In considering how best to help the homeless in high-cost housing markets, it's important to be clear about whom we're talking.
For street, or chronically, homeless people, housing cost is often a less important problem than mental health, drug or alcohol issues. This kind of homelessness is not limited to high-rent cities: As a nation, we need to find ways to connect these individuals to the services they need, but often themselves reject. For this group, short-term quasi-institutional settings — supportive housing — can make sense.
“There will inevitably be neighborhoods in which they cannot afford to live... That's the nature of dynamic city economies. At the same time, we must do our best not to impede the capacity of housing markets to serve the full range of income groups.”
But for the many families — most often low-income single mothers and children — housed in homeless shelters or seeking assistance, homelessness is simply a term for the high price of housing compared to their income.
There will inevitably be neighborhoods in which they cannot afford to live, of course, including some neighborhoods where costs were once low. That's the nature of dynamic city economies. At the same time, we must do our best not to impede the capacity of housing markets to serve the full range of income groups.
Rent regulation, for instance, discourages housing turnover, leading to artificially lower vacancy rates. Regardless of their ability to pay a higher rent, households in rent regulated apartments protect their good deals even if they no longer need the space.
Federal housing vouchers — of which more than 100,000 are distributed in New York — also lead to lower vacancy rates in assistance housing units because the deals are open-ended: Even those whose income might enable them to find housing without assistance have no reason to give it up. The same is true in public housing, where, in New York, some 20 percent of households have empty bedrooms and the average time in the system is 22 years.
Easing limitations on construction would also open up the market, and allow those who need lower-cost housing to get it. As more units come on the market, upward pressure on market-rent costs would ebb, and supply would be adjusted to demand.
Finally, we should help connect low-income households with low-cost housing that is already available. Using federal census data and the housing website StreetEasy, I found that there are thousands of affordable New York apartments for those earning as little as half the area median income.
It's tempting but expensive to subsidize new units reserved for select income groups, but it's also costly and benefits very few. It is better to help housing markets work — a benefit to all.
This piece originally appeared in The New York Times Room for Debate.
This piece originally appeared in New York Times Room for Debate