What Would New York City’s Housing “Moonshot” Look Like?

In a recent Manhattan Institute brief, I wrote that newly enacted state housing legislation and New York City’s “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” (CHO) zoning amendment (if passed as proposed):

should push NYC’s permits for new housing units meaningfully higher than would have been the case, had the legislature not acted…. However, housing will remain in critically short supply in the city. Mayor Eric Adams’s “moonshot” goal of 500,000 units in a decade—a figure ambitious enough that it might, if achieved, result in abundant and affordable housing for anyone who wants to live in the city—remains far out of reach.[1]

That should not be a surprise; the interplay of clashing interests inherent in democratic politics produces, at best, incremental progress.

While praising these initial efforts, we should not lose sight of the goal. A half-million new housing units over a decade translates into 50,000 units each year, a level not reached since the early 1960s—and then, for only a few years. In that period, new housing was boosted by the “grace period” included in the city’s enactment of a new, much more restrictive, zoning resolution. Developments that had permits as of the 1961 effective date could proceed under the old, more permissive, rules but had to be completed by a deadline. After the end of the grace period, housing completions plummeted. To achieve the “moonshot,” NYC needs to create a regulatory framework to produce large numbers of new housing units that can be sustained over time.

This brief addresses the question that my earlier brief raised: What policies would achieve the moonshot goal?

The CHO zoning amendment makes a start. The city’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement estimates that if all its proposals are enacted, in the 15-year period from 2024 to 2039,“the annual rate of housing production is expected to increase, averaging approximately 24,200 to 30,600 new units per year . . . which represents an increase of approximately 2,950 to 9,350 new units compared to the average annual rate of production since 2010.”[2]

Even if this estimate is valid, the city would fall well short of the moonshot goal. Enacting CHO in its entirety might be difficult;[3] but to achieve that goal, additional actions would need to be taken on multiple fronts, each of which seems even more politically challenging:

• NYC’s zoning would need to be far more permissive, beyond what CHO proposes
• Obtaining a zoning change must be made much easier for private property owners
• Taxation of residential property must be rational and consistent
• Rent controls must not hinder new construction
• A series of additional reforms would need to happen

What is impossible today becomes possible in the future because public sentiment, which influences elected officials, evolves. Local governments also want to emulate the best practices of other cities. The U.S. offers numerous examples of cities that are far more welcoming to growth than New York.[4] Those cities still have problems, as all cities do, but an acute housing affordability crisis is not one of them.

The great error of the 1961 comprehensive rezoning of New York City was to replace a zoning framework that was flexible enough to accommodate surges in housing demand with a new system that assumed a stagnant population—and thus would need major revision if the population started to grow again.[5] Before 1961, NYC had zoning, a building code, and additional regulations under the state Multiple Dwelling Law. In combination, these made the ubiquitous six-story semi- fireproof[6] apartment building the favored prototype in many neighborhoods.

Until the 1960s, continual expansions of the subway system, in tandem with flexible zoning, accommodated much of the city’s housing demand.[7] A 1960 city report provided data on housing construction from 1950 to 1959 (Figure 1). Even in an era of generous funding for public housing and other types of publicly assisted housing, more than half of all new housing in each borough was privately owned and financed, amounting to 233,500 units in the decade, or 72% of all newly constructed units. Public housing (owned and managed by the New York City Housing Authority) amounted to 23% of new housing in this period, while privately owned, but publicly aided, housing represented 5% of completions.[8]

Privately constructed housing remained dominant in the years of the grace period in the early 1960s. Figure 2 carries the data forward into the mid-1960s. In 1963, the peak year for housing completions, 75% of new housing was privately owned and financed. Many of these units were in six-story apartment buildings, particularly in southern Brooklyn and in Queens, where the largest number of units were constructed. As the pre-1961 permit overhang diminished, the city became more dependent on public funding, with public and publicly aided housing accounting for 48% of completions in 1965, while the total number of completions was falling.

The zoning system that produced this pro-growth environment was complicated and hard for the public to understand. Its lack of differentiation among zoning districts was both its strength and, ultimately, its undoing. The pre-1961 zoning resolution (originally enacted in 1916) had a short text (60 pages at the last printing in 1960),[9] compared with the behemoth that the 1961 zoning resolution has become. There were also three sets of maps, dividing the city into use, height, and area districts.[10] Use districts were important to businesses, but in contrast to the post-1961 zoning, residences were allowed everywhere. Height districts determined how high a building could rise without a setback, expressed as a multiple of the street width. Area districts established lot coverage (how much of a lot could be covered by a building, when viewed from above) and the required dimensions of yards and courts. In addition, beginning in 1940, the city added new area districts that were prototypes for the post-1961 low-density districts. Many restricted residential uses to single- and two-family homes. These were initially limited to a few affluent neighborhoods with the political clout to get them, prefiguring the much wider mapping of single- and two-family zoning districts after 1961.

However, the most prevalent zoning districts mapped in southern Brooklyn and in Queens—where the postwar boom in six-story apartment buildings was concentrated—were the C and D area districts and the Class 1 height district. After zoning amendments were approved in 1944, C districts allowed new residential buildings to cover 60% of the lot or 75% if at the intersection of two streets; D districts allowed for 55% and 70% of the lot, respectively.[11] The distinction between C and D districts, however, meant little to a building’s design. In Class 1 height districts, buildings were allowed to rise to seven-eighths of the street’s width and were permitted an additional 1.5 feet of height for each foot that the building was set back from the street line.[12] To achieve 60 feet of height on a typical 60-foot-wide street, a six-story apartment building would need to be set back five feet.

Putting all the parameters together, we get a building like 2711 Avenue X, a six-story, 66-unit structure completed in 1962 in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay neighborhood (Figure 3).[13] At the time it obtained a building permit, the lot was in a D area district and Class 1 height district. Since 1961, the building, like many from this era, is now in a low-density R4 district, which limits building height to two or three stories.

The 1961 zoning mappers, convinced that the city would not need to grow in the foreseeable future, determined that the R4 district was appropriate, based on the predominant low-scale character of the neighborhood. A few property owners beat the grace-period deadline and built apartment buildings, such as 2711 Avenue X.

The rush to develop before the deadline was a signal from the market that the underlying land in the neighborhood was more valuable than the zoning implied. Because that value could no longer be unlocked by building more densely after 1961, it was instead reflected in higher resale prices for existing homes. This process, repeated in neighborhood after neighborhood, is how the city became unaffordable.

The 2711 Avenue X building is now a cooperative in which, as of May 2024, one could find a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment advertised on Zillow.com for $400,000. A 1935 two-family home one block down the street, containing two two-bedroom apartments, was advertised for $1 million. New York City planners have not been idle for the past 63 years. Nearby Ocean Avenue has been rezoned for apartments, and several new buildings have been constructed, including 2736 Ocean Avenue, a six-story, 15-unit building between Avenues W and X, completed in 2009, which includes a two-bedroom, two-bath condominium advertised for $645,000. However, the rest of the neighborhood is frozen in time. Even on Ocean Avenue, there are still a few holdout low-scale properties. The scarcity of building sites allows their owners to demand a high price for the land.

CHO proposes to unfreeze some of the locked-up land in the neighborhood. The “Town Centers” proposal would allow commercially zoned blocks along Avenue X, Avenue U to the north, and Avenue Z to the south, as well as along the north–south Nostrand Avenue, to build two or three stories of apartments above stores.[14] Many of those blocks are developed with one-story commercial buildings, and some owners might be induced to redevelop, resulting in dozens—or, at best, low hundreds—of new housing units. That would be a laudable achievement. However, land prices would need to remain high enough to induce property owners to give up commercial rents for a few years and undertake the expense of new construction. High land prices represent a constraint on how much new housing we can expect.

Let’s imagine that the 1961 downzoning had never happened and that the neighborhood remained zoned for the past 60 years for workaday six-story apartment buildings like 2711 Avenue X. Dozens of six-story apartment buildings would likely have been constructed over the past six decades, and land prices, embedded in home values, would not have escalated as they have, because building sites would not have been scarce. In Sheepshead Bay, and in many similar neighborhoods, we would have abundant and affordable housing.

Achieving that happy result today requires giving up the notion of zoning for neighborhood character and, instead, zoning for abundant developable land. Existing zoning tools would re-create the massing of 2711 Avenue X.[15] If applied to a whole neighborhood, most of the existing homes would remain for the foreseeable future, but, in some locations, groups of homeowners would sell out to developers and new apartment buildings would be constructed. That change might be difficult to enact politically because homeowners would fear a loss of home equity, although even small homes, if combined with their neighbors, might be just as valuable as development sites.[16] Existing residents might also fear adverse effects of new development, such as overutilization of street parking and crowded schools. The city would need to have responsive policies to address those concerns. Nonetheless, a prerequisite for achieving the moonshot goal is zoning as permissive as in 1960.

Even if zoning is made much more permissive in residential areas, there will still be locations where housing is prohibited, such as industrial areas with heavy truck traffic that is incompatible with nearby residences. However, those restrictions need to be continuously reconsidered and updated as land-use conditions change. In 2019, for example, I cited the area of Long Island City north of Queensbridge Houses.[17] After a series of misguided zoning decisions,[18] this manufacturing- zoned area, which is within walking distance of the 21st St.–Queensbridge subway station, allows no housing but is largely characterized by recently constructed hotels. The city has since amended zoning, effectively to prohibit construction of more hotels. The remaining low-intensity industrial lots do not attract investment (Figure 4).

A sensible land-use change would be to allow new housing at a high density, taking advantage of the high demand for housing in western Queens. But the city has no plans to do so.[19]

A long-standing challenge in NYC zoning is that the Department of City Planning has never been staffed sufficiently to keep the zoning map continuously up to date. Instead, it relies on private applicants to identify locations appropriate for zoning changes, and these must then fund the considerable costs of obtaining the change.

The cost of private applications has escalated dramatically since 1960, when the city charter required review only by the City Planning Commission and the Board of Estimate,[20] and the whole process could be compressed into a few weeks. The citizens’ revolt in the 1960s against urban renewal and highway-building—and the desire to prevent anyone from accumulating the power exercised by Robert Moses in his heyday—led to new requirements that greatly slowed the process and increased the costs of obtaining a zoning change. Changes to the city charter in 1975 codified the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP),[21] which added community and, in some cases, borough boards to the zoning change review process. The 1989 charter revision added borough president review. The formal part of the zoning change review process now lasts seven months or longer. Applicants are required to hold land and pay for representation at several levels of government.

Even before reaching this formal stage, there is also a pre-ULURP process, consisting mostly of a City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR),[22] required by the state Environmental Conservation Law (ECL)[23] and implemented in the city by executive order in 1977.[24] CEQR has been ever expanding in scope and constitutes a vast and time-consuming preparatory expense that adds little, if any, public understanding of potential impacts.

Even this is not all. The city council has added a requirement that many zoning changes submit a “racial equity report,”[25] which is predicated on the assumption that racial inequality is driven by land-use changes, rather than the status quo. And under Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2016, the city instituted Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH), a requirement that new developments in rezoned areas include below-market “affordable” housing. MIH effectively operates as a tax on much-needed new housing, and the economic impact of this tax is only imperfectly offset by state-legislated tax breaks.[26]

All these time-consuming and expensive requirements deter private applicants from entering the public review process. To achieve the moonshot goal, these costs need to be stripped away. Recognizing the problem, the city recently instituted a “Green Fast Track for Housing,”[27] which allows housing applications with a relatively small number of projected units to bypass some environmental review requirements. But because the city’s authority is limited by state law, the Green Fast Track represents a shortened environmental review and not a true waiver. Under state regulations, a waiver is available only for one-, two-, and three-family homes, ironically facilitating exurban sprawl rather than more environmentally benign urban density.[28]

Last year, I suggested that the upcoming state legislative package should entirely exempt new housing in NYC from environmental review.[29] That did not happen; but to achieve the moonshot goal, it needs to happen.

Another important change, which would require amending the city charter, is to combine the community board, borough board, and borough president ULURP review in a 60-day period. That would shave a month off the process, while affording the public ample opportunity to voice their views, in person or electronically.[30] The current ULURP schedule assumes that the borough president and the other community board chairs—sitting as the borough board when an application affects more than one community district—need to wait for each community board recommendation to arrive in the U.S. postal mail before they can give it careful consideration. But of course, all the officials involved are in constant electronic communication with one another about pending applications. The process should be shortened by a city charter amendment[31] to recognize this.

I also suggested, in another 2023 brief evaluating the CHO proposals, that the city needs to acknowledge that the MIH program does not work economically for private applicants without public subsidies, provided either through the front door with low-income housing tax credits, tax- exempt bonds, and capital budget expenditures, or through the back door via tax breaks.[32] The Adams administration’s current policy of continuing to impose MIH mandates in rezonings, even though the city is unable to close financing gaps, is a political sop to the city council, in many cases. However, it is a disservice to the public, which is promised affordable housing that will never materialize, and to the property owners who, seeking a viable development option, must wait in vain for public subsidies.

For the city to meet the moonshot goal, affordable housing policies must be put on an economically sound basis. Since the recently enacted 485-x tax exemption is designed to work well with the currently proposed Universal Affordability Preference (UAP) and remains in effect for 10 years, the city should allow private applicants to utilize UAP, if enacted, and avoid the constraints of MIH in requests for zoning map changes.[33]

The 2021 report of the New York City Advisory Commission on Property Tax Reform documented that the effective tax rate on large rental buildings (11+ units) was about double those of 1–3-family homes, small rentals of 4–10 units, cooperatives, and condominiums.[34] That creates a financial incentive for private real-estate developers to market new buildings as condominiums. However, condo buyers need to make down payments and qualify for mortgages. Since fewer households can do this, relative to those who qualify to rent a new apartment, a tax system that favors new condos and disadvantages rental housing results in less housing built overall.

To induce private, unsubsidized real-estate developers to build new rental housing, the state legislature enacts special tax breaks.[35] These are costly and inefficient because the legislature, under pressure from affordable housing advocates and construction labor unions, has added requirements to include below-market units and pay “prevailing” (e.g., union-scale) construction wages. These requirements must be offset by larger amounts of forgone taxes. Even so, the tax incentives might not fully offset the underlying disincentives for rental housing that are built in to the property-tax system. Moreover, the tax incentives periodically expire—in recent instances, about two years before new incentives are enacted—creating a boom/bust political cycle for new housing that also constrains housing construction.[36]

The unequal treatment of rental and owner housing could be eliminated by a change in state law applying the same effective tax rate to both. The effective tax burden on large rental buildings would be lower, and the burden on owner housing and small rentals would be higher. That is considered politically impossible because numerous homeowners and owners of small rental properties, many of which are owner-occupied, would be directly affected by such a change and would vote out the responsible legislators. Landlords of large rental buildings, on the other hand, are few and have little political clout in the legislature, as evidenced by the draconian rent- stabilization amendments of 2019 and the 2024 enactment of loose rent controls on previously uncontrolled units under the guise of “good cause eviction,” which will be discussed at greater length in the next section.

The most likely avenue for change is through a lawsuit, Tax Equity Now NY LLC v. City of New York, which was recently reinstated by the state’s highest court after an earlier dismissal.[37] A settlement that reduced the disparity between owner and rental housing, and thus large new rental buildings’ dependence on special tax breaks, would move the city closer to its moonshot goal by allowing new rental apartments to be constructed in a broader range of neighborhoods without public subsidy.

Good Cause Eviction

A large percentage of rental housing units in NYC are subject to price controls through the state-administered rent-stabilization system and the recently enacted “good cause eviction” law. Rent controls are bad policy generally, since tenant protection is bought at the price of chronic housing shortages and the shift of renting activity to under-the-table black markets.[38] However, rent controls, if properly designed to exclude new construction units, can be compatible with high levels of private investment in new housing. Such was the case in NYC in the 1950s and early 1960s, when wartime rent controls were continued for older units, but new units were exempt.

To achieve its moonshot housing production goal, NYC needs to attract private developers, who, in turn, need to obtain construction loans and, for new rental housing, commercial mortgages from financial institutions. Financial institutions often require developers to invest a portion of the total development cost as equity, on which the developer expects an investment return. Regardless of the amount of equity investment required, developers also invest time and effort on new construction projects and expect to be compensated appropriately.

Whether a proposed housing project is financially feasible for developers and lenders depends on whether they can earn their expected rates of return, commensurate with the risk of project failure and default. Perhaps the biggest risk to investors in new apartment buildings comes from the economic cycle, over which they have little control. Housing demand plunges in recessions, as fewer households are looking to move. A housing overhang can develop, in which vacancies rise and rent concessions are necessary.

New York City’s history of strict rent regulations adds another risk: that new buildings’ income will be impaired by rent controls, imperiling loan repayments and reducing investment returns. To avoid this issue, rent stabilization applies to buildings that existed before 1974. Rental units in newer buildings are exempt. However, units in buildings that accepted property-tax breaks through the 421-a program, which expired in 2022, are sometimes also subject to rent-stabilization restrictions, which expire in the long term.[39] The new 485-x property-tax exemption program subjects only “affordable” units to rent stabilization, but it does so permanently.[40]

All these provisions are designed so as not to deter developers and lenders from investing in new privately financed housing. However, the New York legislature is never content to let a unit escape its rent-regulatory clutches. In the 2024 legislative session, leaders of the Democratic supermajorities agitated for “good cause eviction,” which would effectively entail strict statewide rent control on all heretofore unregulated units. The legislature enacted a “compromise” form of good cause eviction, which instituted a loose form of rent control that applied by statute only in NYC—and then, only to a subset of new units that were previously uncontrolled.[41] New construction was exempt for 30 years but only for buildings completed in 2009 or later. That means that, for some older buildings that were completed after 1974 but took 421-a benefits, which have since expired, the legislature broke the promise of deregulation after the end of a specified period.

What happens in the future depends on the behavior of the Democratic legislative majorities. If they continue to demand stricter “good cause” rent controls and apply them to more currently unregulated units, the regulatory risks to investment returns in new rental buildings will be highlighted. In that case, lenders will seek a higher ratio of rental income to debt service, and developers will seek higher rates of return on equity.

A more pro-housing policy would be for legislative leaders to treat “good cause” as a closed issue, with no new category of rental units having rent controls imposed. Even better,“good cause” should be allowed to expire in 2034, as the current statute specifies, and its continuation or expansion not made a condition of property-tax reform or, failing that, a future renewal of 485-x. That would restore the promise of future deregulation that the legislature originally made to 421-a applicants. There are no data to suggest that unregulated tenants, who are generally higher-income, were suffering from unfair rent hikes and needed the protection of “good cause” rent caps. Rather, it was always about legislators looking to increase the number of voters who are grateful for having their rents capped. The housing-supply implications were ignored.

Legislative leaders should signal to investors and lenders that the market, not political criteria, will govern new housing investment. Over time, in this different world, the unregulated rental stock would expand faster than if more and stricter “good cause” controls remain actively on the political agenda. A larger, better-functioning deregulated market means that the perpetuation and expansion of rent controls will appeal to fewer voters. That mutually reinforcing dynamic is needed if NYC is to achieve its moonshot housing production goal.

Demolition for Redevelopment

A second issue, particularly important if Manhattan is to achieve its share of the moonshot goal, is loosening controls on the demolition of rent-stabilized buildings for new construction. The high- value areas of Manhattan are filled with 19th- or early-20th-century walkup tenements that provide low-quality housing and are—or should be, given their central location—zoned for much higher densities (Figure 5). Under current law, owners may evict rent-stabilized tenants to demolish, but only with the approval of the state Office of Rent Administration.[42] This approval is discretionary, leaving the terms of an eviction uncertain and subject to the vagaries of political bargaining. A change to state law granting a right to evict tenants for demolition under specified terms, even if these involved substantial payouts to tenants, could facilitate redevelopment by giving property owners certainty.

Scaffold Law and Tower Cranes

In 2022, my former Manhattan Institute colleague Connor Harris wrote about two unique cost- boosting features of construction in NYC.[43] One, the state “Scaffold Law,”[44] creates unlimited liability for construction contractors when workers are injured by a fall or a falling object. Such liability exists even where the worker ignored safety rules. The Scaffold Law raises insurance costs and makes the insurance market much less competitive because the high chance of large payouts drives away potential competitors to the handful of companies that insure contractors. New York is the only state that imposes construction liability in this manner.

The second cost-booster that Harris identifies is NYC’s failure to make use of stationary tower cranes, common in large cities throughout the world.[45] Harris attributes this to NYC’s unusually onerous permitting and licensing procedures. Consequently, much NYC construction uses alternatives that are less efficient and less safe, including hand transport of construction materials, less stable mobile cranes that often necessitate street closures, and lower-capacity “spider” cranes.

Harris notes that the Scaffold Law and NYC’s crane regulations persist because they serve special interests—namely, trial lawyers and the crane operators’ union. Nonetheless, New York State and City need to heed his sensible reform recommendations to achieve their housing construction goals. He suggests that the Scaffold Law be amended to provide protection for contractors that comply with best-practice safety requirements. Additionally, he suggests focusing any special tower- crane permitting and licensing requirements on construction projects in NYC’s densest areas, with more flexible rules mirroring national practice in the large areas of the city where construction types resemble those found throughout the United States.

Point Access Blocks

Another important construction cost-reducing change is to increase code flexibility for constructing “point access blocks”—residential buildings where apartment entrances are arranged around a central core. By reducing the square footage of common areas, point access blocks reduce costs and provide design flexibility on constrained urban building sites.

Walkup point access blocks are widely found in older NYC developments, including model low- income housing such as the New York City Housing Authority’s Harlem River Houses (Figure 6). Each stair core serves a small number of apartments. Evolving code requirements made newer versions of such housing difficult or impossible to build.

One step toward encouraging construction of point access blocks is the expansion of NYC’s provisions for residential buildings with a single egress stair, currently limited to six stories and a building footprint of 2,000 square feet. The Center for Building in North America, led by Stephen Smith, has been prominent in advocating for single-stair construction for small apartment buildings, which is common in Europe. Smith argues that the typical North American requirement for two egress stairs in apartment buildings results not only in higher constriction costs but inefficient apartment layouts, as every apartment needs access to both stairs via a long central corridor.[46] A bill introduced in the New York City Council in 2022 would have increased the permitted footprint of a single-stair building to 4,000 square feet and up to six stories in height.[47] That bill has not advanced. More recently, in the April 2024 New York State budget deal, the state’s Executive Law was amended to require the state’s Fire Prevention and Building Code Council to study standards for egress in multiunit residential buildings up to six stories.[48]

Smith also points out that North American building codes require larger elevators than are typical elsewhere internationally for small buildings. These elevators must accommodate a seven-foot stretcher used by medical emergency personnel and permit a wheelchair to turn around. In much of the rest of the world, small buildings can have an elevator that accommodates a wheelchair and a person standing behind it but does not permit a turn or an extended stretcher.[49] NYC also currently requires a refuse-disposal room on each floor for most new apartment buildings.[50] However, the current CHO proposed zoning amendment would remove this requirement.[51]

Duplicated stairs, large elevators, and refuse-disposal rooms increase the square footage of common areas, raising construction cost, squeezing living space on small sites, and forcing apartments into inefficient layouts. Code changes that address these inefficiencies can work in tandem with floor area increases to encourage construction of point-access-block apartment buildings up to six stories on relatively small sites. This is another necessary step to achieve the moonshot housing production goal.

Mass Timber

Mass timber refers to engineered wood products, consisting of bonded wood layers, that have recently come into use in New York City (Figure 7) and elsewhere in the United States.[52] As noted above, six-story NYC apartment buildings historically were constructed with noncombustible outer walls and wood joists and floors. In recent decades, in response to fire safety concerns, wood has been replaced in mid-rise residential construction by noncombustible concrete and steel structural components. However, the city’s building code has now been revised to permit contemporary wood products that meet standards for fire resistance.[53] Buildings must be sprinklered and are limited to 85 feet or seven stories in height.[54]

Mass-timber construction has several potential cost-saving advantages. Construction time can be saved using prefabricated panels. Less labor is required, and foundations can be designed for lighter loads. In addition, construction is potentially less carbon-intensive, and the wood sequesters carbon dioxide.[55]

NYC’s current building code is based on earlier updates to the International Building Code (IBC), which the city usually adopts with a time lag. The 2021 IBC update, which NYC has not yet adopted, has provisions for use of mass timber in residential construction up to 18 stories.[56] Should these new provisions prove acceptable in NYC, additional construction cost savings may be realized, further enabling progress toward the moonshot housing production goal.

Mayor Eric Adams’s moonshot goal of constructing 500,000 units in a decade will not be achieved without far-reaching changes to the many laws and regulations that impede housing construction:

• Residential zoning needs to achieve the level of flexibility of 1960, when apartment buildings were allowed almost everywhere and “neighborhood character” was rarely the basis for permitted zoned densities.
• Zoning needs to be much easier to change in areas where it no longer makes sense. Private property owners must be able to request and receive, at low cost, a zoning change that results in economically feasible development rules.
• The tax system must not penalize construction of large rental apartment buildings, even though these are the preferred housing option for a large share of the population, particularly those who cannot afford housing-purchase down payments or qualify for a mortgage.
• The rent-regulation system must be reformed at least enough to allow developers of new buildings to feel assured that the government will not interfere in the rental market and deprive them of the investment returns that they seek. Site assemblage to redevelop antiquated rent-regulated buildings must be possible on an as-of-right basis, with fixed payouts to tenants.
• Additional reforms are also needed, including caps on contractors’ liability in accidents, rational crane-operating rules, removal of impediments to the construction of mid- rise point access blocks, and extension of mass-timber construction to larger buildings.

Many of these reforms represent daunting political hurdles, and change won’t happen quickly. An optimistic scenario is that NYC will see incremental reforms, and housing construction will creep up. Perhaps the next decade will see not 500,000 but 300,000 new units. That would be a significant improvement over the last decade but not enough to end the housing supply crisis. New Yorkers who want to see that happen need to organize for the hard political battles that will be necessary to achieve the moonshot goal.

Please see Endnotes in PDF

Photo: Lelia Valduga / Moment Open via Getty Images