By Pansy Schulman
"In a way, architects know everything about affordable housing, and very little," said Benjamin Prosky, executive director of AIA New York, as he addressed a crowded room last week to kick off a half-day conference titled "NYC’s Housing Crisis." Held at the city’s newly inaugurated Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, the event served as an urgent pre-design call to action. Prosky elaborated on the sentiment before a diverse audience of industry professionals, noting that while design professionals naturally want to default to what they know best—designing their way out of a difficult situation—the multifaceted nature of the city’s housing emergency demands a broader, cross-disciplinary approach. Rather than focusing solely on blueprints and zoning diagrams, the conference brought architects together with policymakers, grassroots activists, and academic researchers who have spent years grappling with the city’s housing challenges on the front lines.
New York City’s housing crisis is far from a recent development; it is a systemic issue evidenced by record rates of homelessness, a high volume of evictions, and an ever-widening affordability gap that has been festering for decades. The roots and trajectories of this crisis span multiple mayoral administrations. By the end of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 12-year tenure in 2013, the economic divide had stretched dramatically, with the wealthiest one percent of New Yorkers earning an average of 45 times more than the bottom 99 percent. Succeeding him, Bill de Blasio campaigned on an explicit promise to amend this stark "tale of two cities." Over the course of his two terms, his administration recorded the creation or preservation of more than 465,000 units of affordable housing across the five boroughs.
Despite these substantial numerical achievements, the core crisis remained stubbornly unresolved. More than half of all New York City households continue to be rent-burdened, meaning they spend upwards of 50 percent of their total income strictly on housing costs, while city shelter populations have soared to all-time highs. Now, at the dawn of another new mayoral administration under Eric Adams—who has pledged a notable $22 billion toward affordable housing initiatives over the coming decade—housing advocates and urban policy experts argue that even this substantial financial commitment falls short of what is truly required to reverse decades of neglect and economic displacement.
Setting an intellectual tone for the morning sessions, New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman delivered an eloquent keynote address offering a sense of perspective. "Crisis is an opportunity for change," Kimmelman noted, a philosophical framework that was repeatedly echoed by subsequent speakers throughout the morning. The event, which heavily emphasized policy, real estate economics, and social equity, was organized into three distinct panel discussions. The first panel looked backward at the historical origins and steady escalation of the housing emergency; the second examined current regulatory and programmatic approaches along with their practical effectiveness; and the third looked forward to emerging models of urban development and alternative housing typologies.
During the opening panel, titled "The Past: Defining the Crisis," all three featured speakers traced the roots of today’s precarious landscape back to the fiscal turmoil of the 1970s. That era fundamentally reshaped urban governance, forging a new, enduring, but often contentious kind of public-private partnership. Ingrid Gould Ellen of New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy presented stark economic data during the session. She noted that housing prices across New York City have skyrocketed twentyfold since 1974, while median incomes over the same period have grown by a mere factor of 6.5. Ellen pointed to compounding pressures, including shrinking amounts of developable land, decades of federal divestment from public housing programs, and rapidly accelerating wealth inequality. This economic polarization allows high-earning newcomers to continuously drive up rental and purchase prices throughout the urban core.
Joining Ellen on the opening panel, Moses Gates of the Regional Plan Association argued that the physical management of space is an overlooked driver of the crisis. Gates highlighted how the urban landscape has shifted since the 1980s, pointing to a persistent increase in the number of vacant residential units across the city—many of which function merely as underutilized pied-à-terre investments for non-residents—coupled with a steady dilution and weakening of rent-regulation protections over the years.
The second panel, moderated by Brian Loughlin, a principal at Magnusson Architects, was titled "The Present: What’s Working? What’s Not?" Loughlin opened the discussion by arguing that the authentic interests and long-term stability of everyday residents are frequently sidelined within the profit-driven public-private partnerships that have dominated New York’s urban development strategies in recent decades.
Offering a counterpoint on the legislative front, State Senator Brian Kavanagh highlighted recent positive policy developments at the state level. He drew specific attention to the landmark tenant protection laws passed in 2019, which represent the strongest legislative safeguards for renters seen in New York in generations, alongside a renewed, if belated, state government commitment to funding affordable housing production. Meanwhile, Jamie Smarr of the nonprofit developer National Housing Partnership suggested that ordinary New Yorkers possess a clear, pragmatic understanding of why comprehensive affordable housing legislation is urgently needed, pointing to the broad public triumph and integration of mandatory inclusionary zoning laws across the city’s neighborhoods.
An especially compelling and grounding voice on the panel came from Karen Blondel, founder of the Public Housing Civic Association. Blondel delivered a sharp reminder that policymakers must meaningfully listen to public housing residents and bring them directly to the decision-making table. Drawing from her own lived experience, she spoke candidly about the physical decay, infrastructural neglect, and unsafe living conditions that she and her neighbors at the public Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn have been forced to endure over the past four decades. Blondel’s presence and testimony successfully kept the panel discussion anchored in tangible human reality, countering the tendency of high-level urban planning conferences to drift into abstract hypotheticals.
The third and final panel of the conference, "The Future: New Models of Development/New Approaches," featured newly elected Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Positioning himself as part of a rising generation of city leaders committed to declining campaign contributions from major real estate interests, Reynoso delivered an energetic pre-panel address. He pushed back against what he termed the "YIMBY/NIMBY deaf loop," a polarized political gridlock that routinely stifles sensible development and the construction of much-needed housing units. Making a forceful case for increased residential density, Reynoso stated plainly, "We need height, we need a lot of it. Height is the way out."
Continuing the exploration of innovative future models, Muzzy Rosenblatt, executive director of the nonprofit Bowery Residents’ Committee, detailed a successful development initiative he spearheaded. Rosenblatt described how he successfully convinced municipal leaders to subsidize the development and mortgage financing for a combined shelter and low-income housing project located in the Bronx. By securing strategic municipal aid, the organization was able to generate sustainable revenue streams to subsidize below-market rents for individuals transitioning out of the shelter system and directly into permanent homes within the 130-unit residential complex. "We can design and build with dignity," Rosenblatt argued, "and recapture profit to subsidize more units of housing."
The conference, jointly presented by AIA New York and the Center for Architecture, marked the formal beginning of a broader, ongoing initiative. In his closing remarks, Benjamin Prosky announced that the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate will publish a comprehensive research report later this year to support the initiative’s goals. As evidenced by the day’s discussions, forging viable pathways toward affordable, equitable, and sustainable housing for all New Yorkers will ultimately require a complex confluence of bold policy reform, grassroots activism, and rigorous public debate, alongside the dedicated technical expertise of architects and urban designers.
Architectural Record served as the official media sponsor for the conference. A full video recording of the event has been made available online for public viewing.
