Posted on November 8, 2015 by Peter Moskowitz in Vice Vice, By Peter Moskowitz New York City has a problem that isn’t unprecedented or unique, but it’s undeniably a problem: Too many people want to live here. As a result, the vacancy rate has dropped to 1 percent in Manhattan, and the average price of a rental in that borough is higher than it’s ever been. Brooklyn is now the least affordable housing market (relative to income) in the entire country, and rents have risen in Staten Island, the Bronx, and Queens as well. Luxury condos have transformed neighborhoods like Williamsburg into glassy wastelands, and chain stores are taking over as independent bodegas are driven out. Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected partially on the promise that he’d reverse the Bloomberg-era trend of of anything-goes development. A proposal from the mayor calls for the construction of 80,000 units of affordable housing and the preservation of another 120,000 units. Most of those units would come as a result a policy called “mandatory inclusionary zoning,” which forces developers of large apartment complexes to set aside up to 30 percent of their units for lower-income residents.
