Mar
12
Blog Post#7: Housing Inequality
March 12, 2015 | Leave a Comment
I was born and raised in Brooklyn, but have had no experience living in an apartment. However, part of my family is in the real estate business, so I do have some background knowledge on renters and housing. This report supported what I already knew and included some interesting and shocking infographics/charts. What surprised me was that income-restricted subsidized housing dropped to half from 2010 to 2011 and that out of all the boroughs, Staten Island was the one that had a decrease in median gross rent. Rent is on the rise while income is still stagnant, which creates financial stress and rent burden for majority of renters.
If you look at figure 3.1, the median gross rent increased about $150 over eight years. In retrospect, $150 over eight years is about an increase of $19 per year which I don’t think makes a difference. My dad is a landlord and he recently increased every tenant’s rent by $50 to accommodate for inflation and the increasing utility fees. It’s not that landowners want to increase the rent; they are forced to raise the rent. However, if rent does keep rising at this rate, it would be hard for low-income or even moderate-income families to keep paying rent.
This was the first time I’ve heard and read of rent burden. By looking at figure 3.8, low-income families are the most severely burned and they take up a large percentage of the total. It’s also scary that not even the moderate and middle-income households were rent burdened. In addition to that problem, NYC faces a shortage of affordable rent housing. There’s a steady decline of adorable 2+ bedroom units and a large decline in subsidized rental units from 2007 to 2011 (shown in figure 3.8). Many of the income-restricted stabilized units have converted to market-rate and many owners have opted out of future affordable housing restrictions. Therefore most of the affordable housing during the 2006/2007 peek has now died down since most contracts have been expired.
The report also makes the point that new buildings and recent movers have higher rents than the median rent paid. I think the reason for this is that in newer buildings, everything is brand new and freshly painted. Every time when someone moves out of one of our apartments, we repaint the walls and do touchups so that everything looks new. By doing this, we can charge more rent. This is also why recent movers pay more since after you move; the landlord can increase the rent.
Income inequality is why most renters are facing the problem of rent burden. It’s a problem when the majority of income is spent on rent and there isn’t enough to pay for transportation, food, and utilities. However, it’s great to hear that 26,000 units were preserved as income-restricted subsidized rental units and it’s also surprising that only 4.1% of households are severely overcrowded. I wonder why overcrowding is so low when NYC has a large population. Is it because it’s not reported or people are staying in other places?
-JanYing He
