Our success is rooted in our understanding of the development process and our application of creative solutions to complex situations. Whether navigating the technicalities of land assemblage, leasing up vacant properties, crafting financing solutions, or negotiating with governmental agencies over zoning and environmental issues, our experience and attention to detail enable us to achieve successful results.

NYC isn’t building enough housing to keep up with job growth: report

November 4, 2019 | Press Release

The city’s housing production declined an average of 25 percent from pre- to post- Great Recession

It may seem like New York City is in the midst of a building boom, with new developments continuing to go up in areas including Long Island City and Downtown Brooklyn. But a new report prepared by the Department of City Planning refutes that, and makes the case that New York City needs to build more housing to keep up with its “explosive” job growth.

The report, titled “The Geography of Jobs,” delves into the city’s and tri-state area’s economic growth, in particular its employment trends and housing needs—and found that the latter is not keeping pace with the former.

New York City has the densest concentrations of employment within the tri-state region, with an average of 150,000 workers per square mile in Lower Manhattan. After the Great Recession, NYC’s “explosive growth” represented 73 percent of the region’s net private jobs gains, according to the report. The city also gained more than 90,000 jobs per year on average since 2010 and 309,000 workers, which represents more than half the region’s labor force growth.

But New York City’s housing production declined an average of 25 percent from pre- to post- Great Recession. Between 2001 and 2018 NYC added 770,000 jobs and 407,000 housing units, or 362,900 more net new jobs than housing units.

“Though NYC produced relatively consistent numbers of new housing units pre- and post-Great Recession, job growth significantly outpaced housing production in the last decade—by a rate of 3.6 net new jobs for every unit permitted,” the report reads.

While the city produced more jobs than housing units, Connecticut and New Jersey had the opposite problem, creating more housing units than jobs. This imbalance has unintended consequences for the city; for example, more residents outside of the city are commuting in, which takes a toll on NYC’s transit network, according to the report.

Commuting trends.

Between 2000 and 2017, the number of residents of the region commuting into NYC for work grew by 24 percent, all while the number of NYC workers who commute from within the city also grew, by 29 percent. The increase in commuters traveling into NYC shows the importance of the region’s transit infrastructure and has implications for long-term investments, the report says.

“The addition of jobs as well as housing in highly accessible, transit-oriented locations outside the city (and the Manhattan core) offers an opportunity to relieve pressure on transit networks while improving access to job opportunities for the rest of the region,” the report reads.