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A Future for NYC Housing | |
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< | -- By KieranSingh2001 - 16 Apr 2024 | >
> | -- By KieranSingh2001 - 27 May 2024 | | | Housing supply and prices are undeniably a problem in New York City. Despite its reputation as a dense city, NYC is limited by zoning. areas like Bushwick allow less density, and neighborhoods like Prospect Park South are sometimes restricted to houses or duplexes. Currently, around a million units in NYC are rent stabilized, meaning that landlords can only increase rent by a certain percentage each year. Affordable and stabilized units are hard to find, obtaining one sometimes depends on literally winning a lottery.
Rezoning | |
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< | A 2018 Minneapolis rezoning plan allowed for the building of duplexes and triplexes on land that was previously zoned for single-family homes and eliminated parking minimums. Since the rezoning, rents increased by 1% in Minneapolis, and 14% in the state; homelessness also decreased dramatically. 1% over 5 years far underpaced the rate of inflation. With this in mind, upzoning NYC to allow taller, denser buildings across the board may ease the housing crisis, but there are political complications. | >
> | A 2018 Minneapolis rezoning plan allowed for the building of duplexes and triplexes on land that was previously zoned for single-family homes and eliminated parking minimums. Since the rezoning, rents increased by 1% in Minneapolis, and 14% in the state; homelessness also decreased dramatically. 1% over 5 years far underpaced the rate of inflation. With this in mind, rezoning NYC to allow taller, denser buildings across the board may ease the housing crisis, but there are political complications. | | |
Historical and Political Obstacles to Rezoning | | | Rent Stabilization | |
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< | Prominent urbanists like Roberta Gratz invoke the possibility of developers buying buildings with rent-regulated units, replacing them with buildings that offer only market-rate housing. However, upzoning can occur counter to, or without, displacement. First, if swathes of the city were rezoned for maximum residential density, wealthier people and transplants may move into new market-rate units, and with a greater supply of market-rate units, it would lower the competition for units overall. This phenomenon, termed "filtering" by urban academics," applies mostly to the reduction in the price of older market rate units, and, unfortunately, evidence shows that a "politically unrealistic" amount of housing would have to be built to cause proper filtering. Still, it is good to think outside political realism, and a compromise plan could still ease competition for rent-controlled units. Additionally, the city allows affordable housing to be even denser and higher than what the limit for each zoning category allows. | >
> | Prominent urbanists like Roberta Gratz invoke the possibility of developers buying buildings with rent-regulated units after rezoning, replacing them with buildings that offer only market-rate housing. However, upzoning can occur counter to, or without, displacement. If swathes of the city were rezoned for maximum residential density, wealthier people and transplants may move into new market-rate units, and with a greater supply of market-rate units, it would lower the competition for units overall. This phenomenon, termed "filtering" by urban academics," applies mostly to the reduction in the price of older market rate units, and, unfortunately, evidence shows that a "politically unrealistic" amount of housing would have to be built to cause proper filtering. Still, it is good to think outside political realism, and a compromise could still ease competition for rent-controlled units. Additionally, NYC allows affordable housing to go higher than market-rate buildings. | | | Reform | |
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< | Second, the 421-a tax exemption could be expanded to incentivize higher percentages of affordable housing in these new developments. This way, rent-stabilized units can increase with rezoning. For people in existing units, current regulation requires that those forced to move after a demolition get moving assistance and stipends. With a much higher number of affordable units available, the city could extend assistance after demolition, guaranteeing a similarly-priced unit in the same general neighborhood. This abundance of affordable and stabilized housing units could allow residents to find rent-stabilized units more easily. | >
> | The 421-a tax exemption could be expanded to incentivize higher percentages of affordable housing in these new developments. This way, rent-stabilized units can increase with rezoning. For people in existing units, current regulation requires that those forced to move after a demolition get moving assistance and stipends. With a much higher number of affordable units available, the city could extend assistance after demolition, guaranteeing a similarly-priced unit in the same general neighborhood. This abundance of affordable and stabilized housing units could allow residents to find rent-stabilized units more easily. | | | Final Thoughts
These ideas may have a hard time getting past the legislature or city council, and the dilemma between community control -- which may be far too slow to solve the housing crisis -- and a citywide plan -- which has unfortunate echoes of Moses' methods -- remains, but the current system is unsustainable. Moreover, while simple economic theory would posit that an increase in supply decreases the price of housing, the real-world data is much murkier. Minneapolis is the strongest, and most recent data point in favor of citywide upzoning, but previous data from upzonings in NYC has shown that the prices of housing did not go down in upzoned areas. This may, again, be related to the causal issue of more in-demand neighborhoods being more likely candidates for upzoning – meaning that rent would have gone up even more in a world without the rezoning. Still, the data shows that concerns of groups like VP and people like Gratz are not unfounded. The ambiguity of the data makes it even more pressing that large expansions in rent stabilization and construction of affordable housing be associated with upzoning. It’s possible that neither policy could work on its own – an expansion of rent stabilization without increased supply would relegate people’s fates to a lottery, and upzoning without a strong affordable housing policy may lead to displacement. The city should pursue these reforms in tandem so that her people have more housing security. | |
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There are several ways that this could be improved, it seems to me. Currently, you bear the weight of having to make up everything: you cite no other writer on any aspect of the problem of city planning and housing construction in New York City. Given that an immense amount is written on the subject, which is intensively studied by many disciplines and engages, not surprisingly, quite a few capable and well-informed New Yorkers, you should not find it hard to locate writing you can learn from.
You can save space by removing technical details in the zoning system. Your objective is to show that moving from single-family homes to high-density high-rise apartment blocks creates housing. Perhaps not reading anything written about cities since Jane Jacobs would make it easier to say nothing about the social consequences.
Another route to improvement would be to think about politics, rather than dismissing it, like air resistance, from the simplified physics problem. New York City is a somewhat complicated political environment, which is why writing about even a small sliver of it (Peter Stuyvesant Village, or Forest Hills, let's say) will require more than a little political history to become intelligible. Robert Caro on Robert Moses still seems to me like the required starting place, though the New York City of The Power Broker is as old as I am now.
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |
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