As my group is looking more into income vs rent-regulation specifically for tenants, I researched more into the 2017 Income and Affordability Study and tried to analyze the data to see what trends are happening on a micro level for tenants and also at macro levels for economic data in New York City. One data point that was not surprising to see was that the “American Community Survey show that median renter income is $43,261, median gross rent is $1,317, and the median gross rent-to-income ratio is 32.0%.” (Graph underneath).

Based on the graph, the median for the gross rent-to-income ratio typical falls in the low 30% range, which is typical to what we said it would be during class discussions. However, my group and I want to focus more so on the tail end of this group. If the median is roughly 30%, then that means that about half of the tenants are paying less than 30% of their income on the rent. They may be potentially paying a meager amount such as 15-20% in some cases. We want to analyze ways that people are essentially conning the system and allow themselves to live in rent-regulated apartments for a small percentage of their income. This issue is especially important in New York City, where we have a housing shortage which then causes more issues such as homelessness to rise. It’s no surprise that it was reported that “an average of 58,770 people were staying in NYC Department of Homeless Services shelters each night, up 2.8% from 2015.”