IT'S SPRINGTIME FOR INNOVATIVE HOUSING AND PLANNING POLICY.

OUR INITIATIVES

Housing Fits All

Twilight Zoning: The Uniquely Slow Growth in NYC's Low-Density Districts

Our analysis found that New York City's low-density zoning districts have added less housing per capita than any part of the metro area or other U.S. city.

Featured Initiatives

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Design & Housing Typologies

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Housing Fits All

Our housing supply problem is not just a matter of having too little housing, but also too few types of housing.

Economics & Finance

Keeping Home

A financially navigable path to maintain and upgrade existing buildings to tomorrow’s standards.

This Is How We Do It?

The processes we rely on to reach our housing goals too often take us further from them.

Featured publications

Design & Housing Typologies

Home Truths: A Survey of Unmet Housing Need in Lower-Density Districts

How well is the housing in low-density districts meeting the needs of residents? CHPC asked 805 New Yorkers to find out.

Brutal Bureaucracy Follow-up: Additional Housing Connect Analysis

CHPC expands its analysis of affordable housing lease-up times with new, more granular data.

Design & Housing Typologies

Basement Apartment Conversion Pilot Program Interim Report

The focus of this interim report is to describe why properties did or did not advance through the pilot and to outline additional changes that would enable the implementation of an effective legalization program at scale.

A tour of six notable refugee housing projects in Europe: a mini-directory

In its directory of housing projects, CHPC describes a range of facilities employed by cities to house refugees, including emergency shelters, temporary housing structures, and short-term and long-term construction projects.

Design & Housing Typologies

From Lot to Neighborhood to City: An Action Plan for Basement Flood Safety & Stormwater Equity

CHPC’s new report on basement flood safety & stormwater equity explores possible interventions designed for city-, neighborhood-, and lot-level accountability.

Gems from the Archive

How Tax Incentives Broke The Housing Deadlock in NYC (1960)

In the 1920s, booming immigration and lackluster construction had New York City in the throes of a dire housing shortage. The State legislature responded by launching a tax incentive for new housing. Half a decade later, after the biggest building boom in the city’s history, the shortage was gone.

SMALL HOMES: A PROPOSAL TO STIMULATE CONSTRUCTION (1981)

In December 1981, the Mayor’s Office of Construction released proposals to promote the construction of low-density housing. Issues it aimed to address included regulations that made three-family homes more costly and slow public review processes.

CHPC Surveys the Mayoral Candidates

In August, 1977, CHPC surveyed the mayoral candidates ahead of the primary elections on “ten major housing and planning issues” ranging from rent control to building a new convention center to the Westway project to using zoning to curb pornography.

CHPC IN THE NEWS

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Basement Conversion Plan Excludes Critical Neighborhoods

"Calling this a 'pilot' was the fig leaf that allowed them to play politics with boundaries," said Slatkin. "What we see instead is some version of political boundary salad that the state legislature has put out."

Key Feature of NYCHA PACT: Ability to Replace Property Management

"One of the features of PACT is that there's a responsiveness that's possible in property management because an underperforming property manager can be replaced," Slatkin said. "The ultimate clients in PACT are the NYCHA residents, and at the end of day the results have to be improved conditions for NYCHA tenants."

City of Yes reforms could reduce housing market pressure

"There is no single silver bullet for the housing crisis," Slatkin told Crain's. "Many steps are needed to give us a functioning housing system, including tax incentives to make new privately financed housing work, expanded resources to support housing for people at the lowest incomes, and efforts to limit the escalation of construction and operating costs."