JC is totally is part of the NYC housing economy, the NYTimes regularly features it in the RE section, there’s a forest of luxury towers on the waterfront. Believing otherwise is just snobbery. And while no private entity is building for the working class anywhere, there’s plenty of middle class construction from Brooklyn to Hudson County. It’s the NYC middle class with dual 6 figure incomes, but that’s the new normal.
Some of this is normal, Jane Jacobs wrote 60 years ago about how all new urban housing was built for the wealthy and middle class, trickling down to the working class as it became shabby. The evolution of Harlem is a perfect example. Postwar zoning and rent controls interrupted that process locking the upper classes into their homes and restricting new development so that structures were coop & condo converted, renovated and the middle and upper classes remained where they were, forcing the working class to also remain in increasingly dilapidated rent controlled housing.
White flight eased that problem for decades, but the return of the middle class to renovate and gentrify has exacerbated the lower class housing issues. But without this cycle entire neighborhoods would be pulled down as housing that had not been maintained because of low cashflow became unlivable with no economic reason to renovate.
In my city, the predominant zoning is decidedly in favor of reducing density rather than enabling more housing, restricting a 25 x 100 lot to 2 huge apartments in a 3 floor house, where legacy lots often have up to 10 units in a 5 floor walkup. If a builder wanted to create a “prewar” style low rise apartment building with dozens of homes in a “nonluxury” neighborhood, they cannot without variances.
