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“Why It’s So Hard to Find an Affordable Apartment in New York” by Mihir Zaveri

New York’s rental market has surged across the city. The median rent in Manhattan has jumped by 25% within a single year. When the pandemic first emerged in early 2020, people received deals on rents where suddenly one bedroom apartments were affordable, but a year later they were getting huge $2000 rent increase. For the first time in New York’s history, the average rent surged to above$ 5,000 a month. People always view New York as a metropolis city with lots of population and big buildings but they have been lagging in job growth and population growth for years which is contributing to the crisis and affordability.

The inflaming crisis in the affordability of houses in New York is fuelled by a longstanding shortage and constraints in city planning. More than a century ago, city planners had predicted that New York had the potential to develop into a monster city with more than 55 million people (Zaveri, 1). The city recommended a significant overhaul of zoning guidelines to get around this fate in 1961. The move was meant to restrict the size of buildings as well as the number of people that could stay in them. It feels counterintuitive that the biggest city in America faces a housing problem. Construction crews and cranes seem to be in constant motion always developing new residential condos, apartment buildings and tall skyscrapers. However worth noting New York’s housing problem is a reflection of a national issue only that it is fueled by the city’s popularity. The fact remains that the more people desire to live in New York rather than in other cities that they can accommodate, the more the housing prices will skyrocket for the available ones.

Works Cited

Zaveri, Mihir. “Why It’s So Hard to Find an Affordable Apartment in New York.” The New York Times – Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos, 4 Aug. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/08/01/nyregion/nyc-affordable-apartment-rent.html.