Tuesday,
February 11, 2025
Year : 2, Issue: 24
Gothamist: The two-bedroom apartment on Tiebout Avenue in the Bronx boasts a remodeled kitchen, polished hardwood floors, new plumbing and new electrical systems. It’s a fourth-floor walkup, but the monthly rent is just $1,250.85, and the unit is reserved for families earning no more than $101,000 a year.
Yet, the renovated apartment has been sitting empty since September 2023. The owner, a nonprofit development corporation called University Neighborhood Housing Program, is desperate to rent it to a family, but its leaders say the city’s bureaucratic rules have kept them from doing that for nearly a year-and-a-half.
“It’s infuriating,” said Brendan Mitchell, University Neighborhood Housing Program’s director of real estate. “It goes against everything we believe in to have vacant units sitting there throughout a housing crisis while people we are serving are just dying to get into an apartment in the neighborhood.”
A new report from the New York Housing Conference found that hundreds, if not thousands, of similar apartments sit empty for months after tenants leave. That’s because of city rules that require landlords to sift through long lists of people registered in the city’s housing lottery system, instead of permitting owners to list them on the market or allowing would-be renters to apply directly, according to the report. Its authors say the delays are exacerbating the city’s already severe housing shortage, and are calling for changes to move tenants into empty affordable apartments faster.
“New Yorkers are desperate for affordable housing and we have affordable housing units that are not being rented today because they are getting delayed by the city’s re-rental rules,” said Rachel Fee, who is the New York Housing Conference’s executive director and a former official at the city’s housing agency.
It’s unclear how many vacant apartments are held up in the process citywide. The rules that require landlords to contact potential tenants were intended to make the process for filling empty affordable apartments more equitable. Fee said they apply to tens of thousands of apartments owned by private companies and nonprofit groups that qualify for tax breaks or loans from the city in exchange for pricing the units for low- and middle-income renters. The wait times are longest for older apartments that are renovated and kept affordable after the owners receive funds and tax breaks from the city, according to the report.
