NYC Doesn't Have Enough Apartments For Booming Population: Report

NEW YORK, NY — Thousands of new apartments have been built in New York City since the turn of the century but they're not enough to house the city's booming population, a new study published Thursday says.

The city has added people at a faster rate than homes since 2000 and rents have grown faster than incomes, leading to an affordability crisis in the housing market, according to the report by New York University's Furman Center.

The analysis of data from 2000 to 2016 argues the city doesn't have the housing stock it needs to serve its changing and growing populace — especially those who struggle to make ends meet.

"The increasing housing stock has not been able to adequately moderate the pressure on rents caused by increased demand, and the stock as a whole has become less affordable, especially for the 70% of New Yorkers with low or moderate incomes," Vicki Been, the Furman Center's faculty director, said in a statement.

The city had nearly 3.5 million housing units in 2016, about 8 percent more than in 2000, the report says, but the adult population grew at an even faster rate of about 11 percent. Other indicators of demand for housing also grew in that time: The number of jobs increased 16.5 percent and the share of households comprising only adults increased about 5 percentage points to 70.9 percent, the report says.

That demand is manifested in a low vacancy rate, increased overcrowding and a rents rising faster than incomes, the report says. The median rent rose more than eight times as fast as the median renter's income from 2000 to 2016, increasing by 31.2 percent, or about $300 a month, as income increased just 3.6 percent, or about $145 a month.

Despite Mayor Bill de Blasio's efforts to build and preserve affordable housing, the share of homes poor and middle-income New Yorkers can afford has shrunk since 2000, the report says.

A family making 80 percent of the area median income in 2016 — $65,250 for a family of three — could only afford about 40 percent of recently available listings, down nearly 24 percentage points from 2000.

And the newest homes are getting more expensive. In 2016, the median rent for a unit built in the past decade was $400 more than the median for the rest of the city's units, the report says. The difference in 2000 was just $50.

The report says the city needs to build more housing across the board, but there's an "acute" need for homes affordable to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers.

"Despite all the effort that has been made over the past few decades to subsidize the constructon or rehabilitation of housing to make it affordable to low- and moderate-income households ..., there is still a significant mismatch between the rents New Yorkers can afford to pay and the cost of units available for rent," the report says.

(Lead image: The Starrett City housing complex is seen in East New York, Brooklyn in May 2018. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)