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What Counts in the Housing Countdown?
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What really counts in the affordable housing countdown? It doesn’t matter how many units we build if they aren’t the kind of homes that help our affordability crisis. Crain’s New York is questioning whether the de Blasio administration should be counting its first 8,700 units of affordable housing.
What really counts in the affordable housing countdown? It doesn’t matter how many units we build if they aren’t the kind of homes that help our affordability crisis.
Crain’s New York is questioning whether the de Blasio administration should be counting its first 8,700 units of affordable housing (click HERE for Crain’s article).
It’s safe to say it’s fair for the current administration to count these units under its plan – but this quibbling over numbers misses the point entirely. Instead, what truly matters is if those units are the right units, and if they actually make the city more affordable.
Rather than tallying “units produced,” the city should be tracking other metrics to determine the success of its housing program – like the number of New Yorkers who are rent burdened, the number of families who are still homeless, the number of new units affordable to the average New York family and, ultimately, how affordable it is to rent an apartment or buy a home throughout the city. Showing results are important, but the result we’re ultimately looking for is an affordable city – not simply more units.
This singular focus on “units produced” during the last administration didn’t help our affordability crisis, and we need a more comprehensive approach if we’re going to make a dent in it going forward. It ultimately matters less if this administration double-counted these units or not – in four years, this administration will be judged on how many more hard working families can afford to live in this city again – not on the technicalities of meeting a housing production number.