Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration estimated the town might want to construct an eye-popping 700,000 new housing models over the following 10 years to maintain up with demand — evens as tens of hundreds of inexpensive flats sit vacant.
The draft report from the Division of Housing Preservation and Growth is the primary to be launched below a 2023 Metropolis Council legislation requiring common assessments of the Large Apple’s long-term housing wants.
Analysts at HPD decided that the 5 boroughs have an rapid want for 290,000 housing models to handle present shortages and ease the town’s measly 1.4% residence emptiness charge.
One other 240,000 properties are wanted to maintain up with inhabitants progress over the following decade, in response to the first-of-its-kind “Truthful Housing Progress Technique” report.
On high of these 530,000 models mixed, a further 170,000 will probably be obligatory to satisfy “future want,” the report stated.
The report makes no point out of the town’s 57,000 rent-stabilized housing inventory vacancies and the over 6,200 empty public housing models below NYCHA.
It references Mamdani’s “Block by Block” housing plan introduced earlier this yr — which seeks to construct 200,000 low- and middle-income properties over the following 10 years, in addition to protect 200,000 current inexpensive models — however these weren’t included within the 700,000-goal, both, an HPD spokesperson confirmed.
The findings launched Wednesday blamed the town’s housing scarcity on “a long time of underproduction,” discovering that almost all of neighborhoods have added solely 240 models or fewer within the final 15 years.
However actual property business insiders stated if the town is critical about addressing the housing scarcity, it must make it simpler to ramp up manufacturing.
“This report places a good larger quantity on New York’s housing scarcity and confirms that provide is on the coronary heart of the affordability disaster,” stated James Whelan, president of the Actual Property Board of New York.
“If New York is critical about producing 700,000 new properties, policymakers should confront the problems nonetheless holding housing again,” Whelan stated.
He talked about fixing the 485-x property tax incentive, which mandates that union labor be used on buildings bigger than 100 models, resulting in many smaller developments.
Whelan additionally stated empty rent-regulated models ought to be put again on supply at market charge.
“The query is not whether or not we’d like extra housing. The query is whether or not the federal government is keen to make it potential to construct it,” he stated.
Vacancies in rent-stabilized flats elevated by 8,000 models in 2025 alone, in response to a report by the state Division of Housing and Group Renewal.
Lease-stabilized landlords are nonetheless struggling to maintain up with elevated working prices — which jumped a median of 5.3% this yr, with insurance coverage prices alone for inexpensive housing leaping 10.5%.
The monetary pressure on landlords was exacerbated in June — when the Lease Pointers Board voted to freeze the hire on the town’s inexpensive housing inventory of roughly 1 million flats — leaving landlords who’re already strapped for money with few choices to treatment their dilapidated buildings.
Mamdani’s Deputy Mayor of Housing, Leila Borzog, downplayed the variety of vacant inexpensive properties, saying the reply shouldn’t be to lift their rents.
“After all, any vacancies which are pointless is a priority for me, given our broader housing disaster, the place we must be constructing extra housing,” Borzog advised NY1 in a July interview.
“However we have now to, once more, tackle this by means of nuanced coverage options moderately than assuming that the answer right here is to discover a option to simply enhance rents.”
In April, Mamdani introduced his administration can be launching a brand new property insurance coverage program for inexpensive housing aimed toward reducing the fee burden for landlords.
Metropolis Corridor claims this system goals to concern new insurance coverage insurance policies for 20,000 properties subsequent yr and 100,000 properties by 2030.
No further particulars about this system, timeline, or insurance coverage companion have been introduced.
To date, the Mamdani administration has efficiently preserved 4,951 inexpensive housing models in addition to a further 908 public housing models preserved by means of NYCHA’s PACT program, in response to the HPD.
