Moving in the Time of a Housing Crisis

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

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It’s probably too obvious to say that I hate moving. I don’t know that there’s anyone out there who enjoys it (if you do, please let me know your secrets, ASAP). I’m moving in a few months and there’s not a single part of this process that doesn’t stress me out. I can’t start looking for a place just yet because it’s too early for anything to be available. By the time it makes sense to start looking, I’ll have at most eight weeks to find an apartment. And then there is the process of packing up my entire life into boxes. I own more books than any one person really should which makes packing even more complicated - books are heavy. I have a lot of stuff to get rid of, lots of breakable things that need padding. I stole boxes from work for my past few moves, but I don’t go into my office anymore, so now I have to figure out where to get packing material. 

So the thing I really didn’t need showing up in my inbox was a headline from The City that read: Looking for an NYC Apartment? Good Luck.

Thanks, guys. But I don’t really think luck is going to get me through this. 

Looking for an apartment in NYC already feels like housing on hard mode. This city is an expensive place to live, and it's deceptively huge. Living near friends and work and in a neighborhood you like is almost impossible, so the least you should be able to do is live near a train so it’s easy to get places, but alas, that can be pretty hard too. And as the aforementioned article points out, it’s getting a lot harder. 

“The vacancy rate for New York City rental apartments has dropped to a minuscule 1.4% according to a key U.S. Census survey,” the article starts out. And it really only gets worse from there. “The supply of even higher-priced apartments is tight, with the vacancy rate of units renting for more than $2,400 a low 3.39%. Virtually no apartments renting for less than $1,100 are unoccupied.” 

Now, I would say, broadly speaking, I make a decent amount of money - certainly compared to a lot of people who are trying to find housing in this city. And I have the benefit of not needing to be close to a specific location for my job. I’m not truly worried I won’t be able to find an apartment, and even if I couldn’t I have a safety net. But it’s not a completely absurd concern. 

NYC has some specific issues that contribute to its housing concerns, not least of which is that there are just an insane amount of people trying to live in a pretty condensed space and they range from the extraordinarily wealthy buying investment apartments they don’t actually live in to the people who are not paid nearly enough money to clean those same buildings. And in between there are firefighters and doctors and lawyers and janitors and street vendors and people who work in movie theaters and drug stores and grocery stores and department stores and people who work at nonprofits and publishing houses and at City Hall and we’re all trying to rent an apartment from people or companies whose first priority is not actually housing, but making money. 

But this is not a New York City problem - this is a national problem, and you can tell because it also made it into Biden’s State of the Union. 

From the New York Times: according to a recent report by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, half of all renters in the U.S. spend in excess of the recommended 30% of income for housing, more than at any other time in history. And more than 12 million spent more than half their income on rent in 2022. And while the rapid increase in rental prices we saw during the pandemic has slowed somewhat, rents are still up 19% over what they were prior to the pandemic. 

Cost pressures in housing are excessive now in part for the same reasons everything is more expensive - inflation drove costs up and then instead of coming back down as inflation has eased, many landlords and developers kept costs artificially high to increase their own profits. And while the Biden administration has done a lot to address the supply chain issues, it is still expensive and challenging to get materials from one place to another. All this means we’re not building housing fast enough to keep up with the demand, and what housing is getting built is not necessarily affordable. 

It shouldn’t need to be said, but housing is a non-negotiable. And yet, it’s the biggest expense in most people’s budgets, the most challenging to maintain, and the hardest to provide for those who can’t afford it. And it is often where the worst of our instincts come out to play. The legacy of racism and redlining in our housing policy and practice has kept neighborhoods segregated and the Fair Housing Act hasn’t been able to force that much change. Segregation has actually increased in some wealthy enclaves around the country. And much though I would like to place the blame solely on Republicans for this crisis, there are more than enough liberal NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) to make clear that this is not a red or blue issue. Just this weekend two Democratic lawmakers in NYC led a “surprisingly large” rally to protest the building of a homeless shelter in their district. 

What does the building of a homeless shelter have to do with my own housing woes, you ask? Nothing really. And yet, everything. I am single, and I have no kids. I make $72,000 a year and I’m getting a bonus soon that should cover the cost of my move plus give me a little walking around money. I never worry about food, I have time and money to travel. My parents are a loving and generous safety net. I’m a middle class white woman and I have all the privileges that come with that. And I’m stressed about housing and rent. Imagine how much harder it is for millions of people all over the country. Imagine how much more insurmountable this problem feels when your potential new neighbors launch a campaign to keep you out of their neighborhood, when you have kids but you barely make enough to afford a one bedroom so you end up living an hour or more’s commute away from your job. Imagine how awful it feels to be surrounded by luxury apartment buildings and empty office buildings when you have a job and you’re still living on the streets or in your car. 

In his State of the Union, President Biden announced a series of policies to try to address the housing crisis, building on previous policies his administration put in place to help renters and tenants. This is a really important recognition of a crisis facing people all over this country. But executive action is not going to solve the crisis on its own. And a Congress at war with itself, in fact the most unproductive Congress basically ever, is not going to be able to solve the problem either, unless Democrats take back the House, keep the Senate and the White House, and we continue to pressure them to pass bold, progressive legislation. 

There is only so much the federal government can do, however. Housing policy is a mess of local zoning laws, state and city tax breaks, and neighborhood councils. It’s just as important to get involved in local politics and campaign for politicians who will actually untangle the contradictory and unfair incentives in how we manage not just housing, but education and health care and transportation. Fight for affordable housing. Show up in Facebook groups and city council meetings and zoning meetings and school board meetings. Talk to friends and family - speak up when they start saying that the new housing development makes them nervous. Remember that the people who will live there are just like you - they might have less money, they might have different struggles and different traditions and different goals. But they are people and just like you and your friends and family they make the world richer and more interesting and better just by being in. And we can all make each other’s worlds better by saying yes. 

Say yes, even in my backyard.