He’s discussing the 5 boroughs, not the greater NYC market that includes NJ as well as Westchester and L.I. He says specifically that the upzoning done by both De Blasio and, in a different way, Bloomberg “did absolutely nothing to contain rents.” After discussing a provision of the property tax code that gives developers tax breaks on new buildings that provide a certain proportion of affordable rental units and the way they’ve been gamed he continues:
The greater problem, as Michael Greenberg spelled out in his New York Review of Books analysis, is that by its very definition new housing that is 25 to 30 percent “affordable” still means huge numbers of high-cost new rentals. It is, in other words, mass gentrification locked in for many years to come, while the city is further starved of tax dollars needed to maintain and improve its public services.
What he’s really calling for in regard to residential real estate is ending subsidies for developers and putting that money instead toward affordable public housing in the city for working-class people (maintenance to be supported by another dedicated half-cent in city sales tax). He supports high-density zoning, but the kind that will result in more affordable rents.
Certainly housing stock outside the geographic scope of what he’s discussing is important, but that becomes an issue of funding better and more public transit than one of funding better and more public housing.
It’s really more about greedy developers, but greedy landlords, especially the private equity funds, certainly find their ways inside NYC. For example, when the city makes laws saying no to rent hikes (or at least limiting them) the large corporate landlords get very creative in forcing tenants under rent control and stabilisation out. As noted above and in the article, when the market supply of housing stock in Manhattan and Brooklyn and, to a smaller extent, Queens is increased with new construction the result is higher rents all around.
That’s a real issue but one that has to be addressed separately, probably in the voting booth. Not all politicians have to be beholden to the unions.
