Mayor de Blasio and upzoning advocates like to say that the cause of the shortage of affordable housing in our city is a lack of new market-rate housing construction, and the cure is to allow more of it. So how come the City’s own recent study of housing production and an analysis of affordable neighborhoods for first-time home buyers of modest incomes shows exactly the opposite?

Our recent op-ed highlights the contradictions and flaws in this school of thought (which is behind the rezoning plan for SoHo, NoHo, and Chinatown), and identifies better alternatives that help create and preserve affordable housing while also maintaining neighborhood character.