Is Prohibitively Expensive Housing In New York City Inevitable?

-- By KieranSingh2001 - 16 Apr 2024

The Problem

As someone who has never faced housing scarcity, it's hard to put my finger on why it ignites a passion in me more intense than nearly any other political issue. Perhaps it comes from seeing my neighbors, in my well-to-do neighborhood of Minneapolis, my hometown, preach high ideals of racial and economic justice in one breath, then lobby for zoning policies that keep their neighborhoods rich and white in the next. Maybe it comes from seeing economic progressives, my ideological compatriots, advocate for those same exclusionary zoning policies based on a well-meaning resistance to housing developers. The housing issue is marred in hipocrisy and misinformation, which is incredibly upsetting given how stable housing is a prerequisite to security and freedom.

Housing costs and scarcity are at their most severe in NYC, and living here has crystallized my impulse to use my legal career to fight for everyone's right to housing. But for every tenant I can represent as a lawyer, there are a hundred other people with no representation in subpar, or prohibitively expensive, living conditions. Thus, as much as I want to focus my pro-bono efforts on securing housing for as many people as possible, the question remains: is it possible, on a macro-level, to make housing affordable for everyone in New York? Even the oft-derided "transplants?" Is it possible as a practicing lawyer? Or only in politics?

The Current NYC Housing Landscape

In 2023, the median rent in Manhattan reached $4,200. In Brooklyn, it was $3,500. Multiply those numbers by twelve and one can more clearly see the problem. On average, it costs fifty thousand dollars just for housing in Manhattan. Moreover, the population of manhattan has declined significantly in the last one hundred years, and, while I would not assume causation here, I would wager that there are far more people that want to live in Manhattan than can.

Zoning Laws

Manhattan zoning laws are complicated, and not based exclusively on heights or units. In Manhatttan, at least, the amount that can be built is a function of the size of the property itself. The ratio between the total floor area of a building and the area of the plot of land is limited. For example, in an area with a maximum ratio of 6, a building that covers the entire plot can only consist of 6 stories. In areas of manhattan, including my current neighborhood of morningside and my future neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen, residential areas are zoned as "R8," which means that the maximum floor to area ratio is 6, with special exceptions for affordable housing developments. Other residential areas in Manhattan are zoned as "R7" or "R9," allowing slightly lower, and slightly higher ratios, respectively. In many areas of brooklyn

Rent Stabilization

Currently, around a million units in NYC are rent stabilized, meaning that landlords can only increase rent by a certain percentage each year, and that the landlord cannot refuse to renew the tenant's lease. More expansive policies were adopted in [x] when

Proposed changes to NYC Housing Law

Hochul's plan

Subsub 2

The Path to Housing Abundance

Rezoning

In Minneapolis, the city council passed comprehensive zoning reform, which, while controversial (especially to those neighbors I mentioned earlier), achieved some genuine change in the abundance and pricing of housing in the city. The plan allowed for

Rent stabilization

Expanding access to rent-stabilized apartments is the second prong of expanding housing affordability, but scarcity problems remain, even if they aren't reflected in the price. It is notoriously

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