Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
PRESENTATION
Alec Schierenbeck discusses New York City's housing affordability crisis and its root causes
0:05:53
·
4 min
Executive Director Alec Schierenbeck details the severity of New York City's housing affordability crisis, emphasizing its impact on residents, segregation, and the city's growth.
He explains that the core problem is the failure to build enough housing, exacerbated by restrictive zoning laws and inequitable development patterns.
The city has been in a declared housing emergency since 1960, yet isn't always treating it as such.
- The current housing vacancy rate is critically low at 1.4%.
- NYC produces less housing compared to other cities that are maintaining affordability.
- A 1961 zoning overhaul and subsequent changes have made it increasingly difficult to build, particularly modest multifamily housing.
- Housing growth is inequitable, with a few districts, often black and brown communities, bearing most of the development burden.
Alec Schierenbeck
0:05:53
Well, one thing that we've heard overwhelmingly from New Yorkers is that we face an affordability crisis that is maybe the worst in our city's history.
0:06:05
And New Yorkers certainly feel the effects every day as long time New Yorkers are pushed out of neighborhoods they grew up in and families crowd together in apartments that are far too small.
0:06:15
And one small setback can put working families on the edge of eviction or into shelter.
0:06:22
This crisis affects what kind of city New York will be and who it will be for.
0:06:27
And so there's certainly no more pressing issue for this commission to look at.
0:06:32
The crisis affects where we live.
0:06:35
And although we don't like to talk about it too much as a very progressive city, New York City's metropolitan area remains one of the most segregated in the country by race and ethnicity, more segregated even than Birmingham, Alabama, and St.
0:06:48
Louis by some measures.
0:06:51
Our crisis affects the dynamism of our economy and our culture.
0:06:55
It affects our heft and presence on the national stage.
0:06:59
New York City, I should say New York State, is slated by some estimates to lose two further congressional seats in the next congressional redistricting because we are growing more slowly than the rest of the country.
0:07:11
And so our ability to have a presence and to shape what happens in Washington, which certainly influences what happens here, is put in jeopardy by our failure to grow and plan for growth.
0:07:23
Next slide, please.
0:07:26
At the core of this crisis is our inability, our incapacity to build enough housing to keep up with New Yorkers' needs.
0:07:35
We are producing far less housing than we used to, and we have long known that our failure to produce enough housing is at the core of our housing affordability crisis.
0:07:49
Since 1960, New York City has been in a declared housing emergency, which is defined by not having enough vacancy, vacancy rate below 5%.
0:07:59
And today, it is 1.4%, among the lowest it has been since that emergency was declared.
0:08:06
And if there's maybe one thing we've heard more than anything else at our hearings, it is that although we have a housing emergency, we are not always treating it like one.
0:08:17
Next slide, please.
0:08:19
We're also producing less housing than the other parts of the country that are make are staying more affordable.
0:08:26
There's a consistent finding across the country that the cities that are doing the best to control housing costs are the ones that are growing the most.
0:08:35
And our own history shows that we can grow more, and then if we do, we're likely to hold costs down more effectively.
0:08:42
Next slide.
0:08:45
Now, what is at the root of our failure to build?
0:08:48
Well, a large component of it is that we've simply just made it illegal to build more housing.
0:08:53
In 1961, the city made a major overhaul of the zoning code that in one fell swoop made it illegal in much of a city to build the kind of modest multifamily apartment buildings that define New York's Outerborough neighborhoods.
0:09:08
And in the decades that followed, we made it harder and harder to build.
0:09:12
In the past decade, now just 12 community districts added as much housing as the other 47 combined.
0:09:19
We see thus an inequitable share of growth with some neighborhoods seeing transformative changes while others grow barely at all.
0:09:29
And the districts that are adding the most housing are disproportionately black and brown, while the districts that are adding the least housing are disproportionately white.
0:09:37
Next slide, please.
0:09:40
The human consequences of our housing shortage are clear, high rents, displacement, segregation, homelessness, tenant harassment, all of these are the consequences of what you might call a landlord's market, in which landlords hold the power and tenants compete against each other with little leverage for the few apartments available.
0:09:59
To reduce that structural imbalance of power, you need to add housing so that landlords compete with tenants.
0:10:05
Next slide.