Seize deteriorating apartment buildings run by negligent landlords. Stop spending on new homeless shelters. Build apartments on church campuses and golf courses and on top of libraries.
In the race to be New York City’s next mayor, few issues have generated proposals as ambitious and sprawling as the housing crisis, a top concern for a growing number of voters.
The share of available apartments is at its lowest point in nearly 60 years, rents continue to climb and high rates of homelessness remain a persistent part of city life. There aren’t enough homes being built to satisfy the demand to live here, many housing experts say, while the Trump administration’s plan cut to federal housing aid could upend the city’s ability to help its most vulnerable residents.
Mayoral candidates across the political spectrum — those running in the June 24 Democratic primary and in November’s general election — agree that the situation is a threat to the city. In ways big and small, though, they differ on the best solutions.
Many of their proposals would be difficult to carry out. Several would require the skillful balancing of adverse political interests, including labor unions, real estate companies and pro-tenant groups. Some would be possible only with help from influential state or federal politicians who may resist development.
Most candidates do not say how they would pay for their plans, which carry price tags stretching into the many billions of dollars.
Still, candidates said it was better to be ambitious when it came to housing.
“It’s the No. 1 issue,” said Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn who is running in the Democratic primary.
He said that people needed to want to live in New York — and be able to afford to do so — in order for the city to generate the tax revenue it needs to survive.
“If we do not solve this crisis, if we do not build more and build rapidly and bring down the cost of rent, we’re going to suffer in many other ways,” he said.
Build More Homes. But How Many and Where?
Candidates agree that the city needs to encourage lots of development. Many are trying to outdo each other with eye-popping figures.
Two Democratic candidates, Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker, and Brad Lander, the city comptroller, have each thrown out a 500,000 home target; Ms. Adams is eyeing a racetrack in Queens as a development site while Mr. Lander wants to build neighborhoods on municipal golf courses. Michael Blake, a former Democratic state assemblyman, wants 600,000 homes built across the city.
Outdoing them all, Mr. Myrie said he wanted one million homes to be built or preserved over the next decade, in part by creating new neighborhoods and developments in places like Midtown Manhattan and the Brooklyn Marine Terminal.
Many candidates talk about building on underused city land, like in parking lots or on top of libraries and schools. Jim Walden, a lawyer and former prosecutor who is running as an independent, said the city should develop apartments on abandoned public properties like Bartow Station in the Bronx and the Neponsit Health Care Center in Queens. More than one-third of any new homes, he says, could be made affordable to lower-income New Yorkers.
These types of changes would require approval by the City Council or the State Legislature, which may not be forthcoming, and would involve months of public hearings and studies.
Several candidates want to build mixed-income housing on public housing campuses, where parking lots and lawns make enticing development sites. That would have the added benefit of generating money for the struggling New York City Housing Authority, which is essentially controlled by the mayor, who appoints its board members.
Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who leads in Democratic primary polls, said in his housing plan that adding 500,000 units over 10 years “will be necessary to meet demand.” But unlike his rivals, he has expressed reluctance toward developing in low-density neighborhoods, saying that those neighborhoods need to first absorb “the impact of recent rezoning efforts” that may already be encouraging development there. He says he would prefer to focus on denser parts of the city.
What About Affordable Housing?
The candidates acknowledge that the city needs to spend on affordable housing if it wants to push down costs for lower-income renters.
“I also want to make sure that as we are thinking about 500,000 or one million units, that we also have a road map to not just building housing for housing’s sake, but building housing for the people who need it the most,” said Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller running in the Democratic primary.
Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens who is polling in second place in the primary, wants to build 200,000 subsidized homes, including some for families earning less than $70,000 a year.
He says his plan would cost $100 billion over the next decade, a price tag that dwarfs the costs of the other candidates’ plans. Mr. Lander, for example, wants the city to spend $20 billion over the next decade on building and preserving homes.
Mr. Cuomo’s plan calls for an additional $2.5 billion in city and state funds to be spent on affordable housing and public housing over the next five years.
Curtis Sliwa, a Republican, said he would make sure that in subsidized housing, the city sets rents at levels low enough to “account for the real financial burdens New Yorkers face — high energy bills, student loans, medical expenses and other nonnegotiable costs.”
The next mayor will most likely have significant influence over the rent-stabilization system, because mayors appoint members of the Rent Guidelines Board, which decides if and how much rents in stabilized apartments can go up each year. Roughly half of all city apartments are rent-stabilized.
Mr. Mamdani, Mr. Myrie, Ms. Adams, Mr. Lander, Mr. Stringer, Mr. Blake and Jessica Ramos, a Democratic state senator, have said that if elected, they would lobby the board to halt increases, even though landlords are increasingly saying they are not making enough to keep units in rentable condition.
Under Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent, the board has allowed increases each year. Mr. Cuomo said he would want to create a subsidy program for landlords who need money to bring rent-stabilized units back online.
What Kind of Experience Matters?
The candidates’ proposals offer a sense of their priorities. But many of them say they are distinguished by their track records on housing.
Mr. Lander and Mr. Stringer both emphasize their policy work and experience in city government. Mr. Stringer highlighted how, when he served as Manhattan borough president, he helped craft development plans for West Harlem and other neighborhoods, while Mr. Lander pushed through a contentious development plan in Gowanus in Brooklyn.
“This has been my whole career,” Mr. Lander said in an interview about his plan.
Ms. Adams points to how she helped cajole other members of the City Council to accept development plans in their districts, despite opposition from neighborhood activists. She also successfully pushed for more affordable housing investment from the city and state.
Mr. Adams, who is not related to Ms. Adams, has made an ambitious citywide development plan, known as City of Yes, one of the milestone accomplishments of his first term. The plan, which was passed last year, is expected to make way for some 80,000 new homes to be built over the next decade.
The mayor said in a statement that the plan represented “bold, forward-looking action that meets the needs of New Yorkers, today and for generations to come.”
Mr. Cuomo served as housing secretary during the Clinton administration. And as governor, he spent many years negotiating with the real estate lobby and with left-leaning lawmakers supporting tenants. He helped pass sweeping pro-tenant legislation, while also pushing much-debated tax breaks for developers that he said he wants to bring back.
A spokeswoman for his campaign, Esther Jensen, said Mr. Cuomo would bring “strong political leadership and intensely focused operational execution” to address the housing crisis.
