The Eminent Domain

With the credit markets still more frozen than a dead moose in Wasilla now hardly seems like a moment for an optimistic take on new housing development in New York City. Yet new projections for the coming years from the New York Building Congress, the construction industry trade group, suggest that growth could be here to stay. For those of you out there unsure of the continued viability of inclusionary zoning, living wage and other policy strategies tied to growth and development, pay close attention to the Building Congress numbers — leave out the spikiest years of the real estate boom, from 2003 to 2007, and New York remains on an upward trend.

As the Times noted yesterday, a new “Construction Outlook” from the Building Congress predicts that New York City’s development boom will peak in 2008, at an anticipated 35,700 new housing units to be completed by the end of the year. As the report itself notes, that spike is partly explained by a rush to pour foundations before new affordable housing production requirements kicked in for many developers benefiting from the 421-a tax credit.

Projecting two years ahead, the Congress sees production plummeting to about 18,000 housing units a year. Sounds grim, right? Well, only if you think of the past few years as anything like normal. The last time NYC produced 18,000 units a year was 2002 — at that time, the highest number seen since the Great Society pumped billions into subsidized housing development in the early 1970s. The Building Congress admits that seeing beyond the next two years is impossible, given the uncertainties of new government interventions in the credit markets. But it stresses optimism for future growth.

The New York Building Congress may be trying to put a brave face on a very bad situation. But 18,000 new housing units a year, for a city that urgently needs them, is much more than nothing — and it’s as important as ever to make sure they’re built in a way that works for New Yorkers and their neighborhoods.