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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Brendan Cheney from the New York Housing Conference on the housing crisis and inequitable development patterns
2:01:18
·
4 min
Brendan Cheney from the New York Housing Conference presents data illustrating the depth of NYC's housing crisis, including record low vacancy rates, soaring rents outpacing income growth, and widespread rent burden.
He attributes the crisis to insufficient housing supply and highlights the deeply inequitable distribution of new affordable housing, which is overwhelmingly concentrated in lower-income communities of color while wealthier, whiter districts build very little.
NYHC advocates for changes to facilitate housing development more equitably across all neighborhoods.
- NYC's 2023 rental vacancy rate (1.4%) was the lowest in over 50 years.
- Over 850,000 households are rent-burdened (>30% income), nearly 500,000 severely so (>50%).
- Affordable housing construction is highly concentrated: the top 10 council districts built >3,500 units each over 10 years, while the bottom 10 built <200 each.
- High-producing districts tend to be lower-income communities of color; low-producing districts tend to be whiter and wealthier.
- NYHC calls for reforms to enable more housing construction in every neighborhood.
Brendan Cheney
2:01:18
Great.
2:01:19
Thank you.
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Good evening.
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My name is Brendan Cheney.
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I'm the director of policy and operations at the New York Housing Conference.
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I want to thank the commission for the opportunity to testify tonight.
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New York Housing Conference is a nonprofit affordable housing policy and advocacy organization.
2:01:34
As a broad based coalition, our mission is to sorry, next slide.
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Our mission is to advance city, state, and federal policies and funding to support the development and preservation of decent and affordable housing for all New Yorkers.
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My testimony today will show the extent of the housing crisis and how unequal our housing supply is distributed, highlighting the need for change.
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We are currently working with our partners to come back with more specific recommendations for change at the Charter Commission hearing in Manhattan next month.
2:02:06
Okay.
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So we are very clearly in a housing crisis.
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Rents and homelessness are at record highs and keep growing.
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And in 2023, we had the lowest rental vacancy rate in more than fifty years at just 1.3%.
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We clearly do not have enough housing to meet demand.
2:02:24
Great.
2:02:24
And as rents are rising, incomes are not keeping up.
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As this chart shows, rents are rising much faster than income and wages since 02/2007, which means New Yorkers are paying a greater share of their income in rent.
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Next slide.
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Thank you.
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In fact, more than 850,000 households in New York City are paying more than 30% of their income in rent, a common measure of rent burden.
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And nearly 500,000 are paying more than half of their income in rent.
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The main causes of the crisis are a lack of housing supply and the lack of affordable housing.
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New York is not building enough housing to keep up with demand.
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In fact, we're building less new housing than many comparable metro areas.
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So the way to address the housing crisis is to increase overall housing supply and increase affordable housing specifically.
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But we also want to make sure that we add housing more equitably across the city than we have been.
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As you can see in this map, most of our affordable housing is being built in a small number of council districts.
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Over the past ten years, ten city council districts financed more than 3,500 units of affordable housing each.
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The bottom 10 districts financed just 200 units or less.
2:03:47
Okay.
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And we can see the districts that are building more housing have certain things in common.
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They're more likely to be communities of color and more likely to have lower average incomes.
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Next slide.
Michael Kaess
2:04:01
So just to give a quick
Brendan Cheney
2:04:03
sense of which districts are building the most housing and how much, you can see that Council Misalimachus District, 17 in the Bronx, built 7,100 units of affordable housing over the past ten years.
2:04:16
You can see going down the list, these are the 10 districts, all
Richard R. Buery Jr.
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of them have built more
Brendan Cheney
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than 3,500 units, but again, some at 7,000, six thousand, six thousand.
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These are the districts that are building the most.
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Next slide.
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And these are the districts that are building the least.
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They're building less than 30 units of affordable housing over ten years, units of affordable housing over ten years.
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All of them building less than 200 units of affordable housing over that time period.
2:04:48
All right, next slide.
2:04:50
So in the neighborhoods building the most affordable housing, 70 of the residents are black or Latinx on average, while in the neighborhoods building the least affordable housing, only 30% of residents are black or Latinx.
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And in the top building neighborhoods, the average income is $67,000 per year compared to $87,000 in the neighborhoods with the least new affordable housing.
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Housing and affordable housing are assets to all communities.
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Every neighborhood can and should add more housing, but neighborhoods that are whiter and higher income are opting out, choosing not to allow new housing and new affordable housing.
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This needs to change.
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Especially in a housing crisis, neighborhoods cannot opt out.
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So when we come back with recommendations for the commission, will be to make changes to make it easier to build housing in every neighborhood.
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Thank you.