The "New York is Our Home" campaign could include the tag line, "And There’s No Room For Anyone Else," if one follows the logic of the organizing coalition. Ideas to increase the overall housing inventory are missing.
To meet housing needs over the next three decades, three questions should be addressed:
- How can we preserve an aging housing stock?
- How should the affordable housing industry in New York City, arguably the most successful and sophisticated in the country, reshape itself to meet new challenges ahead?
- How will we make room for the nearly one million new New Yorkers who are projected to live here by 2030?
The answer to all three questions cannot simply be more government money. No city has spent more money on housing than New York, and yet we still face an affordable housing shortage. We must think differently about housing preservation, the housing industry, and housing supply.
Preservation: While the sale of Stuyvesant Town captured headlines, we should be clear on our definitions. "Preservation" has two distinct sides: one concerns the preservation of the physical building, which has been done effectively through low-interest loans, tax policies and other assistance to owners. The second aspect is the preservation of affordability, and that should be based on tenants’ incomes.
Subsidies should be directed to the families that actually need support, rather than using public funds to buy buildings whose tenants may not need as much assistance. The city's Senior Citizens Rent Increase Exemption is a good example of a program that could be expanded to assist a wider group of low- and moderate-income households. Section 8 enhanced rental subsidies could be redesigned to provide assistance to needy tenants who are not in projects that receive federal funding.
Let’s make sure that our scarce subsidies are actually going to the right places.
The housing industry: Our housing industry needs to evolve. Let’s remember what made it a success in the first place: a competitive marketplace with room for new organizations, and small ones, to grow. Most affordable housing throughout our city is built without direct government subsidy. That activity should not be thwarted by growing regulatory burdens that add to the cost of construction, hinder competition and restrict new entrants to the marketplace.
And the industry should come together to develop a strategy to help develop the businesses of newer New Yorkers. First- and second-generation immigrants are woefully underrepresented in both the for-profit and nonprofit development sectors. The lessons of community development should be applied here, encouraging inclusiveness, both as an economic development strategy and to ensure that housing is built that meets different communities' needs.
And the industry should be at the forefront of new technologies and financing methods, particularly those that encourage energy efficiency.
Increasing the supply of housing: It’s time to design a sustainable regulatory infrastructure that will really meet the housing needs of 21st-century New York. Our definition of “good” housing has not really changed over a century. Regulations were designed that would improve conditions for nuclear families. Over time, the housing stock did improve – but it also became more costly, and meanwhile families became less nuclear.
