Spatial Disparities In Affordable Housing Development Across Local Geographies

New York City continues to face an unprecedented affordable housing crisis in the recent years as a result of contextual, ideological, and economic variables which have long influenced its development and expansion over the years. In this study, focus is placed on the contextual background of housing policies which subsequently paved the way for the urban affordable landscape we have today. Three neighborhoods are picked to perform closer case study analysis, those of Bensonhurst, Borough Park, and Brownsville. From there, three variables were analyzed, that of the share of subsidized housing towards the total housing stock per census tract, comparisons between median household income per neighborhood versus Area Median Income (AMI) classifications, and ultimately the direction of development patterns under the Housing New York plan of the de Blasio administration. The analysis on all three levels shows a lack of correspondence between the development of affordable housing units versus the actual geographic need for development and expansion. There is a critical need for the balancing of affordable housing development, and its equitable establishment across different neighborhoods over time. No specific directional policy is put in place, although guidelines of reasoning have been established to raise critical questions around the efficacy and applicability of the research.