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The
Housing Data Deficit:
Why We Need a NYC Housing Census
By George Locker and
Leonard Rodberg
Introduction
Rental housing in New York City has never been more
expensive or less available. Considering
its enormous impact on so many aspects of life, the lack of decent and
affordable housing may be the most serious problem facing the City.
Despite its severity,
the housing crisis generates little outcry outside of advocacy/activist
circles and essentially no political debate. The housing problem is NYC’s
terrible family secret that is never discussed. Elected officials and candidates for
office studiously avoid commenting on the nature, extent, and response to
the housing problem.
With so little
discussion of housing policy, it should be no surprise that public agencies
gather insufficient data. Lacking
basic data, sound housing analysis and policy become impossible to
formulate.
To address this enormous
housing data deficit, the Five Borough Institute is seeking support to
create a NYC Housing Census Initiative (“HCI”). The HCI
will be the first effort in 75 years to gather and disseminate a basic but
non-statistical real property inventory of all of NYC’s 800,000 lots
and the structures on them, including the entire housing supply of the
City. This data is unavailable from
any other source, public or private.
NYC’s housing
crisis is rooted in shortage. Simply
by counting what we have and comparing it to what we know we need, a
housing
census will generate new
understanding on what is required to end the housing shortage.
The HCI would provide a
sound factual basis for a new housing policy, democratize data collection,
and invest participating community groups with a meaningful connection to
the buildings that make up their neighborhoods.
What is the state of
housing in NYC today?
High Cost of Renting
For a great many New Yorkers, residential rent levels
are unbearably high. NYC started the
90’s with some 925,000 units of low-cost ($500 or less per month)
housing; it ended the decade with less than half that number. Today, one out of three New
York households pays more than 30 % of its income
for rent, the current Federal measure of housing affordability. One out of four pays more than 50%.
Large Cumulative Shortage
Rents are high because
NYC has a sizable shortage of available units. The acute shortage creates an ongoing,
unmet demand, which pushes rents skyward.
The City has a cumulative deficit of over 560,000 dwelling units,
either of newly built or substantially rehabilitated apartments. The shortage includes needed replacements
for
·
264,000 rental units now classified as “physically
poor,” with significant structural or maintenance defects.
·
100,000 estimated illegal dwellings, such as basements, garages, or
subdivided rooms.
·
100,000 units believed to be improperly doubled up in Public
Housing.
·
75,000 private households defined as “severely
overcrowded.”
·
23,000+ persons in homeless shelters.
·
3,000 new units/year for population
growth.
Little New Construction
The cumulative housing
shortage is large and continues to grow because there has been little
construction of new housing in the last thirty years. Notwithstanding the
City’s desperate need for housing, the private sector has all but
ceased to build in New York, and the public sector
has not taken its place.
More housing was built
in NYC in the ten years from 1960 to1970 than in the succeeding thirty
years. In 1963, the most recent peak
construction year, 60,000 new units were built. But throughout the 90’s, even with
the Wall Street economy booming, an average of only 7,000 new units were
built each year.
High Loss Rates
Not only is there little
construction of new housing from the ground up, the annual loss of existing
housing is very high. For years the total housing supply has not been
determined by the rate of construction of new housing, as one might
imagine. Rather, with the rate of
new construction so low, the total housing available in any given year
depends on the number of units “lost” to the inventory and the
number of “returning losses”.
In the last three years,
21,000 new units of housing were built, while 43,000 were lost due to
merging of apartments, conversion from residential to non-residential use,
demolition, condemnation, and boarding-up/burn out. Three years before that, 20,000 new units
were built and 36,000 were lost.
With so little new construction in the past decade and such high
loss rates, the City lost almost twice as many units from the housing stock
as were newly built.
Moreover, since the
mid-70’s, returning losses — previously “lost”
units that have been returned to the active housing inventory — have
replaced new housing construction as the single largest source of additions
to the housing stock in NYC. From
1996-99, returning losses accounted for 34,000 units. Where do all of these “lost”
units come from?
Lost Units: A Crucial
but Unknown Source
Each year, the City
depends on the number of returning losses to offset the gross loss of
housing units. Though the City has
become dependent upon returning losses, little is directly known about this
category of building. Though housing is by definition real property, which
we can see and touch and is all around us, we lack the most basic
quantitative data about these structures, including the actual number of
buildings in the City and their description.
Planners have no idea of
the actual number of buildings within the five boroughs that are the source
or “universe” of returning losses. Neither the Census Bureau,
nor any City agency, knows how many units are “lost” and could
be added to the housing stock, either through natural real estate market
operations or by public policy intervention (e.g. a program to house all of
the homeless).
We do not know how many
“lost’ units are potentially available because we lack the most
basic quantitative information about the housing stock, including an actual
count of all existing structures in the five boroughs.
1934 Real Property
Inventory
The last time an actual
census was performed of the housing stock of New York City was in 1934. Fifty-four hundred unemployed workers
were hired by the NYC Housing Authority to conduct a complete inventory of
the City’s buildings. Within
six months they produced the Real
Property Inventory, giving detailed characteristics by census tract, of
the type, occupancy, and rental costs of the City’s physical
structures. All types of buildings
were included — stores, lofts, and industrial buildings as well as
housing.
This pre-computer,
manual tally, taken during the Depression, produced more complete housing
data for New York City than it has today. Nothing comparable has been done since
then.
Data Estimates
Today, the City relies
on a variety of indirect means to characterize the building stock within
any community of this City. The
Census, a primary source of data, is inaccurate and incomplete. Historically, it substantially
undercounts people. Moreover, it
does not focus on structures independent of inhabitants.
Following the 1990
Census, many people realized there had been a significant undercount of the
City’s population, amounting to perhaps five percent or more. A significant cause was the failure to
include all of the City’s housing stock in
the address list to which the Census Bureau sent census forms and census
takers.
In the succeeding years,
the City Planning Department undertook to identify neighborhoods where it
believed its master address list had significant deficiencies. It conducted a visual examination of some
neighborhoods, using address lists provided by the phone company and
utilities. Not surprisingly, the 2000 Census, drawing on an updated address
list, showed 680,000 more people living in the City than were indicated in
the 1990 Census. Many of these had simply been overlooked by the previous
Census.
No one knows how many
more persons and their places of residence would have been counted if a
door-to-door, non-statistical survey of all neighborhoods had been undertaken.
To make informational matters worse, all of the
Housing and Vacancy Surveys undertaken by the Census Bureau since 1975,
which provide data about the City’s housing stock for its housing
policy analysts, were conducted entirely on the basis of a statistical
survey of some 18,000 housing units.
For obvious reasons, teachers do not take class
attendance using a sampling technique; it is not possible to make sound
housing policy without counting all of the City’s buildings in 68
years. Given the impact of the real estate market on the life of the City,
it behooves planners to know just what is out there.
Today, the largest and
most detailed real property database maintained by the City is the Real
Property Assessment Database (“RPAD”). This data file, housed in the Department
of Finance and based upon private legal filings, serves the primary purpose
of recording building type and property assessments for taxation purposes.
Tens of thousands of
units of “lost” housing, which are by definition not in the
active housing inventory, do not appear in RPAD and go uncounted.
Moreover, RPAD cannot
provide information about why units are lost, why and how they return,
their previous occupancy status, or why the locational
patterns and previous status of “lost” units constantly change.
Because the data is so poor, much of this information is not known or is
inferred or guessed at.
Taking an Actual
Building Census
The Five Borough
Institute proposes to design and conduct, with expert help, a NYC
Housing Census. Such a complete
census, to be performed by community organizations across this City, would
mobilize hundreds of ordinary citizens to examine, in the course of one or
more weekends, every building in their neighborhood.
Together with
representatives from community groups, labor unions, churches, and
academia, 5BI is taking steps to plan the Housing Census. All of these
groups have a stake in an accurate housing census and 5BI believes that
they will be eager to help develop a plan for gathering, training, and
coordinating census-takers from all of their organizations.
The HCI will provide the
structural foundation for the actual census and the basis for a continued
collaboration among the participating groups to develop and advocate a
viable housing plan for this City.
November 2002
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