In this report, the authors address the issue of housing affordability in New York City through a specific focus on the role that broadly increasing the supply of housing can play in increasing affordability. They estimate that the policies proposed in this report, if fully enacted, could lead to the production of approximately 300,000 additional units of housing relative to the status quo level of housing production.

Supporting Housing Affordability in New York City Through Increased Housing Production

A Policy Brief

Jason M. Ward, George Zuo, Yael Katz

ResearchPublished Aug 16, 2023

Cover: Supporting Housing Affordability in New York City Through Increased Housing Production
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New York City's crisis of housing affordability has reached unprecedented levels. The ratio of median rent to median household income in New York City is the second highest among the 25 largest cities in the country. Additionally, the number of single adults experiencing homelessness in New York City has more than doubled in the past ten years. These conditions arose despite concentrated policy efforts at the state and local levels to control the growth of rents and increase the supply of means-tested affordable housing units.

Fundamentally, existing state and local policies — particularly those limiting rent increases — largely do not address the root problem behind the city's affordability crisis: Housing production has not kept pace with the growing demand to live in New York City. In this report, the authors address the issue of housing affordability in New York City by focusing on the role that broadly expanding the supply of housing can play in increasing affordability. They propose six policy reforms for increasing production and estimate that if fully enacted, these policies could lead to approximately 300,000 additional units of housing relative to the status quo level of housing production.

Key Findings

New York City faces a near-perfect storm of housing unaffordability

  • Contributing factors include record-high rents; increasing levels of distress in the older, rent-stabilized housing stock; the expiration of a tax relief program critical to multifamily housing production; the rapid growth of homelessness crowding out other housing priorities; and a collapsing office real estate sector potentially placing a higher future property tax–funding burden on the housing sector.

State and local policymakers have not taken significant steps to address systematic barriers and cost drivers that limit housing production

  • Recent policy efforts to increase affordability have focused primarily on price controls and direct public financing of affordable housing production as New York City's housing production gap has continued to grow.

Fully enacting the six reforms recommended in this report could lead to the production of approximately 300,000 additional new housing units over a ten-year period

  • The estimated change would represent more than a 160-percent increase over recent annual housing production levels in the city.

Recommendations

  • Establish a new tax relief program for multifamily development similar to the 485-w program proposed by Governor Kathy Hochul as a replacement for the expired 421-a program.
  • Increase floor-area ratio (FAR) limits within walking distance of subway and rail stops.
  • Incentivize office-to-residential conversions in Manhattan through the reintroduction of a temporary tax relief program modeled on the 421-g program.
  • Eliminate inefficiencies in environmental review, land use approval, and permitting by implementing recommendations from the city's Buildings and Land Use Approval Streamlining Taskforce.
  • Reform the Scaffold Law to fall in line with nationwide standards, replacing absolute liability for workplace injuries on property owners with the comparative negligence standard used across the rest of the United States.
  • Establish automatic triggers for area upzonings throughout New York City using a data-driven approach that targets areas with the greatest undersupply of housing.

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Ward, Jason M., George Zuo, and Yael Katz, Supporting Housing Affordability in New York City Through Increased Housing Production: A Policy Brief, RAND Corporation, RR-A2775-1, 2023. As of April 30, 2025: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2775-1.html

Chicago Manual of Style

Ward, Jason M., George Zuo, and Yael Katz, Supporting Housing Affordability in New York City Through Increased Housing Production: A Policy Brief. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2023. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2775-1.html.
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The research described in this report was sponsored by the Robin Hood Foundation and conducted in the Community Health and Environmental Policy Program within RAND Social and Economic Well-Being.

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