Housing Starts: NY Less Cramped | NY Not as Dense as Used to Be | Tight Housing Markets Hurt Economy

New York University’s Furman Center I WSJ.com

1. New York Is Getting Less, Not More Cramped It may not feel like it to anyone who has taken the subway at rush-hour lately, but for most New Yorkers the city has become less crowded. The average resident of New York City lives in a less crowded neighborhood than a typical New Yorker in 1970 even though the city’s population has grown, according to a new report to be released by New York University’s Furman Center on Tuesday. The reason why most New Yorkers have more elbow room is because some of the densest neighborhoods, such as the south Bronx, Lower East Side and Harlem, saw steep population declines when New York lost nearly 1 million people at its nadir. Those communities have never fully recovered the people that they lost, according to the report which is named: The State of New York City’s Housing and Neighborhoods in 2014. [Wall Street Journal – 05/05/15]
2. Why New York Isn’t Really as Dense as It Used to Be In the 1970s, New York City was in fiscal hot water. Everyone was leaving—either for the suburbs or to a financially stable city. That’s obviously no longer the case, with New York being one of the most popular living destinations in the country. But while the city’s population has now far exceeded what it was in 1970, its median population density hasn’t rebounded to the same extent. In fact, the average New Yorker actually lived in a denser neighborhood in 1970 than she lives in now, according to a new report by the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. [Citylab – 05/06/15]
3. Here’s How Much New York and San Francisco’s Tight Housing Markets are Hurting the Economy Limited housing is keeping workers away from the cities where they could be most productive, and that’s costing the U.S. economy. Reducing land-use constraints in high-productivity New York, San Francisco and San Jose to the level of the median city would expand their labor forces, boosting U.S. gross domestic product by 9.5 percent, according to estimates from a new study by the University of California at Berkeley’s Enrico Moretti and the University of Chicago’s Chang-Tai Hsieh. ‘A limited number of American workers can have access to these very high-productivity cities,’ Moretti said in an interview. A more efficient distribution would be ‘a general benefit for the entire economy.’ [Bloomberg Business – 05/07/15]
4. Mayor de Blasio’s Plan Aims to Spur More Affordable Housing in New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is calling for an overhaul of housing programs and tax incentives to spur the construction of tens of thousands of apartments for poor New Yorkers, as well as teachers, firefighters and other workers, who increasingly find themselves priced out of a booming real estate market and rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. The proposals, which would require approval by the State Legislature, are central to the mayor’s promise to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing over 10 years. Mr. de Blasio’s plan would require developers throughout the city to set aside 25 to 30 percent of a project’s apartments for poor and working-class residents in return for city tax breaks, a substantial change from the existing tax abatement program, known as 421-a. [New York Times – 05/06/15]
5. Vanderbilt Rezoning Takes Giant Leap Forward In a display of synergy between government and real estate, the New York City Council’s zoning subcommittee, which is part of the land use committee, approved the creation of a special permit to increase the density of the buildings along the five-block Vanderbilt Corridor. ‘We are here today to say that East Midtown is back,’ said City Council Member Dan Garodnick at a press conference this morning on the steps of City Hall preceding the 7 to 0 vote. ‘For too long, this area has been stuck.’ Simultaneously, the subcommittee unanimously voted to allow SL Green Realty Corp. to proceed with its plans for the 63-story, 1.6 million-square-foot 1 Vanderbilt tower within the Corridor. [Commercial Observer – 05/05/15]
6. AP Newsbreak: NYC to Waive $30M Public Housing Payment Mayor Bill de Blasio is poised to announce that New York City will waive an annual $30 million payment it is owed from the city’s public housing authority, and the move is shedding light on the precarious future of the aging development that is home to more people than the city of New Orleans. De Blasio will announce the elimination of the payment, issued every year since 1949 as a “Payment in Lieu of Taxes,” as part of his executive budget presentation on Thursday, city officials told The Associated Press. That decision will save the New York City Housing Authority approximately $130 million through fiscal year 2019. [ABC News – 05/06/15]
7. City Planning Czar Wants to Tinker Around the Edges of Industrial Zones, Where Some Tech Tenants Find Refuge City Planning Commission Chairman Carl Weisbrod said there are no plans to rezone any of the city’s 20 industrial business zones, though some tinkering around the edges may be warranted—a comment that baffled some business advocates. ‘We are certainly not contemplating wholesale, area-wide rezonings within IBZs,’ Mr. Weisbrod testified at a City Council hearing Wednesday. Some IBZs have ‘inappropriate boundaries,’ he said, and acknowledged approving a handful of applications for spot rezonings at the ‘peripheries’ of the zones. [Crain’s New York Business – 05/07/15]
8. Cuomo Says He’ll Stay the Course on 421-A Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday called the charges against Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos ‘deeply disturbing’ but said he would keep negotiating end-of-session issues—including housing programs mentioned in the criminal complaint against him—if Skelos keeps his Senate post. Rent regulations in New York City as well as 421-a, a tax subsidy favored by major developers, are set to expire in June. Cuomo has said he would like to renew both programs, subject to some changes. [Capital New York – 05/08/15]
9. De Blasio Proposes Tenant Protections for Rent-Regulated Units Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a sweeping expansion of tenant protections for the city’s 1 million rent-regulated apartments Tuesday, calling for an end to vacancy decontrol and new restrictions on rent surcharges. The proposals would see an end to vacancy decontrol, which allows landlords to charge tenants market rates once a rent-regulated unit exceeds a rent threshold of $2,500 per month. De Blasio is seeking an end to such thresholds, as well as the elimination of vacancy allowances that allow landlords to hike a unit’s rent by 20 percent when a tenant leaves. [The Real Deal – 05/05/15]
10. CPC Helps Keep NYC Community Affordable With funding through Freddie Mac, Community Preservation Corporation Inc. (CPC) has closed on a $40 million loan for the refinancing of Cathedral Parkway Towers. Refinancing helps prevent otherwise unavoidable rent increases that would have resulted from escalating operating costs at the 309-unit Mitchell-Lama project on West 110th Street in New York City. The $40 million Freddie Mac loan will maintain affordability by refinancing the existing $35 million mortgage and covering other costs. The rest of the loan proceeds will go into a reserve account held by the New York State Department of Housing and Community Renewal (HCR). [Multi-Housing News – 05/06/15]