More than 13,000 rent-stabilized apartments sat empty for the past two years amid a heated debate over “warehousing” low-cost units, according to a new review of state data.
Tenant organizations, landlord groups and policymakers have been trying to determine the exact number of empty rent-stabilized units in New York as the city contends with a dire housing shortage, surging homelessness and record-breaking rents.
The city’s Independent Budget Office reviewed state data and found that the number of empty rent-stabilized apartments decreased significantly from 2021 to 2022, following a pandemic-related exodus from Manhattan.
Landlords listed 42,275 rent-stabilized apartments as of April 1 of last year, with most of those apartments marked as “newly vacant,” the IBO said. The agency said 13,362 units sat empty for at least two consecutive years — up from 12,300 in 2021 — suggesting they were vacant for reasons other than the routine movement of tenants.
“There’s going to be vacant apartments but what we wanted to answer in this project is, are these part of natural turnover, or are these apartments that are sitting vacant over multiple years?” said IBO Assistant Director Sarah Stefanski, who analyzed the data.
Stefanski said the limits of the data tracked by the state makes it impossible to know how many apartments are being deliberately held offline, or “warehoused,” because landlords are not required to say exactly why a unit is empty. But she said looking at specific units marked vacant for consecutive years offers a clue.
The issue of empty and “warehoused” apartments is fueling intense debate, with policymakers proposing legislation that would force owners to bring apartments back on the market. City officials enacted a grant program for landlords with empty units in need of renovation.
Vacant apartment estimates based on city and state data ranging from nearly 90,000 empty units to fewer than 40,000 over the past two years.
Renters and…
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