across the five boroughs, which, according to Patch, accounts for the loss of 29,842 legal street parking spaces.
Sanitation officials, however, argue that this accounts for just 1.52% of the city’s 1.96 million total on-street spaces. That loss isn’t distributed evenly, though, and Manhattan is taking the biggest hit by far.
Manhattan will lose more than 6% of its entire parking supply (roughly 157,000 spots). Some areas will see drastic shakeups:
- Upper East Side: ~1,500 spots lost (10% of neighborhood parking)
- Upper West Side: ~1,500 spots lost (10% of neighborhood parking)
- East 76th St. (near 2nd Ave): 20% of street parking eliminated
- Sheepshead Bay / Marine Park: 569 spots lost
- Staten Island (Borough-wide): Only 285 spots lost
According to the city’s environmental report via Gothamist, car owners on the Upper East and Upper West Sides who lose their street spots may have to shell out an extra $270 a month for off-street garage parking. The city noted that residents in those specific zip codes typically have above-average incomes to absorb the cost.
The Rest of the Rollout Timeline
The city’s ultimate goal is a 100% trash-bag-free New York City by 2031. Here’s when the next waves of neighborhoods will see their parking spaces converted:
- Fall 2026: Full containerization goes live in Downtown Brooklyn and surrounding CD2 neighborhoods
- By End of 2027: The expansion moves to six new districts:
- Manhattan CD2: West Village, SoHo, Little Italy, Greenwich Village, Nolita
- Brooklyn CD8: Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Weeksville
- Queens CD2: Sunnyside, Hunters Point, Woodside
- Bronx CD2 & CD5: Hunts Point, Longwood, University Heights, Mount Hope, Morris Heights, Fordham Heights
- Staten Island CD1: North Shore
- 2031: Full citywide rollout completed
