It’s getting harder and harder to find an affordable place to live in New York City, but no one actually knows how many low-cost apartments are being held off the market — a practice known as “warehousing” that is fueling intense backlash from tenant groups and policymakers.
Estimates based on city and state data range from nearly 90,000 vacant apartments to fewer than 40,000, but at a Council hearing on Tuesday, the city’s affordable housing agency submitted a new metric: 2,500.
Department of Housing Preservation and Development Assistant Commissioner Lucy Joffe told members of the City Council that the agency counted just 2,477 rent-stabilized units “that had been vacant and off-the-market for 12 months or more, were in need of repairs, and had a low legal rent” of less than $1,000.
She said concerns over the deliberate warehousing of apartments by landlords who say it’s not profitable, or simply economically feasible, to rehab and rent them out are overblown and “distracting” from a broader housing shortage.
“We do not have a lot of low-cost vacant units,” Joffe said. “The dearth of units available for rent on any given day in our city is one of the main problems in our housing market. This is why it is incredibly difficult, especially for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers, to find a new home they can afford if they have to move.”
But tenant groups, landlords and councilmembers all pushed back on HPD’s accounting.
Several councilmembers accused the agency itself of downplaying the number of units held off the market and only focusing on the dwindling number of regulated apartments with rents below $1,000 a month.
“We have no idea how many vacant apartments we have in New York City and we’re just guessing,” said Brooklyn Councilmember Lincoln Restler.
Restler is sponsoring a bill that would force landlords of both market-rate and rent-stabilized apartments to provide detailed information about all empty units, along with vacant…
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