Government

What Would It Take to Keep Rental Housing Affordable in NYC?

Thirty years of free property taxes for landlords might do it.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.Eduardo Munoz

More than 87 percent of the rental units in New York City are unsubsidized. Just shy of a million affordable rental apartments are unregulated, while a hair more than a million are rent-controlled. But government-subsidized public housing? Just 300,000 units of a total 2.2 million rental units in 2014.

The city is struggling mightily to maintain its affordable rental-housing stock. New York has a variety of tools to persuade landlords to keep rents affordable. However, the incentives for landlords to not make big rent hikes were designed in a different era, with a different housing market in mind, and they don’t do the trick any more.