NYC needs to build 700K homes in the next decade to keep up with demand: report

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration estimated the city will need to build an eye-popping 700,000 new housing units over the next 10 years to keep up with demand — evens as tens of thousands of affordable apartments sit vacant.

The draft report from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development is the first to be released under a 2023 City Council law requiring regular assessments of the Big Apple’s long-term housing needs.

Analysts at HPD determined that the five boroughs have an immediate need for 290,000 housing units to address current shortages and ease the city’s measly 1.4% apartment vacancy rate.

Another 240,000 homes are needed to keep up with population growth over the next decade, according to the first-of-its-kind “Fair Housing Growth Strategy” report.

On top of those 530,000 units combined, an additional 170,000 will be necessary to meet “future need,” the report said.

The report makes no mention of the city’s 57,000 rent-stabilized housing stock vacancies and the over 6,200 empty public housing units under NYCHA. 

It references Mamdani’s “Block by Block” housing plan announced earlier this year — which seeks to build 200,000 low- and middle-income homes over the next 10 years, as well as preserve 200,000 existing affordable units — but those were not included in the 700,000-goal, either, an HPD spokesperson confirmed.

The findings released Wednesday blamed the city’s housing shortage on “decades of underproduction,” finding that the majority of neighborhoods have added only 240 units or fewer in the last 15 years.

But real estate industry insiders said if the city is serious about addressing the housing shortage, it needs to make it easier to ramp up production.

“This report puts an even bigger number on New York’s housing shortage and confirms that supply is at the heart of the affordability crisis,” said James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. 

“If New York is serious about producing 700,000 new homes, policymakers must confront the issues still holding housing back,” Whelan said. 

He mentioned fixing the 485-x property tax incentive, which mandates that union labor be used on buildings larger than 100 units, leading to many smaller developments. 

Whelan also said empty rent-regulated units should be put back on offer at market rate.

“The question is no longer whether we need more housing. The question is whether the government is willing to make it possible to build it,” he said.

Vacancies in rent-stabilized apartments increased by 8,000 units in 2025 alone, according to a report by the state Department of Housing and Community Renewal.

Rent-stabilized landlords are still struggling to keep up with increased operating costs — which jumped an average of 5.3% this year, with insurance costs alone for affordable housing jumping 10.5%.

The financial strain on landlords was exacerbated in June — when the Rent Guidelines Board voted to freeze the rent on the city’s affordable housing stock of roughly 1 million apartments — leaving landlords who are already strapped for cash with few options to remedy their dilapidated buildings.

Mamdani’s Deputy Mayor of Housing, Leila Borzog, downplayed the number of vacant affordable homes, saying the answer shouldn’t be to raise their rents.

“Of course, any vacancies that are unnecessary is a concern for me, given our broader housing crisis, where we need to be building more housing,” Borzog told NY1 in a July interview.

“But we have to, again, address this through nuanced policy solutions rather than assuming that the solution here is to find a way to just increase rents.”

In April, Mamdani announced his administration would be launching a new property insurance program for affordable housing aimed at decreasing the cost burden for landlords.

City Hall claims the program aims to issue new insurance policies for 20,000 homes next year and 100,000 homes by 2030. 

No additional details about the program, timeline, or insurance partner have been announced.

So far, the Mamdani administration has successfully preserved 4,951 affordable housing units as well as an additional 908 public housing units preserved through NYCHA’s PACT program, according to the HPD.