Landmark Legislation Authorises a Panel to Examine Whether to Convene a Working Group to Develop a Framework for a Crisis That Has Been Ongoing Since 1987
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
NEW YORK, NY — The New York City Council voted 38 to 11 Wednesday to establish the Commission on the Feasibility of Convening a Working Group on Housing Affordability Solutions, described by members as “a meaningful step toward addressing New York’s housing crisis” and by housing advocates as “the civic equivalent of standing in a burning building and writing a memo about whether to consider discussing fire extinguisher procurement.” The Commission follows four previous commissions, three task forces, two blue ribbon panels, and eleven City Council hearings on housing affordability stretching back to the Bloomberg administration, none of which produced legislation sufficient to meaningfully alter the trajectory of a housing market that has become inaccessible to the majority of New Yorkers on median income.
The Core Finding That Every Previous Study Has Made
Every housing study conducted since 1990 reaches broadly consistent conclusions: demand exceeds supply, supply is constrained by zoning that limits density, existing residents oppose new development near them, and the political system that would change the zoning is composed of those same residents’ representatives. This dynamic is called NIMBY. It is well understood, thoroughly documented, and fully operational. Councilmember Shahana Hanif, one of the eleven dissenters, said from the floor she had “read the previous reports and they say to build more housing” and was “not confident a new commission would find something different.” She said spend the $4.2 million on direct subsidies and vote on zoning changes. Colleagues said the moment required “further consensus-building,” which housing lawyers translated as “there are not yet enough votes for the thing that needs to happen.”
What Apartments Actually Cost
Median asking rent for a Manhattan one-bedroom is $4,200 per month, requiring $168,000 annual income to meet standard affordability thresholds — placing it out of reach for 84 percent of city households. Brooklyn’s median one-bedroom at $3,100 requires $124,000. The Bronx at $1,900 requires $76,000, which still exceeds the city median household income of $68,000. These figures from StreetEasy are available on their website. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has designated New York a severely cost-burdened housing market, which is the federal government’s way of officially noting what everyone already knows.
The Commission: Composition and Expected Output
The Commission is co-chaired by a former deputy mayor, a real estate attorney, and a tenant advocacy director who have already publicly disagreed about whether the primary solution is supply-side, demand-side, or structural. A commission of people who disagree sometimes produces creative synthesis and more often produces a report with majority and minority opinions that commissioners distance themselves from on publication day. The council said it was confident the composition would produce “a robust and actionable report.” It did not define actionable. The $4.2 million budget is confirmed. The eighteen-month timeline begins when commissioners are formally appointed. Appointment is expected within sixty days, subject to vetting, which the council confirmed would not itself require a commission.
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The study will be available in 2028 when the crisis will be worse. Private Eye has been studying London’s version since 1961.
What the State Has Done and What It Needs to Do
New York State has taken several legislative steps on housing in recent years, including Governor Hochul’s 2024 housing compact negotiations, the passage of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity zoning amendment in New York City, and multiple rounds of zoning reform that have increased as-of-right development in some circumstances. These steps are real and have produced some results. Housing production in New York City has increased modestly since the passage of City of Yes, with permit applications up in several categories. The underlying gap between production and need remains very large. The Empire Center for Public Policy has documented that New York’s housing production per capita ranks near the bottom of major US metropolitan areas, a position it has maintained for most of the past four decades, suggesting that the structural barriers to housing production — zoning, CEQA-equivalent review requirements, community opposition — are persistent enough to survive individual policy reforms and require sustained, cumulative legislative action over an extended period. The new Commission will have eighteen months. Its predecessors have had decades. The housing market has not waited for any of them. It will not wait for this one.
What Cities That Have Actually Solved Housing Affordability Did Differently
For comparative perspective: Singapore, Vienna, and Amsterdam have all maintained significantly more affordable urban housing than New York over comparable periods. All three did so through sustained, large-scale public housing investment that kept a substantial portion of the housing stock out of the speculative market entirely. Singapore maintains approximately 80 percent of its population in public housing. Vienna’s public and subsidised housing covers roughly 60 percent of residents. Amsterdam’s social housing sector covers approximately half the city’s stock. None of these models is directly transferable to New York, where constitutional constraints, political culture, and the scale of existing private real estate investment would make replication literally impossible. They are nonetheless cited by housing researchers as evidence that the affordability problem is solvable in principle, and that the specific combination of tools available in New York — inclusionary zoning, tax incentives, some direct public housing — has historically been insufficient to solve it. The Commission will not recommend a Vienna model. It will recommend what is politically feasible. What is politically feasible has not solved the problem yet. That is where the Commission begins.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/nyc-housing-commission-study-affordability/