New York City housing crisis

The New York City housing crisis refers to the recent shortage of affordable housing in the city. It is caused by the erosion of the New Yorkers' purchasing power and the uptick of the average monthly rent in the city despite robust tenant protection. To address the problem, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio launched an initiative called Housing New York to create or preserve 300,000 affordable housing units by 2026.
Housing market in New York City
Supply factors
There was an increase of 19% in the number of housing units between 1970 and 2016, although growth in new construction slowed after 2000 from over 7% to 5.3%. Most people's experience of living in New York from the time when Bloomberg was mayor has been of constant construction.
Government initiatives
The city government has had to deal with many periods of housing crisis in its history. Following a housing crisis in 1920, 700,000 units were built. But, again in 1930's people were talking about a crisis. Mayors Fiorello La Guardia and William O'Dwyer dealt with slum clearance and building public housing. Wagner and Lindsay oversaw Mitchell-Lama. Ed Koch was mayor during a wave of housing abandonment which had to be stemmed and rebuilt. This continued under Dinkins and Giuliani.
Individual and family homelessness had become a major issue over the 1980's and 1990's. Mayor Bloomberg oversaw a economically resurgent city. During this period rents in New York City rose more than 15% over the country as a whole. His New Housing Marketplace Plan pledged to create 165,000 units of affordable housing between 2002-2014, of which 53,000 would be new units and 112,000 preserved. The cost for this program was $23.6 billion, of which $5.3 billion was public funds and leveraged $18.3 billion private funds.
Severe overcrowding is defined as more than 1.5 persons per room. The severe overcrowding rate in the nation is 0.99 percent and is 3.33 percent in New York City. According to an agency funded by the New York State Education Department, there were 104,088 students (1 in 10) living in temporary shelters and identified as homeless in the city's school system for the period 2016-2017.
There is a huge cost to the city to provide for the homeless. Following a 1981 consent decree, the city is required by law to provide shelter to any eligible person who asks for it. To shelter one family in one of the 167 family shelters costs $34,573 a year. $1.04 billion was budgeted for 2014 to provide homeless services, up from $535.8 million in 2002.<ref name=stringer_2014 />

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu