The New York Housing Conference launched the NYC Affordable Housing Tracker last month. They also released an accompanying report that analyzes affordable housing production for each city council district under Mayor de Blasio’s Housing New York Plan (2014-2021).

The Need for Affordable Housing

They found that in the past eight years, the city created 67,255 new affordable units. This is an underwhelming median of 569 units per district. In addition, units are not distributed equally across neighborhoods. Only 5 districts producing more than 3,000 units.

For example, one district in the Bronx created 8,550 new units and another district from Queens only created 17 units.

Other notable findings in the report are the following:

• The lack of affordable housing development has had the biggest impact on very low income New Yorkers. Households of three, earning between $28,020 and $60,050 fit this definition. The New York metro area needs about 772,000 apartments priced for these residents, to meet the need.
• The majority of the new affordable housing is built in neighborhoods where land prices are cheaper. Additionally, zoning allows for moderate and higher-density residence districts. Thus, developers ignore opportunities presented by public or underutilized land dispositions.
• In the top third of districts, in terms of affordable housing production, on average 72 percent of residents are Black or Latinx, while in the bottom third of districts by housing production just 35 percent of residents are Black or Latinx.

How You Can Take Action

These production disparities are fueling the severe housing crunch in New York City. A crunch that inevitably drives households into homelessness or into paying a significant amount of their income on rent.

As the report states, the solution is to produce more affordable housing in every neighborhood. You can find more details about the report and learn more here.