NYC is adding more affordable apartments than ever. But who are they meant for?

Published Mar 25, 2024 at 6:31 a.m. ET

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Published Mar 25, 2024 at 6:31 a.m. ET

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If you earn just over $80,000 a year in New York City and are looking to apply for the city's affordable housing lottery, your options are slim.

Since the start of 2022, new affordable housing development is targeting divergent ends of the income spectrum, according to a Gothamist analysis of city housing data. The number of apartments reserved for the poorest residents is about on par with the number built for people earning six-figure salaries — up to $130,000 a year for a single person or $165,000 a year for a family of three, the data shows.

But apartments for people earning what the city considers “moderate income” make up just 5% of the 24,000 newly added subsidized apartments, and account for the smallest slice of the newly built affordable housing stock. Some data suggests that middle-income New Yorkers are fleeing the five boroughs in droves because housing is too expensive and hard to find — just one manifestation of a growing affordability crisis.

Gothamist’s analysis of affordable housing development comes as state lawmakers in Albany are negotiating a new tax break meant to fuel development, including some units with rents capped based on household income. A previous version of the tax break faced criticism for creating too many purportedly "affordable" apartments that priced out the vast majority of low- and middle-income New Yorkers and expired without renewal.

The city's affordable housing lottery lists newly added apartments that receive local subsidies or state tax breaks. To qualify, prospective tenants have to prove they meet certain income thresholds.

“Affordable housing” refers to government-subsidized apartments with rents capped at around 30% of qualifying tenants’ incomes. Residents win the opportunity to rent the apartments through a lottery, and prices vary. The apartments are typically located in buildings that receive a property tax break or are constructed after a city-approved zoning change allowing for larger development. The city's housing department divides affordable apartments into five tiers based on tenant income.

While just a sliver of the new affordable housing is geared toward people earning about the median amount of money for the region, the city is increasing the number of units for New Yorkers earning less than $50,000 a year, who have the fewest housing options. The increase is earning praise from low-income housing experts.

“A lot of us wanted to see more focus on the affordability levels that the private market will never build on its own, the units that will get people out of homeless shelters, so that's exciting to see,” said Sam Stein, a policy analyst at the nonprofit Community Service Society who studies city housing production.

Still, Stein and others criticize the volume of new affordable housing development underway for people earning well above the local median income.

Nearly 8,200 new homes are reserved for renters at the highest income level in the city’s affordable housing lottery: single adults making up to $130,000 a year and families of three earning around $165,000 a year.

The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development said the apartments are located in buildings receiving a tax break known as 421-a, which traded the abatement for some affordable housing. Developers rushed to get their projects started before the tax credit program expired in 2022, and state lawmakers declined to renew it, fueling the high concentration of “affordable” units where monthly rents can exceed $4,000.

A 2022 report by NYU’s Furman Center found most “affordable” units created with the 421-a tax break were priced at that highest income level.

All told, the city has added or financed close to 24,000 new income-restricted apartments since the start of Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure in January 2022. Most of them are studios or one-bedrooms and few are located in low-density sections of the city, Gothamist previously reported. Adams has touted the figure as a record high.

“In the midst of a historic housing crisis, it is our goal to build as much housing as possible while using every tool at our disposal to create homes for the lowest income and most vulnerable New Yorkers,” HPD spokesperson Ilana Maier said.

She said the city added more new supportive housing apartments and units specifically reserved for formerly homeless New Yorkers than ever before last year.

The city subsidized more than 8,000 units — about a third of the total — for New Yorkers earning less than $50,000 a year.

Another 6,262 units are reserved for people considered “low-income” because they earn no more than 80% of the area median income, or about $79,000 a year for an individual.

Just about 1,300 units are being added for people earning between $80,000 a year and $119,000 a year — a range straddling the region’s median income of $98,900 a year as defined by the federal government.

Future development likely depends on legislation in Albany, where state lawmakers are negotiating the contours of various housing proposals, including a replacement for the 421-a program. The outcome of a housing deal could have a big impact on people like Liat Kaplan, who recently scored an affordable apartment through the city’s lottery.

Kaplan, a 28-year-old nonprofit worker, moved into a one-bedroom unit in a brand new building at the Greenpoint Landing complex last week after applying for about two dozen other lotteries over the past three years. She said she makes around $80,000 a year, equal to about 80% of the area median income, and is now paying $1,828 a month on rent.

It’s a decent income, but doesn’t go so far in New York City.

Kaplan said she never would have landed a place like her new apartment without the housing lottery. For one thing, the floors are level, and the walls and windowsills aren’t coated with layers of thick whitewash paint nicknamed the “landlord special.”

“I had just resigned myself to the super-crooked, fourth-floor walkup where the landlord didn't ever fix anything because that was as good as it was going to get for me at that point,” Kaplan said.

The city’s most recent housing survey shows that even people who make decent salaries are finding it hard to get an apartment they can afford. Less than 1% of apartments priced below $2,400 a month were vacant and available for rent during last year’s survey period. Over half of all New Yorkers are rent-burdened, meaning that they spend at least 30% of their income on rent.

The situation is even worse for the lowest-income New Yorkers, for whom the affordable housing lottery can be transformative.

Karim Walker was living in a shelter following an eviction six years ago. But he won a housing lottery in 2020 and moved into a top-floor apartment in a seven-story building overlooking the L train tracks and rooftops of Central Brooklyn.

Karim Walker won a unit through the affordable housing lottery in 2020.

Walker said he applied for at least 50 places before getting picked for the one-bedroom in Van Sinderen Plaza on the border of Brownsville and East New York.

Walker, who works for the homeless rights-focused Safety Net Project, said the selection changed his life.

“I don't know if there's a word in the English language [for] how relieved and how excited I was to get picked,” he said. “The day I moved in, I just didn't want to go out. I didn't want to go anywhere. I just wanted to stay in.”

But the demand for those apartments is only growing.

Eight in 10 residents earning incomes below the federal poverty line pay at least half their income on rent, according to city data. And lotteries for the lowest-cost apartments consistently attract tens of thousands of applicants.

During an appearance on WNYC’s "Brian Lehrer Show" in January, Adams discussed an affordable housing lottery for a new building in Inwood that drew 80,000 applications for 174 units — or about 460 applications per apartment.

“What does that say?” Adams said. “It is saying that we don't have enough stock.”

Brooklyn security guard Wykeisha Mitchell knows this firsthand.

Mitchell was staying in homeless shelters before renting a room in a YWCA near the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. She said she’s applied for at least 80 housing lotteries since 2015 and has alerts set up on her phone to tell her when a new one opens.

“I apply for them like clockwork,” Mitchell said. “Every time it comes up on my phone and my income meets the apartment I apply for it.”

She added that she earns about $40,000 a year, meaning she would have to spend no more than $1,000 a month on an apartment for it to be considered “affordable.” Mitchell said that’s basically impossible.

“I don’t want to live in a basement,” she said. “I don’t want to be struggling. I want to pay my rent and do something I want to do. That’s why I’m trying so hard to get a lottery building.”

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David is a reporter covering housing for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email dbrand@nypublicradio.org or Signal 908-310-3960.

Jaclyn writes data-driven health and science stories for WNYC/Gothamist. She also runs Gothamist's COVID data dashboards. She is an alumna of the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Her work has appeared in NBC News, Spectrum, the Daily Beast, and other outlets. Got a tip? Email jjeffrey-wilensky@nypublicradio.org or Signal 516-366-4382.

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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