A new interactive, real time map released by the Department of Buildings this week shows that Queens has approximately 21 million square feet of apartment space under construction, among other findings.
As announced in a press release on Aug. 22, the map shows the entirety of New York City’s nearly 200 million square feet of building space currently under construction, complete with details about each individual project and links to online copies of building permits. The map is the latest installment in the DOB’s initiative to share data with the public, following the release of the interactive map of sidewalk sheds earlier this year.
The map shows all active permits that have been filed with DOB, including new buildings and alteration projects. It automatically updates in real time as new permits are issued and existing permits expire. Users have the ability to filter through the data shown by building type, number of dwelling units, square footage, estimated cost, general contractors, community board boundaries and boroughs.
When filtered to show just the building projects in Queens, there are several interesting facts about the borough’s buildings.
There are a total of 2,450 active permits in Queens that comprise a total of 37,642,187 square feet of building space under construction in Queens. Of that, approximately 12 million square feet of space is being built in Community Board 2, covering Long Island City and Sunnyside.
In total, Queens has 29,451 dwelling units in the pipeline, and five buildings under construction in the borough rank in the top ten most dwelling units in the city.
29,451 new dwelling units, with probably about 1-200 that are affordable. And the 61,000+ citywide homeless population will keep growing.
26 comments:
At least with the map you can see how much the developers are destroying our communities block by block.
None of these dwellings are for locals. They will be rented out to out of towners who can no longer afford to live in manhattan or brooklyn but dont want to leave.
This is what I don't understand. The city has to approve these buildings. We have a huge homeless problem and it's not just people who aren't working. There are homeless people working in NYC that can't afford the rents.. meanwhile this administration continues to authorize building these units for the rich. I'm sure if there was a freeze on this type of construction only authorizing a 50/50 split for low income and luxury apartments developers would have no choice but to build those units. Instead this mayor continues to spend billions of dollars on a homeless problem that will never be fixed because you are pricing out the minimum wage workers... Not everyone can earn over 75k in NYC to survive even with a college degree. Police / Firefighters / EMT / Tearchers... it's time to get back to affordable housing on a mass scale.
Where are the Queens Politicians, where are the Queens Civics, where are the Queens Community Boards, where are the Queens Media Outlets.
Where that f#$$%*&# is our leadership?
Oh that's right, the pressing concerns of non-citizens and sexual deviants.
Cool.
All this construction, but no improvement for infrastructure. How are all these people supposed to get to work? Extra trains? Buses? Where will they park their cars? What about the electric grid? Future blackouts? Unfortunately, there is no city planning. Developers just build and get their money. They don't give a crap about neighborhoods or quality of life issues.
Whether or not the new housing is set aside as affordable, it will help the housing market overall. People who can afford nicer, bigger, newer units will go after them, and decrease the price pressure on preexisting housing stock they're in. Sure, there are problems with infrastructure, but this is a desirable correction to the housing market.
I'm getting the hell out of here...
" this is a desirable correction to the housing market."
Please explain how... and if it's affordable should matter. The homeless numbers are going to keep rising if affordable units aren't built. It's not as if you're pricing the low income population out and they are moving out of state. No they are adding to the 60+ thousands that are looking for placement into the shelter system. Which is leading to the mayor paying billions to find hotel rooms or moving them into the non-gentrified neighborhoods. I'd like to see the numbers of how many of these units are unoccupied due to the rental costs.
Enough is enough with building these overpriced towers. I'm all for building but we need a solution for the homeless issue that doesn't cost taxpayers these huge numbers. If affordable housing is not going to be built please remove the right to shelter laws then so these people know there are no other options and they should start looking into other states before they end up on the streets...
I think using all this space for overly expensive properties when we have a real homeless issue is a huge concern - and it should be for this administration as well. Unfortunately everyone is very happy to get the kickbacks that are lumped into the costs of building.
You heard it here first;
the next census in 2020 will have Queens overtaking Brooklyn as the most populous borough in NYC.
Queens already has the largest percentage of public school kids.
The writing is on the wall, our future is one of permanent gridlock, overcrowded streets a la Main Street Flushing, lower quality of life and huge populations of low wage workers (many illegal)crowding along all the train corridors in Queens.
...Basically what we have now but on steroids.
Harry Haller
Sure, there are problems with infrastructure, but this is a desirable correction to the housing market.
Only in Queens would you find a statement like this.
What's happening is our politicians and housing court judges invest in LLC and holding companies that own apartment buildings.
If you expect them to care about the working class of Queens, I am sorry but you will have to wake up from the delusion.
Second, illegal aliens get work building these things. How many Americans do you see working on any construction sites? I notice illegals and their wives, girlfriends, relatives who cook food to sell to the crew.
Third, any affordable housing will be given to a black, Spanish or illegal alien. Any white American will have their application torn up unless they have a black baby Daddy.
This is how you destroy a borough and then a country.
Illegal is not synonymous with immigrant. The fact that a person is Hispanic or Asian does not make it a fact that he or she is not a legal immigrant or even an immigrant at all.
Please explain how... and if it's affordable should matter
Basic economics. When the housing supply is restricted, because the demand for some housing - any housing - is not that elastic for people who have well-paying jobs here, they will settle for second or third choice alternatives, even though they would gladly take something else within a range of options for their budget if it were available. This happens all across the income ladder: people squeezed for lack of supply will pursue housing stock they'd rather not simple because it is the best option available. Because they have the expendable income to afford more, the landlords can keep raising prices on those tiers of the market. If you give people even at the higher income end more options they'll prefer and take, that eases the demand on slightly lower tier housing market they are putting pressure on. Some people in the third highest tier can now start to consider 2nd highest, and decrease pressure on third highest. And so on. It's not as though housing designated as "affordable" exists in a market vacuum.
That's nice. It's a shame that there are so many apartments being sat on by landlords who are keeping them empty which is why we hear that we need an endless supply of housing. We don't. We have more than enough. It's just not being utilized.
So now take it to the next step: why would any landlord in his right mind carry the net loss of maintenance expenses and taxes from buildings and their property lots, while generating zero revenue out of them? Because, risk-adjusted, they actually expect to come out ahead in the long term. Why would they come out ahead? Because the appreciation of the building is higher - even accounting for those short term losses by not renting - when not locked into a multiyear lease or some "affordable housing" distortion. How do you fix this problem without adding on yet more band-aids like vacancy taxes and J51 nonsense? BUILD MORE HOUSING so that speculation cools and leasing becomes more attractive. It's not rocket science. The electeds need to make sure utilities, transit, schools, and other public infrastructure is in place. Stop wasting their energies over housing.
Why do they do it for factory properties and storefronts as well? Because there aren't enough of them? No. Because they can write it off as a loss and because they are waiting for the right opportunity to come along so they can make a mint off a rezoning or a big buyer looking to do the same.
You can't write off losses against taxes that don't exist because there isn't lease revenue from the building. A 99% write off of zero is zero. Unless the amount of the lease is less than the cost of the maintenance, they're eating losses. If you want to reduce speculative property flipping, let supply rise to disincentivize that behavior. Net Present Value will drop like a stone. I have no idea how you're going to solve undesirable rezonings, but calls for massive new tracts of "affordable housing" is going to give the people pushing through those plans the moral justification they need to make exactly those density by right changes play into REBNY's hands. These are separable problems with inherent tensions.
As for the homeless problem, the solution is painfully obvious: Right to Shelter needs to be overturned in Albany so that - like *every other county* in New York state, there is some prior residency requirement, and the city is demagnetized.
Crappy, could you please link us to some articles about apartments sitting empty? I would like to know more.
Heck, while I'm asking, any good articles about the tax breaks for empty storefronts that landlords take advantage of?
Start with this one. Nearly 250,000 NYC rental apartments sit vacant
Let's see how the AirBnB legislation affects this.
Of the 247,977 empty units, almost 28,000 have been rented or sold but not yet occupied, or are awaiting a sale. Nearly 80,000 are getting renovated, 9,600 have been tied up in court, and 12,700 are vacant because the owner is ill or elderly. Still, that leaves over 100,000 units, and the census finds 74,945 are only occupied temporarily or seasonally, with 27,009 held off the market for unexplained reasons.
So about 27,000. That's not much. And are these the same apartments continuously unoccupied, or is this simply the average number in any given month, with apartments coming in and out of availability?
"That's not much."
I'm not sure how you do math but 80,000 empty because they are "getting renovated" + 9,600 "tied up in court" + 27,000 "held off the market" is a lot of free space. Enough for every homeless person in the system to live in their own apartment with tens of thousands of apartments left over.
I'm not sure how you do math but 80,000 empty because they are "getting renovated" + 9,600 "tied up in court" + 27,000 "held off the market" is a lot of free space. Enough for every homeless person in the system to live in their own apartment with tens of thousands of apartments left over.
You're saying the city should put homeless people into apartments while they're undergoing renovation, in which utilities may have to be turned off at whim, toxic chemicals are used, or are flat out unsafe for other reasons? You're saying that 9600 units which a judge could summarily sign over to someone else on any given day court is in session and pull the rug out from the current resident is a good place to put a homeless person? And those other 27,000 - are they the same 27,000 month in and month out, or just temporarily vacant units between lease terms? Let's say they are for a second: how are you going to stop the inflow of homeless people from out of the area who will line up to get their "free" apartment?
Getting renovated doesn't mean utilities are being turned off. It usually means the landlord is upgrading appliances and adding amenities in the apartment so they can charge more. "Tied up in court" after the person moved out? Really? Is that how evictions work these days? Heh. The point is there is a lot more unused supply out there.
Thanks for the links, Crappy. Another thing I wonder about is why local development (I'm guessing at the strenuous voicing of groups like COMET, the CB, etc) in Maspeth actually "fits" and is in-context, but by and large even away from wider thoroughfares similar groups in other nabes have not been able to compel developers to do the same...it's a win-win. Area homes don't get dwarfed/en-shadow-ed or over-whelmed, but new duplex/triplex homes DO get built, and families can move in.
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