Red Tape Keeps NYC’s Affordable Housing Empty for Months

To snag one of New York City's prized affordable apartments, you will need not only luck on your side, but lots of patience as well.

Affordable apartments can sit empty for more than a year as low-income, would-be residents grapple with miles of red tape, says a new report.

"I had to jump through so many hoops, and it just felt so exhausting and absolutely humiliating," Ayah, a 29-year-old single mother, told The City. "The entire experience was extremely grueling."

With a median rent of $3,585, an increase of $223 (6.6%) compared to a year ago and a hefty 20.2% increase over six years, New York City is crushingly expensive for even well-off city dwellers.

"The median asking rent in New York City accounted for 55% of a typical household income—well above the commonly accepted 30% affordability threshold. Even with frozen rents and sustained income growth, closing this gap would take decades, not years," says a Realtor.com® New York City rental report.

With the median Big Apple income of $76,114, the typical New Yorker can afford a monthly rent of only $1,903—a far cry from the median reality of $3,585.

Even in the cheapest borough—the Bronx—a tenant would need an annual income of $123,756 to comfortably afford an apartment. In Manhattan, this jumps up to $195,440.

If you're lucky enough to snag an affordable apartment through the city's official housing lottery system, chances are, you'll be eager to move in. However, you'll be waiting for months or even years.

A new report released by Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit that helps build affordable housing, showed that an astonishing median of 439 days passed between when a building's affordable units were finished and when new tenants were able to move in.

The shortest time frame was an inconvenient 8.5 months, while the longest was a staggering two years.

Meanwhile, desperate people such as Ayah—who has a 2-year-old son—remain living in shelters, in untenable or overcrowded housing situations, or even on the street.

The New York City timeline is much longer than the national median of 156 days, and housing experts blame red tape and layers of bureaucracy.

Christina Harsch, director of leasing and compliance at Wavecrest Management, an affordable housing management company in New York City, told The City that it can take so long to move into units that some applicants have died before it happens.

At a building for seniors in The Bronx with over 200 apartments, the move-in timeline took so long that by the time apartments were ready, 88 applicants were no longer interested, while others had moved into nursing homes or had even died.

In a typical example of how slow the process moves and how slim the chances are of snagging a golden unit, 70,000 people applied for only 281 units in an Inwood, Manhattan, building.

Seven months later, a mere 168 tenants had been able to move in.

What is being done?

The Mamdani administration says it is well aware of the situation and working to correct it.

"On Day 1 of the administration, Mayor Mamdani signed three executive orders to aggressively tackle our city's housing and affordability crisis, including one establishing the SPEED Task Force to examine policies and procedures affecting the availability and accessibility of affordable housing and to streamline those processes," Matt Rauschenbach, a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, told Realtor.com. 

Duties of the SPEED (Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development) Task Force are enumerated here.

"All options are on the table as we review these recommendations and work to get New Yorkers into available affordable housing units as quickly as possible," he says.

Rauschenbach adds that the task force will be presenting its recommendations to the administration within the "coming weeks." (Pressed for a more specific timeframe, Rauschenbach did not respond.)

"We are in the process of revamping the housing lottery and homeless placement systems, incremental fixes will not go far enough," Ilana Maier, a spokesperson for Housing Preservation and Development, said in a statement.

"Extensive changes are already underway to create a simpler, less technically complicated housing lottery system that is fairer and faster."

She pointed out that the applicant approval process for 2025 was already seven weeks faster than it was in 2024. Also, the median timeline for contacting an applicant for a lottery unit was 81 days, down from 116.

The 10,000 households that moved to affordable units and the 4,651 households that were moved out of homeless shelters were a 15% increase over 2024 during the Eric Adams administration, she noted.

"Always more to do. But each year, we’re seeing successful lottery applicants get contacted faster about their applications and approved more quickly," she said.

Should you be one of the lucky ones, an affordable unit can be a lifesaver.

Currently, applications are being taken for The Barnett, a 146-unit residential building at 50-25 Barnett Ave. in Sunnyside, Queens, where rents start at an astonishingly low $545 a month.

The New York City affordable housing lottery "has allowed me to continue to live in the neighborhood I love while working as an artist," choreographer and musical theater director Merete Muenter previously told Realtor.com.

"I no longer feel the stress and struggle of trying to have enough money to pay rent and bills every month—it's such a relief."