Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ambitious initiatives to create more affordable housing – Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and Zoning for Quality and Affordability – will likely face a vote in the City Council at the end of March.
But along with MIH and ZQA there has been another suggestion for how to create more affordable housing: to build more market rate units. In last months’ real estate issue, Borough President Melinda Katz said that more market rate units, as well as more affordable units, were necessary to combat the city’s affordable housing crisis. It seems like common sense to increase supply in order to take the pressure off prices. But two experts argue that New York City cannot develop itself out of this problem.
Matthew Lasner, a professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College, thought new housing supply, unless it completely flooded the markets, would have little impact on rent.
Lasner said the problem was just that demand in New York had just exceeded supply for far too long, by far too much.
“We would have to build hundreds of thousands of units of new housing before we caught up with demand,” he said. “That’s not a reality that any of us will ever witness in our lifetime.”
Paul Graziano, a land use and urban planning consultant, also said that real estate prices in New York City were not driven by the simple laws of supply and demand.
“The whole city is hyper expensive,” he said. “It’s not a supply and demand issue. It’s what the market will bear.”
Graziano said that the contextual down-zonings that he orchestrated in the many neighborhoods actually helped keep them relatively affordable for middle class residents, something that might seem counter-intuitive, since they made the potential housing supply in the neighborhood finite.
But he argued that when the possibility of development was taken off the table, the properties lost their speculative value for developers; their price ceased to be inflated by the properties potential to become a money-making apartment complex.
“You’re removing the ability for someone to make a lot of money,” Graziano said of the downzonings. “If the neighborhood were zoned multi-family, [the property value] would jump exponentially. Because each of those properties could be re-developed into multi-family housing.”
18 comments:
Finally! Common sense. thanks Paul Graziano.
“The whole city is hyper expensive,” he said. “It’s not a supply and demand issue. It’s what the market will bear.”
What? "What the market will bear" IS supply and demand, genius.
No, when you have buyers from overseas buying units without seeing them, it's not a "demand for housing", it's a demand for greed. No one is living in these units, therefore it's not a housing demand, genius.
I have a way we can catch up....it's called deportation....maybe we should try it!
It makes me crazy the Deblasio is trying to shove affordable housing down everyone's throats. NYC is one of the most expensive cities in the world. HELLLLOOOOOO??? yes it's unattainable for some so what. that's reality. Why does he keep trying to cheapen it. I can't afford it so I don't move to NYC, I go where I can afford.
Why do the residents of NYC have to support all the illegals and lazy trash migrating here from other states for the fabulous welfare benefits when it's difficult enough to support ourselves here? It wouldn't be "hyper expensive" if the taxes didn't have to be jacked up so much to support the above detritus. The so-called representatives of the people are only interested in feathering their own nests or those of their actual constituents---don't tell me that the head of the city council is not, in reality, just chief lobbyist for Puerto Rico. What other city would allow someone on the city council to actually live not only in another city than the one they represent, but in a totally different STATE? What imbeciles would continue to vote for city council representative who want to totally destroy any meaning of citizenship and allow illegal trash to actually VOTE, as if they were citizens?
There's a serious problem when so called experts don't acknowledge the concept of foreign investment, speculation, and housing bubbles. More housing stock will solve the problem of demand. To say, it's too late is to admit only the wealthy should be able to buy property or not rent with multiple roommates to make rent?
affordable housing TRANSLATION - government subsidized housing for blacks, and illegal immigrants. No whites need apply, poor or otherwise.
The great thing about subsidized housing, as you can tell with all our public housing projects across the country, is that one can get out of prison, come home and have a great life with out working a full time job. That's how one can build up a drug/gang empire, continue getting paid in cash for pimping, gun sales and loan sharking. While at the same time collect food stamps, welfare benefits , free health insurance and that all purpose housing subsidy.
Wonderful country USA. Too bad most of it's citizens can't benefit from all these same programs.
Perhaps this will make it clear. The only housing being built is luxury housing. There is an infinite demand for these units due to foreign investors. No one is building large quantities of low income or middle class housing without serious subsidization. Limiting the affordable housing requirement to only units where developer driven zoning changes are requested will do bupkis for the supply of the middle and low income units demanded. Not to mention that the income thresholds are way too high. All this will do is make developers wealthier. This is the point these two zoning experts were making. The supply/demand equation is not natural in NYC and to repeat that mantra just shows how simple minded the public is and why we end up with pols that railroad us all the time under the guise of solving our problems,
Affordable housing and NYC in the same sentence does not make sense.
Looking at the NY Post Real Estate section, 59M, 4.5M, 11.5M, so on and so on.
So who the fuck can afford these houses? Or the taxes, maintenance on them?
Fucking liars! Affordable your ass.
Perhaps this will make it clear. The only housing being built is luxury housing. There is an infinite demand for these units due to foreign investors. No one is building large quantities of low income or middle class housing without serious subsidization. Limiting the affordable housing requirement to only units where developer driven zoning changes are requested will do bupkis for the supply of the middle and low income units demanded. Not to mention that the income thresholds are way too high. All this will do is make developers wealthier. This is the point these two zoning experts were making. The supply/demand equation is not natural in NYC and to repeat that mantra just shows how simple minded the public is and why we end up with pols that railroad us all the time under the guise of solving our problems.
As one of those zoning experts interviewed for this article, I'll go a step further:
The neighborhoods that I've rezoned or helped to rezone; the new zoning categories that I've co-authored or helped to create; and other actions, including getting buildings and neighborhoods landmarked, have all been done for a simple reason: to protect our low-density livable neighborhoods from what has become the systemic overdevelopment of our city.
When you have a block full of single-family detached houses and the current zoning allows for six story apartment buildings, you are INVITING overdevelopment. This has nothing to do with creating affordable housing units - it's all about speculative market-rate development. Period.
Unfortunately, there are huge areas of the city which still have this kind of mismatch between the existing built environment and what can be built there presently. Most of the 40-50% of Queens that has been contextually rezoned since 2002 outside of places like downtown Jamaica, Long Island City and Corona have been zoned to allow less as-of-right development because these neighborhoods simply cannot absorb this amount of housing and population, based on a permanent lack of infrastructure.
As for luxury housing: it's true that there is also an increase in "investor-grade" units in places like downtown Flushing, where overseas investors are paying for apartments which are either rented out for a fortune or (often) left empty, similar to the multi-million dollar supertower apartments being constructed on 57th Street, where more than 50% of the units are being purchased by sketchy anonymous overseas LLCs and purposely left vacant.
Saying this is a big problem is a massive understatement.
Paul Graziano
"As for luxury housing: it's true that there is also an increase in "investor-grade" units in places like downtown Flushing, where overseas investors are paying for apartments which are either rented out for a fortune or (often) left empty, similar to the multi-million dollar supertower apartments being constructed on 57th Street, where more than 50% of the units are being purchased by sketchy anonymous overseas LLCs and purposely left vacant."
And that's the burn. These affordable housing units are just sketchy tax havens. They will remain dark just like the recent behemoth tumors that sprouted up in the city and in the tony sections of eastern Queens and goddamn Brooklyn. And their vision for East New York should send chills down everyone's spines, not just the folks that will be displaced and forced to move to southeast queens or in one of the many homeless hotels that are sprouting in the worlds borough.
@Paul
That's right!
Money laundering at international level.
Now that China is cracking down on out of country monies held by their citizens we can expect more of the same.
But hey NYC benefits, how much is the tax on a 6M co-op in Manhattan?
Money doesn't smell apparently.
NYC + Affordable housing = BULLSHIT biggest LIE ever.
Nothing Duh Blasio has been promoting has worked very well so far.
Let's all just grit our teeth and sit saddle and wait until big Bill's term is over.
Then we can get a fresh horse. Until then, he is número uno Bill, a one term mayor
(Lord willing)!
One term?? Doesn't work that way, we all know that. We have Duhbill for another 10 years.
Then another REBNY backed mayor will replace Du Blah.
Stupid people vote for stupid democrats who create stupid policies and come up with stupid solutions when they inevitably fail. Keep it up New York, and I'll keep laughing at your stupid ass.
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