New Yorkers appear to agree on something: our city desperately needs more housing.
For years, conversations about the housing crisis were dominated by debates over affordability, zoning, financing, and neighborhood character. Meanwhile, housing production slowed, affordable developments stalled, and the gap between supply and demand widened. The result has been a city where too many families, workers, and young people struggle to afford rent.
That growing consensus marks an important turning point, one that Mayor Mamdani reinforced last week in his draft Fair Housing Growth Strategy calling for 700,000 new affordable homes. But it also raises an important question: where should all this new housing go? The answer is simple: everywhere.
No neighborhood should be expected to solve the housing crisis on its own. Every community has a responsibility to help create the affordable homes New Yorkers need. This isn’t a radical idea. In fact, it’s how New York used to approach housing.
In the 1940s, as returning veterans and the baby boom fueled demand, we built more than 150,000 homes across the city, including iconic developments such as Stuyvesant Town, Peter Cooper Village, and Parkchester. During the housing crisis of the 1960s and 1970s, city, state, and federal leaders created landmark housing programs and invested in transformative housing developments throughout the five boroughs. Many of those communities, like Co-op City, Starrett City, and Rochdale Village, continue to provide affordable housing today.
The lesson is clear: New York made progress because it treated affordable housing as a citywide priority. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case.
Affordable housing production is increasingly concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods, while wealthier communities add fewer affordable homes. Neighborhoods like Fordham in the Bronx and East New York in Brooklyn are asked to shoulder the city’s housing needs, while large portions of Manhattan and Northeast Queens are largely off the hook.
The reasons are understandable. Land costs are significantly higher in these neighborhoods, making affordable housing more difficult to finance. Yet these are precisely the communities where affordable housing is needed most.
Building in high-cost neighborhoods isn’t easy, but it’s possible.
In Midtown Manhattan, Slate Property Group is transforming the now-shuttered Stewart Hotel into a one-of-a-kind affordable and supportive housing development. In Williamsburg — one of Brooklyn’s fastest-growing and most expensive neighborhoods — we’re working on two affordable and supportive housing developments that will create 312 permanently affordable homes.
Earlier this summer, we stood with the Mamdani administration and unveiled a joint proposal to build nearly 1,000 units of affordable and supportive housing along the Long Island City waterfront.
These projects demonstrate that meaningful affordable housing can be built anywhere, even in high-cost neighborhoods, when government, nonprofits, and private developers work together.
Projects like these require public investment, creative financing, and policies that acknowledge the realities of building affordable housing where land is expensive. Newer programs such as 485-x are helping to fill gaps, but we need even bolder, more innovative thinking to meet the city’s housing targets. Inclusionary air rights, public-private partnerships, and alternatives to traditional tax credits can help move housing forward.
That’s why Mamdani has such a critical opportunity. If we truly believe every neighborhood should help solve this crisis, City Hall must continue expanding programs that make affordable housing feasible everywhere, not just where land is cheapest.
Our housing crisis is a citywide problem, and solving it will require a citywide commitment.
Schwartz is the co-founder and principal of Slate Property Group.