The only way to end the increasingly bleak outlook on poverty is actually to fix the housing crisis and not just talk about fixing the housing crisis. Credit to Mayor Adams and others who are putting the shovels in the ground.
From the latest annual NYC Poverty Tracker report by Robin Hood: “In 2023, the cost of five basic necessities that make up the poverty line — food, shelter, utilities, clothing and telephone/ internet — outpaced income growth and the overall rate of inflation. This pushed the poverty threshold up to $47,190 for a renting family of four — 7.5% higher than the 2022 poverty threshold of $43,890 — causing more New Yorkers to fall below this line.”
How many more New Yorkers fell under the line? An additional 100,000, hiking the totals to 2.02 million, made up of 1.6 million adults and 420,000 children. The city’s 2023 poverty rate of 25% was nearly double the nation’s rate of 13%.
To some extent, poverty is a constant of an economically dynamic global city. We need a critical mass of strivers who are scrambling to build better lives for their children to come here, to work and work and work at jobs that many others might consider beneath them, to grow their bank accounts and set up their children for more economic success.
But poverty trends should not be getting increasingly bleak.
Robin Hood sets the threshold for a renting family of four at $47,190 — which is to say, based on its analysis, those who make less than that are considered impoverished. It breaks down the spending for such a family into key constituents: an average $10,859, or 23%, goes to food. $1,569, or 3%, goes to clothing. $3,893, or 3%, goes to utilities.
And, wait for it, a knock-your-socks-off $22,399, or 47%, goes to the cost of housing.
Which is to say, if city leaders stand by and let housing costs keep rising, they are consigning generations more to lives in poverty. If and only if they act boldly to ensure that housing is preserved and produced all throughout the city, they have a fighting chance to bring down those punishing costs and help lift tens if not hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty in the process.
Which brings us to a Bloomberg News headline we came across this week: “Austin rents tumble 22% from peak on massive home building spree.” Here’s how the Texas Tribune put it last month: “The chief reason behind Austin’s falling rents, real estate experts and housing advocates said, is a massive apartment building boom unmatched by any other major city in Texas or in the rest of the country. Apartment builders in the Austin area kicked into overdrive during the pandemic, resulting in tens of thousands of new apartments hitting the market.”
Austin points the way for New York, where supply is so tight, rental vacancy rates are an unheard-of 1.4%: produce more places for people to live — all types, for people at all income levels — and rents will slow their growth or even start to come down.
The mayor helped take us one big step in the right direction with his City of Yes rezoning. But that’s just fertilizing the ground. Developers need to plant the seeds, and communities need to pour the water, and politicians need to attack the many drivers of high housing costs, including the property tax.
Go, go, go. Build, build, build.