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“I agree we have to build a lot more homes,” said Miller Samuel CEO Jonathan Miller. “It matters that it’s the right kind of home.” e high prices have not stopped people from wanting to move to the area. e city’s population was about 8.5 million people as of July 1, 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It grew by around 800,000 in the past decade, but just 200,000 new homes were added to the market during that time, according to the mayor’s o ce.

And the homes haven’t been cheap. Manhattan condos and coops both ended 2022 with a median price of more than $1 million. Brooklyn homes were not far behind, at $950,000. And the median rent in December remained above $4,000 in Manhattan and above $3,000 in Brooklyn, according to recent data from Douglas Elliman.

But with sellers and landlords still able to nd buyers and renters, it stands to reason that prices will remain high in the area, even if they don’t continue to soar. If Adams’ plan to build 500,000 homes in the than the product entering the market by far, so I think the best we can hope for is moderate price growth as opposed to a surge in a ordability. I think that’s a bridge too far.”

Suburbs are calling

Prospective renters and buyers shouldn’t despair entirely, though, especially those hoping to eventually nd something in areas currently dominated by single-family homes, such as the suburbs of Westchester County and Long Island. Although a six-bedroom house in Westchester is expensive now and almost certain to remain expensive 10 years from now, a general push to build more types of homes could result in a wider scale of prices in that county, noted Rachel Fee, the New York Housing Conference’s executive director.

“If we can add to our housing supply, then we’re also going to have housing at price points we don’t have currently,” she said. “If we can really add some density— add more townhouses, add more multifamily units with apartments—we’re going to have a greater variety of entry points for both homeownership and rentals.” city and Hochul’s plan to build 800,000 homes across the state over the next decade are implemented exactly as envisioned, the best-case scenario is that prices still increase but at a slower rate—ideally lower than the rate of in ation. It will probably take at least ve years before even this type of impact is felt, according to Miller.

“Who knows what the market will be like at that point? I suspect rents won’t be cheaper,” he said. “ e population is still growing faster

But the push to build more housing in the suburbs is also likely to be one of the aspects of the plan that faces the most pushback, especially if recent history is any indication. Hochul has called for all downstate counties to grow their housing stock by 3% every three years, and there should be a mix of towns that are happy to comply and towns that wait out the three years and only cooperate as a last resort, Fee said.

Hochul made a similar play to add housing to the city’s suburbs in 2022 that ultimately failed in the face of sti community opposition, and there is little reason to think that this opposition has lessened after just one year.

“It was not long at all before she had to pull back on that because there was such an uproar around

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local municipalities who had called legislators and said, ‘Over our dead body will this go through,’ ” said Elise Wagner, co-chair of the landuse practice at the law rm Kramer Levin. “I think it’s going to be challenging, and I would think it’s likely there would be litigation.”

However, elected o cials are already moving forward with plans to better connect the suburbs and the city via commuter rail lines. After years of delays, the East Side Access project just launched, connecting Long Island Rail Road trains to Grand Central Terminal. And one of the mayor’s rst major rezoning plans is to add housing around four new Metro-North stations planned for the northeastern Bronx, where single-family homes exist alongside apartment buildings. Hochul’s housing plan also calls for communities with Metro-North stops to rezone the areas within a half-mile of the train stations for more housing within three years.

Fee described the recent investments in city transportation as “historic” and stressed how important it is to complement them with an equally historic housing policy.

“ at would be, I think, a strategy that would unlock signi cant housing potential,” she said, “and it would also be a growth strategy for New York.”

Affordability aims

In both the city and the suburbs, a focus on building a ordable housing speci cally will be key to the success of the mayor’s and the governor’s plans, especially given the limited impact adding more housing in general is likely to have on overall prices, experts said.

“You can’t just rely on pouring more to the top of the market and waiting for it to lter down,” said Howard Slatkin, executive director of the Citizens Housing & Planning Council. “ ere are no solutions to a ordability that do not involve supply.”

New Yorkers who already have a ordable or rent-regulated units tend to be ercely protective of retaining them, which is directly related to their low numbers. Lotteries for existing a ordable housing projects typically get applicants at rates that far surpass the number of units. ough protecting tenants who are already in these apartments is important, building more a ordable apartments is the only way to actually improve this imbalance, Fee said.

“If we expand tenant rights [to hold on to units], that’s not going to expand any housing opportunity,” she said. “It will bring some housing stability to existing renters, but it’s not creating more housing opportunities.”

Arguments about the number of a ordable homes these plans should include and how a ordable they will actually be are almost certain to come up frequently as ocials begin the messy work of trying to implement them. ese are good arguments to have, but they should not distract from the fact that building more homes in general is the most important thing New York can do right now, said Slatkin.

“ is is the right conversation to be having right now, and that is beyond dispute,” he said. “If people want to talk about the details, that’s great, but there’s no question that this is the conversation that needs to happen in the city, state and region.” ■