Here’s Where Affordable Housing Was Built Last Year—& Where It Wasn’t

In 2024, City Councilmember Chris Banks’ Brooklyn District, which includes East New York, Brownsville and East Flatbush, saw the greatest number of income-restricted apartments built: 1,439. Meanwhile, two districts in Eastern Queens and Manhattan’s west side saw zero units.

In 2024, New York City helped create or preserve 27,620 affordable apartments, a nearly 10 percent boost compared to the average over the last five years. Just over 14,000 of those units were new construction, the second highest number on record.

But the building boom didn’t happen everywhere. Certain neighborhoods led the way, including Brooklyn’s City Council District 42—which spans East New York, East Flatbush and Brownsville—and central Bronx’s District 15. Meanwhile, two districts in Eastern Queens and Manhattan’s west side saw zero units, according to an annual analysis by the New York Housing Conference (NYHC) released this week.

The latest report follows similar trends as in previous years: the districts that produced the most affordable housing tended to be lower-income and predominantly home to Black and Latino residents. Areas that saw few new units had a higher average median income and more white residents, the analysis shows.

_{Above: The 10 City Council districts that produced the most new affordable housing last year, vs. the 10 districts that produced the least. (NYHC’ Housing Tracker)}

“The Bronx is really showing up, once again, as the top producers in affordable housing,” said NYHC Executive Director Rachel Fee. Over the last decade, Bronx Council districts account for five of the 10 areas that saw the greatest number of new units.

_{New affordable housing over the last decade, by Council district.
Source: New York Housing Conference’s NYC Housing Tracker.}

Next year’s 2025 tally has the potential to look different, Fee notes. Last year, state lawmakers replaced the expired 421a tax break for affordable housing developers with a new abatement program, 485-x, which is expected to incentivize more new construction. And in December, the City Council adopted a modified version of Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes for Housing plan, a series of zoning rule changes to allow for greater residential density citywide—what supporters say will help fill an historic housing shortage and curb rising homelessness.

But the plan faced opposition in a number of neighborhoods, primarily low-density areas in the outer boroughs where residents voiced concerns about potential out-of-scale development and strain on existing infrastructure. The final deal approved by the Council included a number of carveouts and modifications to appease that opposition (and the local lawmakers who represent those areas, who voted on the plan). It retained minimum parking requirements for new development in certain neighborhoods, and reduced the reach of some outer borough zones around public transit stations where extra density would’ve been permitted.

“We had a concern about the lack of infrastructure,” said Councilmember Banks, who was among the lawmakers who voted against the City of Yes plan (thought it ultimately passed the Council by vote of 31-to-20). The proposed removal of parking requirements for new development was particularly unpopular with his constituents, Banks said, describing parts of his district as a “transportation desert,” where residents rely on cars.

Still, the Brooklyn lawmaker—who took office at the start of 2024—said he was glad to see his district ranked highest when it came to new affordable units last year.

“We’re happy to be a model, in a sense. And we’re hoping for more housing to come, and housing that really meets the needs and the desires of the local community,” he said.

“Our focus now is to make sure that local residents who want to stay in the 42nd Council district get the opportunity to move into some of those new apartments,” Banks added.

Just how much say councilmembers get when it comes to new housing in their districts is under debate. A Charter Revision Commission convened by Mayor Adams to explore changes to the city’s housing processes released a preliminary report this week on the issues it’s considering, including the concept of “member deference”—a custom in which the Council defers to the vote of the local member on land use applications in neighborhoods they represent.

Supporters of the tradition, the report notes, say it “promotes political accountability in land use matters, with communities able to hold local members responsible for land use decisions and, if necessary, vote members out.”

On the other hand, critics say member deference fuels the uneven production of affordable units across neighborhoods, and stymies the city’s overall efforts to address its housing shortage.

“Councilmembers frequently use their power to block housing proposals altogether,” the Commission wrote, pointing to an analysis that found since 2022, “at least 3,547 units overall have been lost as a result of Council modifications to the scale of housing proposals or the withdrawal of housing proposals in the face of opposition.”

“The most significant consequence of member deference is, however, the most difficult to measure: the projects that are never even proposed,” the report notes. “If a potential project is in a district where a local member is likely to be hostile to new housing, it rarely reaches the filing stage.”

The Commission said it will explore ways “to give borough- or city-wide perspectives greater weight in the decision-making process,” when it comes to land use applications that require public review.

But Councilmember Banks disagrees with this approach. “The power when it comes to land use needs to stay within the Council. It needs be consistent with…being a bottom-up approach,” that starts with community board review, he said.

“I believe it’s a power grab by the administration,” he added. “This would be a way to kind of basically move around the Council.”

The Council has already passed legislation aimed at addressing geographic disparities in housing production. In 2023, lawmakers passed Speaker Adrienne Adams’ Fair Housing Framework, which mandates the city come up with a housing plan every five years that sets production “targets” for each of the 59 community districts—though stops short of mandating development.

Some housing groups, including the New York Housing Conference, have called for greater accountability for districts that don’t meet those goals. In its testimony to the Charter Revision Commission, NYHC recommended ending the land use public review process with the City Planning Commission “in districts that are not meeting their production targets”—bypassing the City Council vote in those instances.

“The long time use of member deference, even though it’s an informal process, has really shifted land use decisions in New York from what used to be something that really took into account more citywide needs. Now it’s really about local control,” Fee said.

And in a city where the recent housing vacancy rate was a dismal 1.4 percent—the lowest availability in more than 50 years— “every single project makes a difference,” she added.

“Each unit here is somebody’s home, and saying yes to housing is giving somebody that opportunity,” Fee said.

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