Has everyone forgotten how percentages work? Whenever “affordable” buildings offer rents at 130%, calling it affordable is a deception. 130% indicates that 80% of the area cannot afford the rent. And there are usually no more than a third of the apartments priced like that, while the rest of them are plan ol’ unaffordable. These buildings recieve all kind of incentives too.
We need new standards for affordable apartments. 100% AMI should be the maximum price allowed. Also, buildings should be forced to set lower rents for least half the units. Its absurd to call a building affordable if a majoriry of the building is in fact unaffordable. Don’t we have enough unaffordable apartments by now? Are NYC apartments becoming a giant investor commodity? The staff at your condos and others who earn less than 6 figures have to live somewhere.
Everything you just mentioned causes housing to be more unaffordable, not less. The thing that needs to happen is more housing built, that lowers rent for everyone. Quantity. This is simple supply-and-demand economics. What you are talking about reduces the supply without reducing the demand.
I feel bad for people that advocate against their own best interest. Austin and other cities that have been building a ton of housing in general, not just affordable units, are seeing rent decreases in their markets.
One or two months free. Reduced or no security deposit. And an ample supply of housing to choose from regardless of the income levels.
And then there is the NYC affordable housing advocate advocating for making housing less affordable.
I am not advocating to stop building apartment buildings. I am advocating we stop calling expensive apartments affordable. 130% is simply unaffordable for most people. Its nuts to determine AMI then add 30% to it. The result is preventing 80% of the area residents from affording these places.
In the not too distant past it was true that the more you build the more places that are available, keeping rents in check. In Brooklyn I have seen new buildings go up with higher rents than the previous buildings on the site. Then the landlords of the adjacent places see the higher rents in the new building then raise their asking price without improving a thing.
Why? What happened? People used to buy apartments to live in. Now people across the globe buy them as investments then they never occupy them. How many permanently empty units are in NYC right now? Its probably a shocking number especially when there is a scarcity of regular apartments. Can’t we build non-luxury apt buildings anymore? This hybrid of unaffordable apts and almost affordable apts in a building does not help the housing crisis. How much taxpayer money goes towards subsidizing these falsely affordable buildings?
Literally everything you mentioned is solved by building more, and it’s exacerbated by building less and/or adding restrictions and bureaucracy to development. You are actively trying to convince other people to help you shoot your own feet.
Building more dilutes any investment value and solves that problem as well.
It also doesn’t matter what you call affordable or not, it only matters what the actual prices are, not the verbiage, and the way to keep the prices in check is to build more. Or reduce population, which is never a recommended option as it hurts in many other ways. Verbiage only matters if you’re trying to add bureaucracy, as deception is often a key part of bureaucracy. Otherwise, the numbers themselves are the only thing that matters.