My grandparents grew up in New York City believing that if you worked hard, contributed to your community, and played by the rules, you could build a life here. They raised my parents with that same promise, and they in turn instilled those values in me. That’s the same promise so many New Yorkers were raised with. But today, that promise is slipping away for too many families. The dream of raising children and putting down roots in New York City for generations to come is becoming harder to reach, and in many cases, impossible. We must act with urgency to ensure that dream remains within reach.
In a recent article, “Why Families Are Leaving New York City,” The New York Times highlights the crisis that we have witnessed unfold before our eyes: families are fleeing our great city. As families leave, our school enrollment declines, our tax base erodes, and neighborhood stability crumbles. The article highlights the fact that median asking rent for family-sized apartments with three or more bedrooms is now nearly $5,000 a month. That’s impossibly high for so many, including those who were born and raised here. As a result, families are leaving New York City at higher rates than other demographic groups and at a higher rate than families are leaving other major cities. And the families that don’t leave? They either stay and become severely rent-burdened or they make up the roughly 70 percent of shelter residents who are families with children.
New York City and housing
Increasing the production of affordable housing has been one policy solution to address affordability broadly, but notably absent from this conversation is families. Government agencies and elected officials frame their success in terms of “units built,” and we are seeing policy aligned with that metric: the vast majority of new, taxpayer subsidized, as-of-right units are studio and one-bedroom apartments. And while government officials talk in terms of “building units,” we need to talk in terms of “housing people.”
The astounding element of the lack of affordable two and three-bedroom apartments is not merely their scarcity. Government policy actually incentivizes this skewed production with our tax dollars. That is why we must act. That’s why I introduced Int. 1433-2025, legislation that would finally bring our housing production in line with the real needs of New York City families. This is legislation designed to house people, not simply build units.
The oversaturation of studio and one-bedroom apartments makes for great press releases, as it allows officials to point to a higher number of “units produced,” yet this push for volume over need has created a system where outdated HPD term sheets effectively encourage developers to pack buildings with smaller units, in most cases incentivizing 70% of all apartments in a given as-of-right development to be studios or one-bedrooms. It looks efficient on paper, but it has real-world consequences for families, multigenerational households, and New Yorkers striving to stay rooted in the communities they love.
During the Nov. 19 Land Use Committee hearing, HPD stated that they share the goals motivating this legislation: advancing meaningful affordability, expanding housing choice, and creating homes for a range of household sizes. Yet in the same testimony, they argued the bill is too rigid, and that they need more “flexibility” to meet neighborhood needs.
But that flexibility is exactly what has led to an underproduction of homes for families with children in the first place and has contributed to the exodus of families from our city. HPD says they already take a “holistic approach” to planning, but their own data show that the production of two and three-bedroom units has been declining for years. They argue that The Fair Housing Framework already addresses this issue, even though the Framework contains no enforceable requirements that would meaningfully encourage building for families with children.
None of their claims add up, because what they really mean is that my legislation is a break from the status quo.
I will continue to fight on behalf of working families to build an affordable city that works for all of us. A city that cannot house its families is a city in decline. As families move out, so do our students and our workforce. As our tax base shrinks, so does our city’s budget, resulting in cuts to programs that we cherish.
We must be smarter with the money we already spend on housing and create a thoughtful, equitable framework for future development. With my legislation, HPD can continue to build the volume of affordable housing we desperately need, while finally fixing the broken incentives that have driven families out of our city for far too long.
If we want families to build their lives here, we must build a city that has room for them. Int. 1433-2025 is a meaningful step toward that goal, and I will keep fighting to ensure New York City remains a place where every family can grow and thrive.
