A new report has found a significantly lopsided allotment of affordable housing across New York City.
6SqFt.com reports the latest NYC Housing Tracker Report from the New York Housing Conference found only 10 of the city’s 51 Council districts produced more than half of all new affordable housing since 2014. The report also determined that 13 districts built more than 4,000 affordable homes, while 10 have added fewer than 300, and four have produced under 100.
Over the past decade, the city’s 10 highest-performing districts averaged 454 new affordable homes each while the 10 lowest-producing districts added seven units combined, less than one per district on average. Four districts reported no new affordable housing.
Furthermore, the report found sections of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island turned into “no-go zones” for multifamily affordable housing, producing only about 130 affordable homes on average over the past decade.
The report is published ahead of Tuesday’s municipal election where voters will decide on four housing-related ballot questions designed to rewrite the city’s land-use and affordable-housing review process. The three mayoral candidates split on the ballot questions, with independent Andrew Cuomo favoring them, Republican Curtis Sliwa opposing them and Democrat Zohran Mamdani declining to offer an opinion.
Affordable housing has to have land or depreciated business buildings that have little to no demand for retail/hospitality/commercial/industrial reuse. When affordable housing is put into a higher priced areas it has to be a minimal number of units so as not to change the social-economic dynamic of that specific area very much. The article doesn’t mention newly transformed affordable units that were once higher priced units but now have fallen in rental rates or sales price probably because it was esoteric just on new housing. It’s important to track existing units and for affordable housing those properties that have fallen in pricing due to a changing marketplace.