After years in obscurity, NYC’s housing crisis has finally emerged, if not as a campaign issue, at least as an obligatory subject on which a candidate must now have a position. 
 
In order to evaluate the housing proposals of the candidates for mayor, we need first to define the housing problem.  There are three significant aspects to NYC’s housing crisis.  Each aspect must be addressed if we are to solve the housing problem.
 
Shortage The City has a huge cumulative housing shortage, which continues to grow.  After decades of not building, the City now needs some 560,000 more housing units (new and rehabilitated) in the housing supply than it has.
 
This housing deficit would include 264,000 rental units classified in the Census as “physically poor,” with significant structural or maintenance defects; an estimated 100,000 illegal dwellings, including basements, garages, and subdivided rooms; 100,000 thought to be improperly doubled up in NYC Public Housing; 75,000 private households defined in the Census as “severely overcrowded;” and 23,000 in homeless shelters.
 
While the size or composition of the cumulative housing shortage may be subject to debate, the fact of its existence is not. 
 
Moreover, New York’s housing shortage is increased by substantial annual loses from the housing stock and by demand for housing generated by an expanding population.   Each year, 15,000 units of housing are lost from the inventory, while population growth adds 3,500 new renters.  NYC thus needs to build some 18,500 new units each year just to stay in place.
 
None of the mayoral candidates speak quantitatively about NYC’s cumulative housing shortage, the annual housing loss rate, and the housing demands of a growing population.  None defines the problem.
 
If these key factors are taken into consideration, a construction program intended to eliminate the housing shortage in NYC would require building about 52,000 units a year (the rate in the mid-60’s), for fifteen years. 
 
Under the most ambitious of the mayoral proposals – Ferrer’s — we would build 150,000 units over 10 years; Hevesi, 105,000 units, of which 40,000 would be newly built, over an unspecified time; Bloomberg, 100,000 new units over an unspecified time; Green, 50,000 units over an unspecified time; Vallone, “tens of thousands” over five years; Badillo, position unknown and unobtainable on all housing issues.
 
Thus, when measured against the City’s actual housing needs, the best of the mayoral proposals to build new housing equals only the annual losses from the City’s housing supply.
 
Condition There are over 3 million existing code violations of record, including tens of thousands of the most serious classification.  40% of all multiple dwelling units in NYC, or 850,000, are old and of tenement-era design and construction.
 
Because of their age and inadequacy of initial structural design, the physical condition of Old- and many New-Law tenement structures and the units in them are issues of concern.  The public health consequences of so much obsolete and deteriorated housing have only begun to be explored.
 
Except for general remarks by Bloomberg, the candidates are silent on the subject of code enforcement, although code enforcement is by law a City function.
 
A mayor could make code enforcement a priority.  For example, we could have a policy of zero tolerance of hazardous violations.  The City has leverage.  Millions of dollars in City welfare payments go directly to private owners of deteriorated and dilapidated residential buildings; each year City courts are used to summarily evict tens of thousands of New Yorkers from buildings rife with serious code violations. 
 
Cost While all of the candidates express general support for continuation of rent regulations, they avoid all of the hard questions.  None of the candidates address the permanent loss of rent-regulated units, the permanent loss of low-rent units, regulating presently unregulated or newly built units, imposing a rent freeze or rent rollback, instituting a moratorium on evictions, or making unaffordable housing affordable.
 
Conclusion The debate over the causes and solutions to New York’s housing crisis has just begun, but the candidates for mayor are certainly not leading the way. 
 
Each should specify how he would eliminate the City’s housing shortage, insure strict code enforcement, and make new and existing housing more affordable to ordinary folks.

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