"Crisis" As Lobby Ploy

   It was a beautiful day as we sat down for a quick breakfast. The back door to the firehouse kitchen was chocked open. The sun streamed in and the spring air was a welcome change.  

     During breakfast I was told of a new building site that was a complete interior “gut job.” The site was  four brownstones, a side by side merger.  Apparently all four buildings had been bought by a couple with the intention of combining all of them into one residence.  My first question was, “ four brownstones? do they have 12 kids?” “No,” came the answer rather quickly from one of the guys, “It’s just them.”   I could not fathom four brownstones being combined for just two people. I still can’t. 

      We quickly finished our cereal and got ready for the day.  It was Tuesday, BISP day (Building Investigation Safety Program), and we were to leave for inspection at 10am, barring any runs. 

            We loaded up into the rig and set out.  It took no time at all to get there.  We pulled up to the site to see large steel beams, and a complex shoring system holding up the exterior of the 4 buildings in question while the interior structures were being completely demolished.  It was a sight to behold, and an interesting engineering feat, but my thoughts went back to, all of that space for just two people.  I was further floored when I was told that this was not the owners' only property.  

     One brownstone is a lot to vacuum. I can’t imagine four of them put together, but then again these buyers probably had not had their hands on a vacuum in some time, if at all.  This was not the first mega mansion in the neighborhood, but it was one of the biggest I had seen to date.

      In an article in “The City,” written by Rachel Holliday Smith submitted on August 24, 2023 Ms. Smith cites that, “NYC lost 100,000 apartments to house conversions…Over the last 70 years mergers of flats and rooming houses into bigger residences has taken a toll on the city housing stock.” Ms. Smith further cites a row house at 34 East 68th Street in Manhattan. “In 1879 this building housed 17 apartments, now it is a 9,600 sq. ft. single family home that changed hands for 11.5 million in 2011 with a gut renovation.” 

      I have never begrudged anyone their success from hard work, or the financial reward that comes with it.  I, for one, am a step farther up the economic ladder than my relatives who arrived on these shores  one generation ago. I am also aware that the longer a family lives in this country the more likely the possibility, depending on one’s luck and circumstances, to have the ability to compound generational wealth. 

     This city, however, is in the middle of a housing crisis, so we are told.  A crippling crisis, if we are to believe the reports from the media, and City Hall.  How is a city with a profound, and alarming crisis allowing multiple buildings to be combined for just two occupants for a property that is not their primary residence?

      The West Village, over the years, had become a place of considerable wealth.  Long time residents clung to the neighborhood as best they could, but with the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital the influx of money and privilege accelerated quickly.

     St. Vincent’s, like many hospitals, had provided housing throughout the neighborhood for staff members.  When the hospital closed, staff quarters were sold off and a good portion of the middle class, and working class who occupied those buildings had to vacate the neighborhood.

        The hospital itself, a safe haven for many New Yorkers, had served this city proudly for 161 years.  It was founded in 1849 by the Sisters of Charity, a Catholic order of nuns, and had a  long history including, treating cholera patients during an outbreak in 1849, handling the typhoid epidemic of 1853, and accepting and treating the victims of the Titanic tragedy who were dropped off at the Cunard Pier just off West 13th Street in 1912. During the 1980’s the hospital treated many patients with a new and unknown deadly disease that was eventually identified as AIDS.  

     With the closing of the hospital during the Bloomberg Administration, the now empty buildings were converted into a large luxury complex. The abrupt transition sent shock waves throughout the real estate market in the area as well as the surrounding neighborhoods.  In addition it left the West Side of Manhattan without a hospital from 59th Street to the South Street Seaport.

             Capitalism doesn’t allow for the status quo to remain, and the market ruled with Mike Bloomberg as mayor.  With the introduction of this behemoth development, the prices for real estate quickly escalated sending those just trying to hang on flying out of the neighborhood to find cheaper rents.  

     Suffice it to say large portions of the borough of Manhattan were heading that way already, but it was alarming to see the speed of the transformation and the ripple effects when a project of this magnitude is introduced into the microcosm of  just one neighborhood.

     Statistics from New York City’s Furman Center cite that  “over 185,000 multi family units were added to the city’s housing stock between 2010 and 2020.”  “Three in ten of those units were targeted for low income households.”  The population of the city has declined by 5.3% or 546,000 residents from April 2020 to July 2023 according to the census bureau.  The reported vacancy rate for apartments in NYC in 2024 is 1.4%. The numbers are not adding up.  

     When the term crisis is invoked,  a three dimensional picture must be drawn in order to approach the problem in a measured and somewhat solvable way.  To just  proclaim that we need, “more housing now!” is irresponsible and does nothing to dissuade the idea that monied interests are informing the decisions on how to proceed.  Social change is socially engineered, and it is socially engineered from the top.  

     We have an affordability crisis in this city, like many cities.  In order to get down to brass tacks, statistics must include a great deal of data, not just the data that suits the preordained premise: how many apartments lay vacant due to warehousing, how many properties are private investments and not a homes, does the owner have a primary residence somewhere else, are properties being bought by LLC’s as part of an investment portfolio? These are just some of the few questions to be considered before action should be taken.

     All of these variables and much more need to be addressed and explored as to how much housing availability actually exists and how is it being used, lest we lose the opportunity to address this problem in a way that actually houses people and prepares for the city’s long term future. 

      A city, like New York,  can not use property as an investment in order to create capitol and not expect that the goal of housing all New Yorkers to quickly fall by the wayside when there are large amounts of cash to be had.  Money and power have edged out the everyday citizen for centuries, and will continue to do so no matter how many high rises are built.  Just to add housing stock with no regulations does nothing to solve a now run away investment scheme.

     “Decades of housing subsidies, down payment assistance, artificially low interest rates, money printing and endless bank support have turned the American home into a financial product first and a place of shelter second,” Charles Marohn, “Stong Towns” August 19, 2024 from his article “The Housing Market is a Bubble Full of Fraud, and It’s Going To Pop.”

     Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s housing intiative steered by his then deputy mayor, Dan Doctoroff, put the emphasis on development for profit according to John Massengale’s editorial in “Our Town” on August 26, 2024 on the “City of Yes.”

       Mr. Massengale, a self described YIMBY,  is an architect and urban designer and has worked around the country with the Congress of New Urbanism.   In his editorial Mr. Massengale states, “Many of the changes proposed by the “City of Yes” ( the current mayor, Mayor Eric Adams housing proposal) are designed to make it easier for developers to build highly profitable luxury apartment towers.  They are a neoliberal vision in which the rich get rich and the poor get evicted.”  He goes on to say, “The most profitable buildings in the history of New York are the, luxury super tall apartment towers in Manhattan, marketed to the global rich as a new asset investment class……The old economic development emphasis on building low-income housing and working and poor neighborhoods changed to supporting and subsidizing large-scale expensive projects by the biggest developers.”  

     Mr. Massengale goes on to attest that Daniel Doctoroff who helmed Bloomberg’s housing plan was on the panel for the Adams “City of Yes” housing initiative.  How is this city ever to responsibly address any housing issue when the same individuals steering the conversation at the table for multiple administrations are the ones who have exacerbated the crisis to this degree?

        Inclusionary housing has been around since the 1970’s. During the Bloomberg Administration, and continued through the DeBlasio Administration inclusionary housing once again became the new catch phrase, and cure all.  All economic levels living under one roof.  This would provide housing for profit while giving a few apartments in each building to those who were not “high earners.” If the working and middle class were lucky they may get one of the apartments allocated to them, if not, there were far fewer units citywide to vie for, in an all out lottery that rivaled the mega millions jackpot. 

      If a city needs more housing, and there is in fact a crisis, the first question that needs to be asked is who is in greater need of the housing?  How can the city work with builders to build a supply of safe affordable residences with space for families to live in and how will city and state government maintain the rising costs to a level these families can sustain over the long haul while still allowing property owners enough income to maintain their properties and make a living?

      These are not new questions and the answers and solutions are not easy, but to start with the premise of a luxury city, one that will now require residents to pay more just to reside, is not even considering the enormity of the problem or allowing it to be addressed in any realistic way.  It is a business model, not a government one, and should have been rejected outright.  

     Instead the city got a lot of shiny new towers with dubious descriptions of “affordable apartments.”    Some of these new towers listed its affordable apartments starting at $90,000 to $100,000. There are many people in this city who would love to earn that salary, but will never attain it.  Where are they supposed to go? 

      It is certainly time to stop building super tall residences that are mostly unoccupied a majority of the time.  It is well past time for city government to stop the world’s wealthy from using NYC as a safe deposit box.  If this city is indeed in crisis, then the wealthy are not a priority.  They have resources few of us can even imagine, and they will do just fine as they always have. 

     City government, however, seems to have embraced the mandate of sheer profit, and the quick and easy buck  without any accountability, and now we are seemingly in a game of catchup. All the rules go out the window in order for enough residences be built to appear to accommodate those in crisis, left out in the cold by the last two administration’s housing initiatives. 

     Mr. Massengale cites in his editorial that in 2019 49%of tax revenues for New York City came from revenues supplied by property tax.  There is no incentive for a weak, or unprepared administration to build affordable housing when they are confronted by an extremely powerful lobby (The Real Estate Board of New York, REBNY) whose product produces huge returns.

         NYC is built on finite space with finite resources.  We cannot responsibly build to accommodate endless numbers of people, or the endless need for profit.   The city’s infrastructure is very old.   If we don’t look at all of the variables we, as a city, will be continuing to chase our tails.  When building new residences in volume we must start by asking questions that very rarely see the light of day.  

      We are now in the process of building far higher than ever before and housing far more people on a square block than could have ever been imagined when this city first started as a village at the southern tip of Manhattan island. A few decades later, an apartment building on the Upper West side was called The Dakota because of its remoteness to the rest of the city.

     We live in an incredible time where we can produce, invent, and build things that could not have even been fathomed by those who came before us and this reality can lead to examining, and indeed pushing the edges of the envelope in ways we could never before, but there is a limit.  There are always limits.

     How many people can this city actually sustain, and how many people can be absorbed healthfully by the city’s infrastructure?  What is the maximum amount of people that can ride the trains at rush hour?  By the look of the IRT on the East Side, we are already at maximum capacity.  

     Planning is everything and to every plan there are limitations..  The idea of just building to the sky without looking to below the street level, to see how we are going to supply and maintain the sheer size and volume of these structures, or take into account just how many people this finite property can sustain, is all very relevant now. 

      We need only to look at the Paris Olympic Games of recent memory to see that all of the good thoughts and plans were humbled in the face of reality and dated infrastructure.   The venue for the swim portion of the olympic triathlon was the river Seine.  It seems a picturesque place from the television coverage I have seen, but go below the street to the sewage treatment facility.  The realization of what worked decades ago, is now straining to keep up with a city that has outgrown its infrastructure. 

      To replace the system, according to those familiar with it, as reported on CBS Sunday Morning, would be incredibly destructive to the city scape, not to mention cost prohibitive.  What is a city of considerable age and population to do?  Paris decided to have the athletes swim, hoping, and I am sure praying, that it would not rain for the days proceeding the event.  That plan went awry quickly.  Mother nature had other ideas.

     How many towers are we going to build, and for whom?  What is the capacity of the infrastructure  below these buildings?  In a layperson’s terms one may ask, how many toilets will be added to the inlet for the waste pipe that lies under the concrete and macadam of the street at that particular intersection?  If there are more high rises built, add that many more toilets.  If they don’t all flush together the pipe, perhaps installed over 100 years ago may hold, but for how long?  

     A city block that was ringed by 4 story tenements, consisting of a store on the ground floor and 2 or 3 apartments above has now been raised, and a 50 story building is being put in its place with 15 apartments on each floor. The grid is being over taxed and that is not getting enough attention. For this city to try to even begin to modernize the grid for this scope of construction, is a dilemma in and of itself, and one that should be considered before building plans are submitted.

     In order to address all of this, which is daunting in and of itself, the city has to define who needs housing the most.  Who are the builders who can provide this type of housing, and what the scale of these projects should be.  Too big and they will overwhelm the city so that is no longer livable, too small and sparse and housing insecurity will continue to be  rampant.  

     City government must also consider strong measures on costs and protections for rent and maintenance charges of existing property’s throughout the city, so that people who are now on a fixed income are not hit with exorbitant rent or maintenance increases.  On a personal note, my maintenance charges went up almost 18% in the last two years due to real estate taxes and labor costs and when the green initiatives kick in the costs may be too prohibitive to remain.  All of these variables are in the mix.  To just build more buildings is not addressing the cost of just living.  

     Building owners must be able to pay their expenses, and gain a profit but not at the cost of discarding anyone who cannot pay top dollar. The city should explore ways to protect the environment without bankrupting residents, and city government must realize the reality that catering to the super wealthy is not plan and in the long term will strip this city of everything that is vital to it. Perhaps we should look to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s 2019 housing initiative in Washington D.C. to create 36,000 housing units by 2025.  To date the initiative has built 36,216 housing units. We need to look out side our own borders to explore all possibilities instead of just relying on the same voices with the same  agendas pushing out policy.

     When housing becomes a commodity, all costs rise not just the rent, and building more will do nothing to alleviate that.  It is time for a constructive, compassionate approach to housing, one that includes all, not just those who are in the top 1%.