Fewer Than 10,000 New Housing Units Were Proposed By NYC Developers In 2023
Applications to build new housing in New York City fell dramatically in 2023 despite ambitious goals set by Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul at the beginning of the year.
Developers filed applications to build foundations for just 285 multifamily buildings last year, according to the Real Estate Board of New York’s review of city data.
In all, the developments would yield 9,909 housing units, 80% less than the city would need to add per year to meet Adams’ “moonshot” goal of creating 500,000 units over the next decade.
NYC produced an average of around 20,000 units per year between 2000 and 2020, REBNY found. But filings for new multifamily buildings dropped significantly after June 2022, when the 421-a tax abatement expired.
“Without support for new development incentives, New York City finished 2023 well behind its yearly goals for new rental housing,” REBNY Senior Vice President of Policy Zachary Steinberg said in a statement. “Hopefully this is the year that State lawmakers take steps to reverse this trend with sensible, data-driven housing policies.”
After developers proposed an average of 52 new multifamily buildings per month over 2022, they filed for just 19 new buildings in November and 25 in December.
There were just 28 new filings all year for buildings with more than 100 units and just one in December, a supportive housing project in the East Bronx. These types of filings, which would make the biggest dent in the housing crisis, dropped 78% from 2022.
Twin housing supply and affordability crises have plagued NYC since the city began to bounce back from the pandemic, leading to eye-watering rents that broke records in summer 2022 and 2023. Adams and Hochul last year pledged to fix the housing crisis but hit stumbling blocks when their proposals proved unpopular in the New York Legislature.
The data was released the same day that New Yorkers heard about Hochul's latest attempt to address the crisis in her State of the State speech, including proposing a replacement for 421-a.
