The increasing lack of affordability of housing in New York is a serious challenge facing our city, and only getting worse. Why? Instead of taking new approaches to address the real roots of the problem, city and state leaders have been doubling down on the failed policies of the past. Real estate interests, in an effort to achieve as little regulation as possible, have promulgated the false notion that building bigger and more unaffordable housing will make our city more affordable.

We know that’s not true, and so do you. Not only do many of these policies geared toward turbocharging the scale and amount of market-rate development actually hurt affordability, they destroy neighborhood character and cohesion in the process. Village Preservation believes not only that affordability and preservation can go hand in hand, but that they must. And the “build, baby, build” policies promoted by the deregulation crowd only offer false promises and the accelerated loss of the qualities we hold dear about our city and neighborhoods — including affordability and accessibility to people of a variety of income levels.

We’ve summed it all up in our new Policy Paper on Affordability and Preservation — read it here. It builds on and summarizes years of work by Village Preservation to counter myths and misinformation, and informs our positions as we continue to fight for a fair, accessible, and livable city and neighborhoods. The paper has also been shared with government leaders, and will be a cornerstone of our outreach to candidates for office in NYC this year, all of whom are up for election in 2025, as we hold candidate forums and distribute questionnaires.

TO HELP:

For more information on Preservation and Affordability, including links to multiple studies forming the basis of our positions, CLICK HERE.