After reading the 2017 Housing Supply Report, I found some facts regarding overcrowding and housing permits to be particularly intriguing. The Report states that pre-war and post war stabilized housing were the most crowded with 15% of pre-war stabilized housing  overcrowded and 6.1% severely overcrowded, while 14.6% of post war units were overcrowded, and 5.5% severely overcrowded. The percentage of crowded and severely overcrowded housing was higher than non regulated housing with 14.9% of rent stabilized housing being  overcrowded and 6% being severely overcrowded. I wasn’t too surprised that rent-stabilized housing has a higher percentage of being overcrowded  than non-regulated housing. Since the rent is stabilized in these apartments, having more family members live and pay the rent would make the cost of rent even more affordable. Also, these apartments have protections from landlords that other apartments do not have, making it more of an incentive for other family members to overcrowd these apartments.

I found the the drop in housing permits in 2016 to be surprising. According to the report, in 2016 permits fell in double digits in every borough except Staten Island. Surprisingly enough, permits in Brooklyn fell by the greatest proportion, declining 82.7%. Brooklyn has been hot for the past 2-3 years now, so I find it weird that housing permits in Brooklyn fell by the greatest proportion. With all the new high-rises  I saw being built around that time, I would have thought the housing permits in the borough doubled. It seems that many new projects in Brooklyn were spearheaded in 2017 because housing permits increased by 335.1% and also significantly increased for the other four boroughs as well. Permits did not increase nearly as much in Staten Island and the Bronx as they did in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan. It seems that gentrification in Brooklyn and Queens will continue to advance in full swing and won’t be stopping anytime soon.