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A Place to Call Home: Housing and the Next Mayor

21
Wednesday April 2021

Speakers

Brad Hargreaves Founder & CEO, Common Living
Jessica Katz Executive Director, Citizens Housing Planning Council
Eric Kober Senior Fellow @eric_kober

As New York City heads into the 2021 mayoral campaign, housing will be among the most important issues for candidates in the June Democratic primary. The next New York mayor will want to return as fast as possible to the happy world of growing tax revenues and easily balanced budgets that characterized most of Bill de Blasio’s two terms, before the pandemic. Without an expanding housing stock, it will be difficult to resume private job growth and house essential-service workers. 

New York, even compared with other high-cost metros, is a national outlier in the share of rent-burdened households. Severely rent-burdened households are often in danger of becoming homeless as a result of some adverse life event, such as illness or the loss of a job. Supply-oriented policies to ensure affordable and available housing are critical to New York City’s recovery from the pandemic-induced recession of 2020.

As New York City tries to attract new businesses and jobs, the likelihood is that renewed growth will quickly lead to a revived housing crunch that deters employers from continuing to add workers. In its current fiscally straitened circumstances, the city would benefit from policies that would tackle the problem more effectively—and at a lower cost.

Join MI director of state and local policy Michael Hendrix, Brad Hargreaves, Jessica Katz, and Eric Kober for a discussion on why more housing in New York City is critical to its recovery.

communications@manhattan-institute.org