Sarah Watson, the Citizens Housing and Planning Council‘s Deputy Director, says over the years, city policy has exacerbated the housing shortage. In the 1950s and ’60s, New York was anxious to keep stable families from fleeing to the suburbs, so it shut down a lot of the single-room occupancy hotels and apartment hotels.
“Our approach was actually looking at how government policy and how regulations can better support how people are really living than trying to enforce an idea of how they should,” she says.
