New map shows where tenants are at risk of being pushed out in NYC

As affordable apartments continue to disappear and as people across all five boroughs demand more affordable housing, an advocacy group, the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD) has released an interactive map that the group is hoping will help alleviate some of those problems.

The map, which was first covered by the New York Times, shows were tenants across the city might be most at risk of displacement. The Displacement Alert Project Map or the DAP Map as it is known was creating by researching several databases and received the support of the Ford Foundation.

The map features a total of 96,000 multi-family buildings, and for each ANHD looked at the loss of rent-regulated apartments in the building, the number of DOB permits issued for that building, which to the group indicates an increase in rent, and the sales price of the building, which to ANHD gives a sense of what the surrounding real estate market might be like.

In selecting the buildings that they did, ANHD considered buildings that had at least three apartments and met at least one of the three following criteria: had at least one rent-regulated apartment since 2007, got a work permit from the DOB since 2013, or was sold in 2015.

Based on this criteria, the organization then color-coded and scored buildings, and identified those buildings where tenants are most in danger of displacement, and where existing affordable units were in danger. From their research ANHD discovered that almost 26 percent of the buildings on the DAP Map received a high risk score, and that between 2007 and 2014, the city had lost 156,000 rent-regulated apartments.

The organization is hoping that the map will bolster the work of housing activists and will also enable elected officials to shape public policy with more information in their hand.

Not everyone is in agreement with this project however. An executive at the Rent Stabilization Association, a landlord organization, spoke with the Times and said that work permits weren’t a reliable factor into measuring the risk of displacement as many of the buildings are decades old and in desperate need of repairs.