Tag Archives: New York City Comptroller

Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning in NYC

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"East New York" by MMZach

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer issued an analysis of Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and the East New York Rezoning. It opens,

In an effort to address the City’s ongoing affordable housing crisis, the New York City Planning Commission is currently proposing a series of zoning changes, including Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) and Zoning for Quality  and Affordability (ZQA), for potential application in communities across the city. One neighborhood targeted for significant redevelopment is the East New York/Cypress Hill area of Brooklyn. While many Community Boards have already expressed a variety of concerns about the proposed rezonings, the ultimate question comes down to this: does the proposal help or hurt the existing affordability crisis — in East New York and across the five boroughs? (1)

The analysis concludes that “the City’s own data shows that the current plan could inadvertently displace tens of thousands of families in East New York, the vast majority of whom will be unable to afford the relatively small number of new units that will be built.” (1)

In place of the Mayor’s plan, the Comptroller proposes the following principles, among others:

  • target density to sites primed for affordable housing
  • ensure affordability for existing, low-income residents

While the Comptroller is right to highlight the impact of zoning changes on existing residents, his principles do not seem to lead to a better result for a city starved of new housing. Targeting density to sites primed for affordable housing will result in many fewer housing units because it applies to far fewer parcels. Ensuring affordability for existing, low-income residents will mean that subsidy dollars will have to be concentrated on fewer units of affordable housing.

This debate between the Mayor and the Comptroller highlights two key issues. First, every plan to increase affordable housing has winners and losers. Second, affordable housing policies almost always have to choose between providing moderate subsidies to many units or deep subsidies to fewer units. While the Comptroller’s analysis highlights those tensions in the Mayor’s plan, it does not acknowledge them within its own. There are no easy answers here and those who are truly committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing in NYC must make sure not to let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

What Makes NYC Crowded

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"Manhattan from Weehawken, NJ" by Dmitry Avdeev

NewsDocVoices quoted me in What Makes NYC Become More and More Crowded. It reads, in part,

Yuqiao Cen, a graduate engineering student at NYU, makes sure to shower before 10pm every night, otherwise she is criticized for making too much noise in her apartment. She lives with her landlord and his family of five in a 3-bedroom apartment on 11th Avenue in Brooklyn.

Similar to Cen, Yanjun Wu, a newly admitted graduate student at Fordham University, barely stays in his living room because she feels uneasy wearing pajamas while her male roommates are around. She lives with 4 roommates in a 4-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side.

Cen and Wu are not the only ones forced to share an apartment. Many of their classmates and friends living in New York are also doing the same thing. In fact, a recent study conducted by the New York City Comptroller Office suggested that NYC has become much more crowded in the past 10 years with the crowding rate being more than two and a half times the national average.

The study “Hidden Households” was conducted by Scott Stringer, New York City Comptroller, highlighting the growing crowding rate in housing in NYC. According to the study, New York City’s crowding rate has rose from 7.6 percent in 2005 to 8.8 percent in 2013. The number of crowded housing units grew from 228,925 in 2005 to 272,533 in 2013, representing an increase of 19 percent.

The increase in the crowding rate is city-wide. The Comptroller’s study indicates that the proportion of crowded dwelling units increased in all of the five boroughs except Staten Island during this time period. Brooklyn has the largest increase with 28.1 percent, Queens has 12.5 percent and 12.3 percent in the Bronx.

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“Fundamentally, this is a story about supply and demand,” said David Reiss, professor of Law in Brooklyn Law School, and research director of Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship. “The increase of the housing supply has been very slow, while the increase of the population was very fast, and that is the recipe for crowding. Because people can’t afford to live where they want to live, their choices would be continuing to live where they want to live and be crowded, or to switch to location with more space for your dollar.”

The data confirm Reiss’s observation. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, NYC’s population in 2013 was 8.43 million, increasing from t8.2 million in 2005. However, the 2014 Housing Supply Report, conducted by New York City Rent Guidelines Board, also indicates that the number of permits issued for new construction of residential units had reached its peak – 34,000 in 2008, but the number decreased greatly to 6,000 in 2009. Although the number kept gradually going up, and reached to 18,000 in 2013, the market is no longer as hot as before the financial crisis of 2008.

Contrary to common belief, income does not in itself drive crowding. Although “Hidden Households” shows that 23.6 percent of crowded households reported household incomes in the City’s bottom quartile, it also revealed that 18.5 percent of crowded households have incomes in the City’s top quartile and 5.2 percent of crowded households have incomes in the 90th percentile or higher.

In the beginning of apartment hunting, Wu and her roommates wanted to rent a five-bedroom apartment so that everyone could have their own private space. “The market is too busy in New York,” said Wu. “Once we were going to pay the [lease] for an apartment on Roosevelt Island, but someone was ahead of us by just a few minutes.”

After weeks of apartment hunting, Wu and her roommates decided to make a compromise – two of them would have to share a bedroom, in order to get a decent apartment at an acceptable price – $4,900 per month, with neither an elevator nor a laundry room.

“Land is very expensive, and there is not much left for residential development but a tremendous number of people want to live in New York,” said Albert Goldson, Executive Director of Indo-Brazilian Associates LLC, A NYC-based global advisory firm. “Real estate prices started to go up, so you have people who are middle class or who have modest salaries who can no longer afford [to pay a] mortgage. And what many of them would have done, either single people or a family, was ‘double up’. Like single people who bring in a roommate, now have several roommates in a unit.”

Most experts in the urban planning industry believe that the underlying cause of the growing crowding rate is the affordability of housing. Goldson argues that the city needs to be more available for middle-class people who are actually working here and potentially leaving the city if it is too small or uncomfortable to live here anymore.

From Reiss’ perspective, the way to solve affordability of housing is to amend its zoning code to encourage the construction of housing. Vertical construction is a trend and a solution to the crowding situation. But in the meantime, with more people living in taller buildings, the density would definitely increase. “If the city is really committed to increasing the affordability of housing, you have to be committed to increase the housing density as well,” said Reiss.