Most affordable housing in New York City has been built in lower-income Black and Latino neighborhoods

The building of affordable housing in New York City reached the largest figures in decades last year, with most units going up in predominantly lower-income Black and Latino neighborhoods, a new report showed.

The figures were published by the third annual NYC housing tracker from advocacy organization New York Housing Conference. It showed that over 14,200 new units were produced in 2023.

According to Gothamist, the organization's executive director, Rachel Fee, said the report seeks to hold councilmembers accountable for how they make land decisions.

"We thought it was important to start tracking who's saying yes to housing and who's saying no," said Fee. "It's very clear that some neighborhoods are doing a lot and others have really been left off the hook for years of not producing any affordable housing. And it's no surprise that the disparities in affordable housing production also track with pretty big differences in income and race by district."

The areas that produced the most units were Brooklyn's District 30 and Queen's District 21. The report added that, overall, the top-producing districts were in Central Brooklyn, the Bronx, Northern Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn and Queens near the waterfront, as well as eastern Queens.

The populations of these neighborhoods were in average over 70% Black or Latino. This compares to under 30% in the 10 districts with the least affordable housing production.

"The top 10 districts also have an average median income of just over $67,000 –$20,000 less than the 10 districts with the least affordable housing production. Further, a quarter of residents in top-producing districts live in poverty, more than double the poverty rate of the bottom ten districts," the report added.

The document also includes recommendations to build more affordable housing, including increasing capital funding to subsidize more units and creating tax incentives for developers. It also recommended zoning changes, especially in low-density districts where more land could be available for residential use.