State of New York City’s Housing and Neighborhoods in 2021

This year, our Focus Chapter explores the geography of housing development over the last decade, mapping market-rate construction and subsidized affordable housing built across the city. The chapter surveys properties with four or more units, and we estimate that our analysis covers more than 90 percent of newly-constructed units during this time period.

Overall, we find that over 185,000 multifamily units were added to the city’s housing stock between 2010 and 2020, with nearly 3 in 10 of those units targeted for low-income households. Patterns of new development over the last decade mirror existing racial and economic disparities. New income-restricted units targeted to low-income households and financed through Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) or City capital dollars were built in neighborhoods with higher Black and Hispanic population shares, higher poverty rates, and lower sales prices and rents than the neighborhoods where market- rate units were constructed. But units targeted to low-income households built using the 421-a tax exemption only were located in neighborhoods similar to those of market-rate units.