According to NYC Housing, “New York City’s shortage of affordable housing has reached a crisis point.” The problem of affordable housing has different causes, including increase in New Yorkers’ purchasing rate in the housing marketplace. Salaries of city’s renters have not changed much in the past 20 years, but “the average monthly rent for an apartment in New York City increased by almost 40 percent.” (NYC Housing) In addition, the mismatch between supply and demand also lead to the problem of shortage in affordable housing. The 2011 U.S. Census states that there are 979,142 households that are either low-income or extremely low-income, but there are only about 424,949 affordable units available to rent. Therefore, affordable housing is a top priority of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. In 2014, he released his plan to create 200,000 units of affordable housing by introducing two policies, mandatory inclusionary housing (MIH) and zoning for quality and affordability (ZQA).
In class, we had discussed one of solutions to increase the amount of affordable housing, which is to encourage developers to build bigger buildings and include a specific percentage of apartments with cheap rent. This seems like a good policy and would attract developers who want to build giant buildings. However, is it really beneficial to people who are looking for affordable housing? Since only 20% of apartments in a building are affordable and the rest are expensive, the stores around the building would tend to sell products that are affordable for people with high incomes. The rent of the place determines the prices of products sell in the store and the monthly rent of the store. No one is willing to pay for a high rent and selling five apples for two dollars. Business owners need to sell the goods at prices that can support their monthly rent, the wages of employees and themselves. So, are government also going to provide services in the neighborhood, for 20% of the population, by opening stores for these families? Although MIH provides affordable housings in the city to low-income families, these families are not getting the sense of community in the neighborhood they are living in.
Another problem of MIH policy is many developers chose not to participate in the inclusionary zoning program, because “implicit subsidy for the affordable units is so high.” “As a result, inclusionary zoning generated fewer than 3,000 new affordable units from 2005 to mid-2013, according to an analysis from Brad Lander, a New York City councilman.” (Barro, 2014) The statistic shows the ineffectiveness of the inclusionary zoning program and makes me think implementing this program might not be beneficial people. First of all, the hidden cost of sustaining cheaper units discourages developers from participating in the program. Secondly, residents living in affordable housing units would have a hard time finding a sense of community in the area they live in, because stores in the neighborhood are possibly all targeting the rich customers. Finally, low-income communities are the targets of upzoning programs and since often of time residents are not included in the decision-making process, more people will be displaced rather than getting helped.
Nathan Newman, a housing activist, suggested that instead of including affordable units in the large building, government should sell density to developers for cash. The government can then use the money to improve low-income communities by constructing buildings with affordable housing and allow the residents in the community to decide what to do in order to best benefit the community and its people.
Work Cited:
Barro Josh (2014). Affordable Housing That’s Very Costly. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/upshot/affordable-housing-thats-very-costly.html(last accessed 5 May 2017)
NYC Housing. Our Current Affordable Housing Crisis – Affordable Housing For Every New Yorker. http://www1.nyc.gov/site/housing/problem/problem.page (last accessed 5 May 2017)
Oscar Perry Abello (2016). How East Harlem Wrote Its Own Development Plan. https://nextcity.org/features/view/east-harlem-neighborhood-plan-upzoning-affordable-housing (last accessed 5 May 2017)
I really liked your post and the article you brought into the discussion. A lot of new ideas came forward that didn’t really cross my mind before. I never really thought about how people living in an affordable housing unit, which is part of a mostly high-income resident building, do not get the full sense of community in their neighborhoods. But that’s so important. They lack a connection to their neighbors and the rest of their neighborhood simply because they are lower income. Although they have a place to live, they may not feel like they belong. They may continue to be stigmatized and pushed to the side, creating further problems.
You also mentioned how many developers chose not to build higher and include affordable housing and that’s a major problem as well. If developers are not taking advantage of the incentive to build taller, as long as they include a percentage of affordable housing, then where do we build affordable housing? The article offered the idea of making inclusionary zoning mandatory, which had its own flaws. And of course, there’s the issue of New York City not containing enough land to build new affordable housing on its own.
Sadly, from your post and Barro’s article I got the sense that all initiatives to fix the affordable housing crisis are flawed and failing. And it’s a reality. Nothing really seems to be working, definitely not the way it should be. And you really made me open my eyes to that. Now my question is, what else can we do? Should we improve our current flawed policies, or is there something new and innovative we can think of?
I’m also curious as to your opinion specifically on community land trusts. It seems like a step in the right direction but it also has its own problems. There only seems to be one, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, that is helping people and doing the job it was created to do. Do you think it’s possible that this kind of initiative and organization can function in New York City? It’s scary to think that there’s no answer to this terrible crisis.