Home ownership in New York City has become increasingly out of reach — a consistently rising reality that started long before the pandemic intensified the affordability issue. Rising property taxes, higher insurance and home maintenance costs, and insidious deed theft practices that prey on marginalized communities have steadily pushed families out of the five boroughs.
The pressure is felt across the entire city. However, for Black and Brown homeowners, the financial gap to be able to live in New York is deeply widening. These are families whose wealth is often tied to a single asset, such as their home, and less likely to have financial cushions to absorb consistently rising costs.
When expenses climb and income options shrink, the financial strain forces these homeowners out. That is exactly what is happening.
For years, bad actors converted residential buildings into de facto hotels, removing housing from neighborhoods and distorting local markets. Local Law 18 was designed to stop that and it largely did. But it also sweeps far more broadly than intended.
For many owner-occupied one- and two-family homeowners, particularly in Black and Brown communities, the law eliminated one of the few flexible tools available to manage rising costs. Not speculative investors, but families living in the homes they own.
Short-term rentals, when limited to primary residences and used responsibly, were never about large-scale commercial operation. For many homeowners, they were a survival mechanism: a way to offset a tax bill, fund a necessary repair, or maintain a home that has been in the family for decades. In neighborhoods without hotels — places historically excluded from tourism infrastructure — this was also one of the only ways residents could participate in tourism-driven income.
Removing this option without creating alternatives has real consequences that fall hardest on homeowners in outer-borough neighborhoods, which are more likely to be multi-decade family assets and less likely to be supplemented by other forms of wealth.
We are already seeing the broader effects. More than 200,000 Black New Yorkers have left the city in recent years, many driven out by affordability pressures or predatory tactics. In neighborhoods like Canarsie, Flatlands, and Crown Heights, longtime homeowners are increasingly forced into difficult choices: absorb rising costs, defer critical repairs, or sell the homes they fought to keep.
The intent of the law, to curb abuse, was fundamentally solid. But its implementation did not account for the uneven financial realities facing owner-occupied households, particularly in historically marginalized communities. Regulation should be precise enough to target exploitation without eliminating survival tools for homeowners trying to stay afloat.
On Thursday, we introduced the Homeowner Stability and Protection Act, which would amend Local Law 18 to allow responsible short-term rental activity in one- and two-family homes under clear, limited conditions. A suggested amendment to the law was first introduced in 2024 but wasn’t taken up by the City Council.
The Council now has an opportunity to revisit this issue because we are unintentionally hurting our working-class homeowners. Seriously considering the modification would not undo protections against bad actors. It would restore some semblance of balance for thousands of homeowners who were never the law’s intended target in the first place.
The goal is not to weaken practical laws for housing protection, it’s to make them more accurately represent a large portion of city homeowners.
Smarr is president and CEO of the New York City Housing Partnership. Narcisse is a member of the City Council representing the 46th District in Brooklyn.