Optimism is Warranted

Many New York City and State officials,^[1] including the mayor and governor, have obviously read The Housing Theory of Everything or something like it. This is evident by their sharp, bold rhetoric that’s backed up with increasingly concrete action. They have an excellent grip on the economic, environmental, procedural, accessibility, social, cultural, historical, and other effects of housing policy, and they’ve laid those out clearly. They know we need to build, and they acknowledge that without hedging. While I believe they need to go even further, I am pleased with their current stances. To go further, they need more support from all of us, which is straightforward.

We have more people than homes. This shortage gives landlords the power to charge any price they want and leaves too many New Yorkers with no place to go. That needs to change. And history is on our side. We used to build things; we can do it again. We built the Empire State Building in just over one year at the lowest point of the Great Depression. 100 years ago, we built 750,000 new homes, more than three times the number of homes built over the past 10 years. Think about that for a minute. —Eric Adams, NYC Mayor, December 8, 2022

While this essay is not comprehensive (follow-on pieces will explore more), it introduces these ideas:

We’re making good progress. Immense progress has been made toward housing abundance in New York. The freefall has stopped, the climb upward has begun. The housing crisis will end—it’s just a matter of how quickly and to what degree now. The political reality of housing is far sunnier than you know, but more clouds can yet recede.
The rhetoric favors supply. We have reached a rhetorical turning point—the idea that housing supply is the root cause and solution to our housing crisis has reached the centers of power and taken root.
Policy changes are underway. Needed policy changes are already being implemented, with political will being thrown behind even larger changes to come.
You can make a difference. While political leaders are proposing and enacting needed changes, they still do not go as far as they should, and there are plenty of critiques of their changes. But you shouldn’t be discouraged by this—there are many opportunities to move the needle and contribute your political and social capital toward housing abundance.
The NYC City Cou

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YIMBY