The next time New Yorkers hear the speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, call for more housing on Manhattan’s West Side, they might ask him to explain why the council has already voted to restrict housing there.

In his State of the City address, Mr. Miller laid into Mayor Bloomberg for opposing residential development around the Hudson Yards. “Incredibly, the mayor says that if we build housing on the far West Side this City will have ‘too much housing.’ Too Much Housing? Too much housing when our police and firefighters and teachers can’t afford to live where they work? Too much housing when middle-class families are forced out of our City?” the speaker said. “This site presents an incredible opportunity to develop the housing we need,” Mr. Miller said of the proposed stadium site.

But as a new report from New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy points out, the Hudson Yards rezoning recently approved by Mr. Miller and the City Council set “a dangerous precedent in use restrictions.”

The Hudson Yards plan, proposed by the Department of City Planning and approved by the council, created a special zoning district that limits residential uses in commercial districts where residential uses are usually permitted. “The city is in essence mandating the development of office buildings through zoning,” note the report’s authors, Jerry Salama and Michael Hill. “In the foreseeable future, given the vacancy rate that continues in office uses, it is likely to result in no offices and no housing.”

If the speaker really wanted greater residential development, he’d stop grandstanding, admit that the council erred in approving the special zoning district, and work to rescind the artificial constraint it places on New York’s housing market.