When you say you support building more housing, do you mean affordable housing?
We advocate for the creation of both affordable and market-rate housing. Both are important and both are urgently needed.
We support government efforts to build and preserve affordable housing options – but we also know we can’t subsidize our way out of a shortage. The only way to bring housing costs down across the board for good is to increase the housing supply city-wide. That means more of everything – affordable housing, market-rate housing, and social housing.
New housing tends to be expensive in New York. Won’t new housing make NYC even less affordable?
This is a common assumption, but we believe it is mistaken. If you’re concerned about housing affordability, look at the effect of new market-rate housing on the housing market as a whole. New market-rate housing takes pressure off of existing housing.
Where the construction of those homes is highly constrained, like in New York City, wealthier households end up bidding up the price of older housing—blocking access from lower-income households and hampering affordability. More market-rate housing would put that process into reverse. See here for more information.
But new housing is billed as luxury, with expensive construction methods and finishes. Can it really be affordable?
First off, developers market all new housing as “luxury” – New York does not have a city or state standard for what makes a building luxury. And even if new residential construction is high-end, that can still benefit lower-income families. More high-end units mean fewer middle and lower-tier units being gut-renovated for occupancy by the wealthiest households. See here for more information.
How is Open New York funded?
Ok, I understand the thinking – but what have you accomplished?
We have secured some major policy wins that will make housing more affordable in New York. We shepherded the SoHo/NoHo rezoning through a successful City Council vote, winning thousands of mixed-income homes for two of the country’s wealthiest neighborhoods.
In addition, every local rezoning that we advocated for completed the approvals process without major cuts. That included another pro-housing neighborhood rezoning in Gowanus, plus major individual projects in Williamsburg, the Financial District, Throggs Neck, and Prospect Heights.
Altogether, thousands more families will be able to call New York home thanks to those victories – and we’re continuing to push for similar breakthroughs every day.