New York City in 2005: Rents Up, Incomes Down

The City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development yesterday released their triennial report on New York City Housing and Vacancies. Most of the information that comes across in an initial looksie seems pretty common sense. The gist? While the household income of average New Yorkers has fallen, the price of living in the city has done anything but.

"You don't have to be a rocket scientist or a statistician to know that affordability is increasingly the fundamental problem that we face," the city's housing commissioner told the Times.

The study found that median household income in New York fell by 5.9 percent from 2001 to 2004 (from $33,900 to $32,000), whereas it was increasing from 1998 to 2001. At the same time as income was declining there was a 8.7 increase in the median monthly rent from 2002 to 2005 (from $782 to $850).

The scariest part of the report is that "more people are spending more of their paychecks on rent." In 2002 half of the renters in New York spent 28.6 percent of the household income on rent. Now they spend 31.2 percent. Another 28.8 percent of renters spent more than half of their income on rent in 2005.

Of course, there are two bits of nice news slipped in. First off, vacancy rates have started to increase, which means a reduction of pressure on the market. Second, "renters rated their satisfaction with their neighborhoods at the highest levels in 27 years." But then again, if you're going to pay that much rent you damn well better like your neighborhood...

Photo detail from ohadby's flickr stream.

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By Garth Johnston in News on February 11, 2006 2:19 PM

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rosaphilia

if nycha did a better job of evicting drug dealers and actively evicting illegal subleters and stopped allowing children to autoatically "inherit" uncles, parents, or other family members' larger apartments after their parents die or move away and if nycha verified by mail box listings inside the individual apartments' mailboxes who and how many people are receiving mail to which apartments, then less fraud and more rents would be paid and those who don't deserve rent subsidies and who can afford market rate or jail would get what they deserve and honest families who do need the rent subsidies (like eachers, civil servants, working poor and middle=class and disabled and elderly could afford to live in nyc.

especially as it applies to manhattan where all the projects are seething with the flotsam that/who have been chased from the queens and brooklyn and bronx apartments in nycha due to increased enforcement and gang-busting.

also, there should be a curew and photo id's issued. curfew for kids and parents told explicitly they are responsible for their kids behavior in the lease and rules of conduct explicityl stated in lease (ditto dogs) and also photo ids and "do not copy" on keys and photo-ids for legal tenants so that when the cops come in case of trouble, or suspicious behavior, they can make those not living in a particular project or building from hanging out in the lobbies or stairwells or playgrounds at nite or during the day loitering.