A Gothamist analysis of city data shows nearly 70% of the roughly 24,000 subsidized, affordable units built or financed citywide since Mayor Adams took office are studios and one-bedroom apartments that don’t easily accommodate families because of their size. The concentration of these smaller units is higher in many parts of the city with greater proportions of families, such as the north Bronx and eastern Queens, according to census data. As a result, the tens of thousands of families who submit applications for affordable housing each year are left with little chance of landing a small number of apartments big enough to accommodate them.
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“It’s a continually vexing issue: Which of these things do we need more of?” said Citizens Housing and Planning Council Executive Director Howard Slatkin, who worked at the city’s planning department for over two decades. Family-sized affordable units were also in short supply during the Bill de Blasio administration, as City Limits has reported.
“Like so many things in housing, we end up answering like it’s an either-or question, but there’s such a need for both,” Slatkin said.
Read more at Gothamist.
