It’s getting harder and harder to find an affordable place to live in New York City, but no one actually knows how many low-cost apartments are being held off the market — a practice known as “warehousing” that is fueling intense backlash from tenant groups and policymakers.
Estimates based on city and state data range from nearly 90,000 vacant apartments to fewer than 40,000, but at a Council hearing on Tuesday, the city’s affordable housing agency submitted a new metric: 2,500.
Department of Housing Preservation and Development Assistant Commissioner Lucy Joffe told members of the City Council that the agency counted just 2,477 rent-stabilized units “that had been vacant and off-the-market for 12 months or more, were in need of repairs, and had a low legal rent” of less than $1,000.
She said concerns over the deliberate warehousing of apartments by landlords who say it’s not profitable, or simply economically feasible, to rehab and rent them out are overblown and “distracting” from a broader housing shortage.
“We do not have a lot of low-cost vacant units,” Joffe said. “The dearth of units available for rent on any given day in our city is one of the main problems in our housing market. This is why it is incredibly difficult, especially for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers, to find a new home they can afford if they have to move.”
But tenant groups, landlords and councilmembers all pushed back on HPD’s accounting.
Several councilmembers accused the agency itself of downplaying the number of units held off the market and only focusing on the dwindling number of regulated apartments with rents below $1,000 a month.
“We have no idea how many vacant apartments we have in New York City and we’re just guessing,” said Brooklyn Councilmember Lincoln Restler.
Restler is sponsoring a bill that would force landlords of both market-rate and rent-stabilized apartments to provide detailed information about all empty units, along with vacant commercial spaces. Currently, just owners of rent-stabilized apartments are required to submit registration data to the state, though those responses can be slow and some landlords fail to submit the information.
“We need real data to understand just how many vacant apartments there are in New York City. The estimates are all over the place,” Restler told Gothamist at a rally to end “warehousing” ahead of the Council hearing. “And we need to get the data on exactly where they are, and we need to hear from landlords on what it’s going to take to make them inhabitable so that every single available apartment in New York City can house a working family.”
Homelessness has surpassed record highs over the past year, with more than 80,000 people spending the night in the city’s shelter systems. At the same time, rents have spiked to new heights, with the housing shortage apparent in some surreal listings.
The city’s most recent annual housing survey found that fewer than 1% of apartments priced below $1,500 were empty and available for rent in 2021. Meanwhile, 42,860 rent-stabilized were being held off the market for a variety of reasons, the survey found.
Joffe said the agency’s analysis found that more than a quarter of those apartments were undergoing renovations at the time of the survey and thousands were priced well above $3,000 per month.
But tenant groups are urging the city and state to find out just how many apartments are offline amid a housing shortage.
At the rally ahead of the hearing, tenants and some councilmembers spoke out against the practice of “warehousing,” citing decrepit buildings full of empty units in Washington Heights owned by Daniel Ohebshalom, number one on the public advocate’s annual worst landlord list, or vacant apartments in a South Williamsburg building with dozens of open violations.
“There are three empty apartments and nobody wants to fix them,” said tenant Silo Espinal who lives in an apartment on South 4th Street. “In the winter, there’s no heat.”
Councilmember Gale Brewer said stricter rent protections enacted in 2019 are leading to landlords holding apartments because they do not find it profitable, or at times cannot afford to renovate apartments and rent them out with their monthly returns capped.
She too criticized HPD’s commentary on the number of vacant units.
“This is a very contentious issue,” Brewer said. “I just don’t understand why we’re not doing all we can to move people into these apartments.”
Councilmembers also discussed another bill, introduced by Councilmember Carlina Rivera, that would require HPD to contact owners after receiving complaints about hazardous conditions in empty apartments and inspect those units within three weeks.
Tenants frequently complain about egregious conditions in empty apartments infested with rats and roaches, susceptible to long-term leaks or prone to break-ins.
“We have broken doors, we have mold, we have rats, really unsafe conditions in the middle of a housing crisis,” Rivera said. “No matter the number that you are hearing, it is unacceptable to have these units be vacant to warehouse units.”
The landlord group Community Housing Improvement Program, which represents owners of rent-stabilized apartments, is opposing both Restler and Rivera’s bills.
They say the measures do nothing to address the funding needed to renovate vacant apartments and bring them up to code, while also enabling owners to earn money from rent.
“Tens of thousands of apartments sitting empty. It’s not a conspiracy, it is basic economics,” said CHIP Executive Director Jay Martin. “We need real solutions and housing policies that work. Hopefully, the City Council will support solutions instead of wasting their time collecting more data that will likely be ignored.”
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