Tag Archives: Furman Center

Housing Stability in the Mamdani Administration

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By Phillip Capper, Wellington, NZ – 143rd. St., Bronx, NY, 2/08, CC BY 2.0

I am looking forward to the discussion tonight on Housing Stability in the Mamdani Administration, hosted by the Urban Design Forum. While it is sold out, we will be discussing “what a potential rent freeze may look like under the Mamdani administration” and I am sure there will be some good reporting on this topic over the coming weeks and months. The Forum writes,

As living costs continue to rise, Mayor-elect Mamdani has proposed freezing rents on stabilized apartments as a way to support tenants and protect housing stability. At the same time, critics warn that such measures could make it harder for building owners—particularly those managing older buildings with thin margins—to maintain safe, livable homes.

We’ll begin with an overview presentation by Mark Willis of the Furman Center, followed by a panel with Oksana Mironova, Emily Kurtz, David Reiss, and Thomas Yuon how the next administration can promote tenant stability and preserve affordable housing.

What strategies can preserve deep affordability while ensuring stabilized buildings remain financially sustainable?

Understanding NYC’s Rent-Stabilized Housing Stock

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I will be moderating an NYU Furman Center Policy Breakfast on NYC’s Rent-Stabilized Housing: Understanding Different Segments of the Stock and Why It Matters on November 19th. The link to register is here.

Nearly one million apartments in New York City are rent-stabilized. In 2023, the median rent among rent-stabilized tenants was about $1,500, compared with $2,000 for market-rate renters. These units play a central role in maintaining housing affordability across the city, yet they are often discussed as a single, uniform category.

Our policy breakfast will explore the diversity among buildings with rent-stabilized units, spanning older pre-1974 buildings and newer developments regulated because they received public financing or property tax reductions. Panelists will discuss how these differences shape the challenges and policy considerations facing the rent-stabilized housing stock today. The session aims to deepen understanding of the current landscape and to ground debate on what tailored interventions may be needed to preserve the affordability and quality of this essential part of New York City’s housing supply.

Panel
Kenny Burgos, Chief Executive Officer, New York Apartment Association
Emily Kurtz, Chief Housing Officer, RiseBoro Community Partnership, Inc.
Jane Silverman, Executive Director, Community Development Banking, JPMorgan Chase Bank
Samuel Stein, Senior Policy Analyst, Community Service Society

Moderator
David Reiss, Visiting Professor of Clinical Law, NYU School of Law,
and former Chair, Rent Guidelines Board

Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Time: 8:45 – 10:00 AM ET

NYU School of Law – Vanderbilt Hall
40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012

A livestream link will be provided for online attendees.

Tech Entrepreneurship Clinic in NYC

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Cornell has just formally announced the creation of its first NYC law clinic, a branch of the law school’s Entrepreneurship Law Clinic, to be located on the Cornell Tech campus. You can read more here.

 

Micro Apartments and The Housing Crisis

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photo by BalazsGlodi

The NYU Furman Center has posted 21st Century SROs: Can Small Housing Units Help Meet the Need for Affordable Housing in New York City? The policy brief opens,

Throughout much of the last century, single-room occupancy (SRO) housing was a commonly available type of low-rent housing in New York City, providing housing to people newly arrived in the city, low-income single New Yorkers, and people needing somewhere to live during life transitions. SRO units typically consisted of a private room with access to full bathroom and kitchen facilities that a renter shared with other building occupants. As the city fell onto hard times, so did SRO housing. During the second half of the last century, many SROs came to serve as housing of last resort, and policymakers enacted laws limiting their construction and discouraging the operation of SRO units. Many SROs were converted to other forms of housing, resulting in the loss of thousands of low-rent units in the city.

New research and analysis from the NYU Furman Center addresses the question of whether small housing units (self-contained micro units and efficiency units with shared facilities) can and should help meet the housing need previously served by SROs. In this policy brief, we present a summary of the paper, 21st Century SROs: Can Small Housing Units Help Meet the Need for Affordable Housing in New York City? We provide an overview of the potential demand for smaller, cheaper units, discuss the economics of building small units, analyze the main barriers to the creation of small units that exist in New York City, and suggest possible reforms that New York City can make to address these barriers. (1)

The policy brief makes a series of recommendations, including

  • reducing density limitations for micro units near transit hubs
  • permitting mixed-income and market-rate efficiency units
  • creating a government small unit program to promote the construction of micro apartments

There is no doubt that the lack of supply is a key driver of the affordable housing crisis across the country. Small units should be part of the response to that crisis, not just in New York City but in all high-cost cities.

Rental Housing Landscape

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A Row of Tenements, by Robert Spencer (1915)

NYU’s Furman Center released its 2017 National Rental Housing Landscape. My two takeaways are that, compared to the years before the financial crisis, (1) many tenants remain rent burdened and (2) higher income households are renting more. These takeaways have a lot of consequences for housing policymakers. We should keep these developments in mind as we debate tax reform proposals regarding the mortgage interest deduction and the deduction of property taxes. When it comes to housing, who should the tax code be helping more — homeowners or renters?

The Executive Summary of the report reads,

This study examines rental housing trends from 2006 to 2015 in the 53 metropolitan areas of the U.S. that had populations of over one million in 2015 (“metros”), with a particular focus on the economic recovery period beginning in 2012.

Median rents grew faster than inflation in virtually every metro between 2012 and 2015, especially in already high rent metros.

Despite rising rents, the share of renters spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent (defined as rent burdened households) fell slightly between 2012 and 2015, as did the share spending more than 50 percent (defined as severely rent burdened households). Still, these shares were higher in 2015 than in 2006, and far higher than in earlier decades.

The number and share of renters has increased considerably since 2006 and continued to rise in virtually every metro from 2012 to 2015. Within that period, the increase in renter share was relatively larger for high socioeconomic status households. That said, the typical renter household still has lower income and less educational attainment than the typical non-renter household.

Following years of decline during the Great Recession, the real median income of renters grew between 2012 and 2015, but this was primarily driven by the larger numbers of higher income households that are renting and the increasing incomes of renter households with at least one member holding a bachelor’s degree or higher. The real median income of renter households with members with just a high school degree or some college grew more modestly and remained below 2006 levels in 2015.

Thus, the recent decline in the share of rent burdened households should be cautiously interpreted. The income of the typical renter household increased as the economy recovered, but part of this increase came from a change in the composition of the renter population as more high socioeconomic status households chose to rent their homes.

For almost every metro, the median rent in 2015 for units that had been on the market within the previous year was higher than that for other units, suggesting that renters would likely face a rent hike if they moved. The share of recently available rental units that were affordable to households earning their metro’s median income fell between 2012 and 2015. And in 2015, only a small share of recently available rental units were affordable to households earning half of their metro’s median income. (3, footnote omitted)

Poverty in NYC

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photo by Salvation Army USA West

NYU’s Furman Center has released its annual State of New York City’s Housing and Neighborhoods along with a focus on Poverty in New York City. The State of the City report is always of great value but each year’s focus is where we get to see the City in a new light. This year is no different:

In New York City in recent years, rents have risen much faster than incomes. The pressures of rising housing costs may be greatest on those with the fewest resources—people living in poverty. New York City has a larger number of people living in poverty today than it has since at least 1970. This sparks a range of questions about the experience of poverty in New York City that we address in this year’s State of New York City’s Housing and Neighborhoods Focus. Who in New York City is poor today? Where do they live? What are the characteristics of the neighborhoods where poor New Yorkers live? Are poor New Yorkers more likely to be living in areas of concentrated poverty than they were in the past? How, if at all, do the answers to each of these questions differ by the race, ethnicity, and other characteristics of poor households?

Though the share of New Yorkers living in poverty has been relatively constant over the past few decades, there was a drop at the end of the last decade and then an increase in 2011–2015. Poverty concentration—the extent to which poor New Yorkers are living in neighborhoods with other poor New Yorkers—followed a similar trend, dropping in 2006–2010 and increasing again since then. The neighborhood of the typical poor New Yorker varies substantially from that of the typical non-poor New Yorker, but those disparities are largely experienced by black and Hispanic New Yorkers living in poverty. The typical poor Asian and white New Yorkers live in neighborhoods that do better on the measures we examine than the neighborhoods of the typical non-poor New Yorker. We also find that neighborhood conditions vary significantly based on the level of poverty in a neighborhood. Higher poverty neighborhoods have higher violent crime rates, poorer performing schools, and fewer adults who are college educated or working. And, poor New Yorkers are not all equally likely to live in these neighborhoods. Poor black and Hispanic New Yorkers are much more likely to live in higher poverty neighborhoods than poor white and Asian New Yorkers. Children make up a higher share of the population in higher poverty neighborhoods than adults or seniors. (1, footnotes omitted)

Policymakers should have a lot to chew over in this report. Let’s hope they give it a read.

Carson and Fair Housing

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photo by Warren K. Leffler

President Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (also known as the Fair Housing Act)

Law360 quoted me in Carson’s HUD Nom Adds To Fair Housing Advocates’ Worries (behind a paywall). It opens,

President-elect Donald Trump’s Monday choice of Ben Carson to lead the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development added to fears that the incoming administration would pull back from the aggressive enforcement of fair housing laws that marked President Barack Obama’s term, experts said.

The tapping of Carson to lead HUD despite a lack of any relative experience in the housing sector came after Trump named Steven Mnuchin to lead the U.S. Department of the Treasury amid concerns that the bank for which he served as chairman engaged in rampant foreclosure abuses. Trump has also nominated Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., to serve as attorney general. Sessions has drawn scrutiny for his own attitudes towards civil rights enforcement.

Coupled with Trump’s own checkered history of run-ins with the U.S. Justice Department over discriminatory housing practices, those appointments signal that enforcement of fair housing laws are likely to be a low priority for the Trump administration when it takes office in January, said Christopher Odinet, a professor at Southern University Law Center.

“I can’t imagine that we’ll see any robust enforcement or even attention paid to fair housing in this next administration,” he said.

Trump said that Carson, who backed the winning candidate after his own unsuccessful run for the presidency, shared in his vision of “revitalizing” inner cities and the families that live in them.

“Ben shares my optimism about the future of our country and is part of ensuring that this is a presidency representing all Americans. He is a tough competitor and never gives up,” Trump said in a statement released through his transition team.

Carson said he was honored to get the nod from the president-elect.

“I feel that I can make a significant contribution particularly by strengthening communities that are most in need. We have much work to do in enhancing every aspect of our nation and ensuring that our nation’s housing needs are met,” he said in the transition team’s statement.

The problem that many are having with this nomination is that Carson has little to no experience with federal housing policy. A renowned neurosurgeon, Carson’s presidential campaign website made no mention of housing, and there is little record of him having spoken about it on the campaign trail. One Carson campaign document called for privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-run mortgage backstops that were bailed out in 2008.

The nomination also comes in the weeks after a spokesman for Carson said that the former presidential candidate had no interest in serving in a cabinet post because he lacked the qualifications. That statement has since been walked back but has been cited by Democrats unhappy with the Carson selection.

“Cities coping with crumbling infrastructure and families struggling to afford a roof overhead cannot afford a HUD secretary whose spokesperson said he doesn’t believe he’s up for the job,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee. “President-elect Trump made big promises to rebuild American infrastructure and revitalize our cities, but this appointment raises real questions about how serious he is about actually getting anything done.”

HUD is a sprawling government agency with a budget around $50 billion and programs that include the Federal Housing Administration, which provides financing for lower-income and first-time homebuyers, funding and administration of public housing programs, disaster relief, and other key housing policies.

It also helps enforce anti-discrimination policies, in particular the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule that the Obama administration finalized. The rule, which was part of the 1968 Fair Housing Act but had been languishing for decades, requires each municipality that receives federal funding to assess their housing policies to determine whether they sufficiently encourage diversity in their communities.

Carson has not said much publicly about housing policy, but in a 2015 op-ed in the Washington Times compared the rule to failed school busing efforts of the 1970s and at other times called the rule akin to communism.

“These government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality create consequences that often make matters worse. There are reasonable ways to use housing policy to enhance the opportunities available to lower-income citizens, but based on the history of failed socialist experiments in this country, entrusting the government to get it right can prove downright dangerous,” wrote Carson, who lived in public housing for a time while growing up in Detroit.

That dismissiveness toward the rule has people who are concerned about diversity in U.S. neighborhoods and anti-discrimination efforts on edge, and could put an end to federal efforts to improve those metrics.

“If you’re not affirmatively furthering fair housing, we’re going to be stuck with the same situation we have now or it’s going to get worse over time,” said David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School and research affiliate at New York University’s Furman Center.