Today Mayor de Blasio is expected to unveil his affordable housing plan, a key part of his agenda.
The centerpiece of today’s announcement will be his plan to make good on his campaign promise to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing. Talking to PBS’ Charlie Rose last week, de Blasio said the idea is to demand more affordable units from the real-estate industry in return for making it easier to build.
In itself, this is not unreasonable. De Blasio is right that high rent in New York City squeezes many residents. He’s right too about needing more units.
And there’s even a good case to be made for a trade-off he appears willing to accept: higher density and taller buildings coupled with more affordable units.
We look forward to the details.
Our hope, however, is that the mayor will recognize that if we’re going to rely on government for affordable housing, we’ll never get what we need. Because the primary driver of Gotham’s high housing costs is the law of supply and demand.
It’s basic economics: If demand outstrips supply, prices will rise. That’s precisely what we have in New York, thanks largely to city policies that artificially limit supply. That’s true whether it’s the rent-control/rent-stabilization regime that effectively removes half the rentals from the market, or regulations that make it more costly than it need be to build and expand.
There are many paths to addressing this challenge. One is the build-higher model the mayor likes. Another is the rezoning his predecessor pushed, which has freed up much space for residential redevelopment.
Another would be to relax regulations so that, say, people in the outer boroughs might convert unused basements into low-priced apartments.
The problem of high rents is real, and it threatens not just the poor but the middle class. We just hope the mayor recognize that addressing this problem requires more than the city getting involved: It also requires government getting out of the way.