'Rent Burdened' New Yorkers

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now WNYC housing reporter David Brand who's reporting on a new study that found a third of New Yorkers pay at least half their monthly income on rent, and also on Mayor Adams newly announced policy of restricting shelter stays to 60 days for family of asylum seekers who have come to the city recently. The limit was originally just for single adults, now families with children. David, always good to have you on. Welcome back to the show.

David Brand: Thanks a lot, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Can you tell us about the new stats on how much people pay in rent? What's new there?

David Brand: Well, they're pretty striking and pretty depressing. I don't know if that's new, but it's just the latest reminder that tenants in New York City are having a hard time. That's hundreds of thousands, millions of tenants in New York City. You mentioned it. Half of all renters, more than half of all renters in New York City are paying at least 30% of their income toward rent. Federal guidelines recommend that people pay no more than 30%. Most people in New York City are paying that and much more. A third of New York City tenants are paying half their income on rent. That's 400,000, 500,000 households. You look at the numbers, it sounds crazy to be paying that much toward rent, but when you break it down, it's actually not even that much relative to other apartments, I guess, in New York City.

If you're making $40,000 a year, you're paying $20,000 rent, it's only about $1,700 a month. That's low-income people. Middle-income people making $100,000 a year, comes to about $4,200 a month. For a family maybe in a two-bedroom, a three-bedroom, that might be considered not so high in this weird dynamic we have. It really is affecting a lot of people.

Brian Lehrer: How have these numbers changed over time?

David Brand: Well, it's been since 2005 that the majority of New York City renters are paying more than that 30% threshold. Every three years the city's housing agency, Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and the US Census Bureau conduct this big survey, the housing and vacancy survey, and they talk to tenants, they try to determine how many vacant units there are, what percentage of the city's housing stock is empty, how much tenants are paying, how many people are rent-stabilized, and so they get a lot of data. Part of that data is finding out this rent burden.

It's been since 2005, that we've had this problem. It seems to be getting worse. It's at 55% of tenants now, according to the survey, are paying more than 30% of their income. It's especially bad for the poorest New Yorkers. The Community Service Society, non-profit group, looked at the microdata from this survey where it's really apartment by apartment level data, they found that almost every single household earning the federal poverty line or lower in New York is paying at least half their income on rent. That's really not sustainable for most people.

Brian Lehrer: What's contributing to this at this time?

David Brand: Well, housing prices are going up. Rents are at record highs. Median rents in New York City have been at record highs for past couple of years. There's a very limited supply in New York City, especially supply at that lower end of the market. Incomes are relatively stagnant over the past few decades. People are making less or making the same and paying a lot more. There's really not that much new housing coming online.

Brian Lehrer: Didn't a lot of people with relatively high incomes, the relatively affluent New York population, in some meaningful numbers leave the city during the pandemic, which you might think would put downward pressure on rents because of supply and demand?

David Brand: Well, rents did go down during the pandemic, especially for middle and higher-income New Yorkers who come into Manhattan. You could get COVID deals. I actually was visiting someone's apartment for a story the other day, and they got a deal in Soho for a one-bedroom where they're paying $2,600 a month. After their lease expired, the landlord raised the rent to $6,000 a month because demand is back, people will pay that and so they had to move. They were struggling to find a place that was a comparable price range. That did happen, but then as people came back to the city, prices went back up and up higher than ever.

Brian Lehrer: With our housing reporter David Brand on a couple of stories. We've been talking so far about this new study that found a third of New Yorkers pay at least half their monthly income on rent. We will get into Mayor Adams's newly announced policy of restricting shelter stays to 60 days, even for families with kids, among the asylum seekers who have come to the city recently.

Has the Adams administration reacted to this study? Another story that I see in the news, as reported by the news organization The City, is that New York City created only 11,000 units of new housing this year. Each mayor in recent decades comes in with a goal of hundreds of thousands new or preserved as they call it. How do you see that 11,000 number, and is the Adams administration responding to this continuing pressure on especially poor New Yorkers with respect to rent?

David Brand: The Adams administration says this is a main focus of their work to try to build more housing across the board with some of that reserved or set aside for the lowest-income New Yorkers. He's unveiled a couple of housing plans. Most recently a pretty comprehensive set of proposals to lift restrictions on new housing development through changes to the city's zoning codes that would spur new development in lower-density communities like one, two-family, three-family homes to add a few extra units to different lots. Then also in the busiest, most dense parts of New York City like Manhattan converting offices to apartments or allowing for larger construction. That's one of the strategies.

He talked about setting aside more units for people leaving homeless shelters. They definitely understand this is a huge problem. I think, everyone in the city, everyone in the state realizes it's a huge problem, but there's a dispute over how the best way to solve it, I guess, is. That has led to some inaction in Albany. The city is doing what it can to try to change things and spur development here.

You mentioned that report on the 11,000 units. That's depressing figure because we do need more housing development in New York City. I think there's some debate over what the cause of that is. That was a report from the Building's Congress saying that the reason we have so little new construction is because the tax abatement program known as 421a expired, and so there's less incentive to build because costs are so high. Developers say, "Well, we need a break on something." What the state can control is the cost of property taxes. If you limit our property tax burden, that makes it more feasible to build.

I talked to some people who say, "Yes, that's true. In the future, that could affect new development, but right now, the projects that are finishing right now already qualified for 421a." People are saying this is probably right now more to do with delays during COVID because it takes two to three years for a project to be completed. If there was a delay two or three years ago right at the beginning or the heart of the COVID pandemic, then we're going to see that impact now. They're hopeful that things will pick up in the next year or two, but then they also warn there could be a real cliff where the number of completions does stop or really, really limit without some type of tax abatement program.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, as if everything we've been discussing so far isn't enough pressure on New Yorkers with respect to affordable housing, I saw that you reported in an article earlier this month on Gothamist, headlined US Supreme Court rejects challenge to New York's rent stabilization laws, but two cases linger. The Supreme Court is considering ending rent stabilization in New York?

David Brand: Well, there are three cases that have gone through the federal appeals process at lower courts and now the plaintiffs are trying to get the Supreme Court to take them up. One was brought by different landlord groups like the Rent Stabilization Association of New York, which actually opposes rent stabilization despite the name. They were trying to say that rent stabilization rules are unfair to property owners, that it amounts to an illegal takings where the government is dictating what people can do with their property and limits profits. That specific case, the Supreme Court decided not to take. That's rent stabilization laws, as far as that lawsuit goes, are safe. There's two others that are related but have been filed by individual property owners in New York City and just outside the city, saying that the way the rules are applied to them limits their ability to determine what they do with the property and how much money they make from their property. The Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on those. They're similar. I think it's still unclear what's going to happen, but it's something to keep an eye out in the coming weeks.

Brian Lehrer: As if there weren't already enough reasons to watch the Supreme Court this term, we have that. Finally, I want to ask you about Mayor Adams' announcement about asylum seeker families who need shelter, only being eligible for the city's right-to-shelter policy for 60 days because of not enough space, even now for families with kids. It used to just be for single adults who've come here recently. Here's the mayor defending the policy yesterday.

Mayor Adams: Since the humanitarian crisis began 18 months ago, not one family and child has slept on the street. Not one. I want to be very clear on that. We have seen that the 60-day notices with intensive case work support, they're working. Many people are deciding to find their own independent living arrangement or their stand with family members or move into other locales where they can stabilize their lives. We're going to continue to use this, the successful model, to help those transition out of the shelter system.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Adams, yesterday. David, let me ask you since he's saying that so far, no families with children have had to sleep on the street, assuming that's the case, how many families would this new ruling affect or this new policy affect, say, by the start of the new year and the dead of winter?

David Brand: This is going to affect families staying in the migrant-specific facilities. I think there's about 15,000 parents and children staying in those facilities. I think what's really important to remember and something that my colleagues, Liz Kim and Karen Yee, have done a great job reporting on, these aren't all expense-paid resorts in New York City. These are homeless shelters. If people have other places to go, they're going to go to those places. A 60-day limit is really going to have the effect of just disrupting people's lives, making it way more chaotic for families with children and children who are in schools.

If you're going to one school, you have to leave your shelter after two months, go re-apply for shelter, get placed in a brand-new facility. Who knows where that's going to be and if you're going to be able to continue at your current school, or if you're going to have to start all over again? That's going to be really challenging for families. It's also going to be really weird for schools to try to maintain some consistency. He's saying people haven't stayed on the streets, so we'll see what happens when people are forced to leave their shelters and then go re-apply and get re-assigned somewhere else.

The city does something like this already for homeless families applying for family shelter at the intake center in the Bronx. After 10 days, they investigate whether you have another place to stay. If you don't, they say, "I'm sorry, you can't stay in shelter," so you have to reapply. Then families often have to reapply several times. Kind of has the impact of discouraging people. It's like, "All right, this is such a nightmare. I have to go reapply for shelter constantly. I keep getting denied. I keep having to travel with my entire family." They give up. People who criticize this proposal, like attorneys from the legal aid, like immigrants rights advocates, say that might be the effect. People are just so discouraged that they just stop. That's one way to limit the shelter population, I guess.

Brian Lehrer: Here's more of the Mayor yesterday, this time saying, "If not this policy, then what?"

Mayor Adams: I'm really calling on legal aid and others, come up with some tangible ideas, come up with some tangible ideas. Criticism is not an idea. Some tangible ideas and people keep stating build more housing. Yes, that's what we are about, and we will continue to say that. We want them to join us this year and go into Albany and finally get some form of housing plan out of Albany. We want them to be part of the solutions to the problem. Even if you say build more housing, that's going to take years. We have a problem right now, and it is easy to be on the sidelines and say, "Well, it shouldn't be done, but the city is out of room."

Brian Lehrer: How are the legal aid society, we mentioned there by name or other advocates who object to this 60-day limit, responding to that? Do they have alternatives that house people in the short term?

David Brand: They're calling on the city and state to step up efforts to move people to other municipalities. That's something that's been in the works but has really been slow.

Brian Lehrer: Adam Swartz himself, right?

David Brand: Yes. That's been slow to actually happen. There's been very few people, maybe single-digit families have been resettled. That's one option. Some advocates have proposed expanding access to housing vouchers. It's a controversial idea because there's so many people with vouchers right now who are looking for housing, and so adding more could strain that. They're also just saying, "Look, this is expensive, but we need to find places to put people, whether that's getting more hotels online just because the city is going to end up paying in some way anyway, so families are on the street." If people are using hospitals or going to jail because they have no place to stay, they're going to end up paying for this anyway, so have to bite the bullet.

Brian Lehrer: WNYC housing reporter David Brand, thank you very much.

David Brand: Thanks a lot, Brian.

 

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