This is the nasty side effect of rent stabilization/control. If you're outside the system, you're kinda screwed.
It seems like there's a lot of missing analysis in this article rather than just a jump to conclusions, blaming tenant rights, and calling it a day.
Brokers and sites that I've found claim you'll pay a broker one way or the other: if the owner pays the broker, then the owner increases the rent to cover the cost. If you find a "No fee" apartment (a designation that anyone who's rented in NYC knows, and it has a special status and banner on https://streeteasy.com/) then your rent is increased to match the market anyway.
Even if it's true that as a renter you pay for brokers no matter what, it's the deceit in advertising in NYC that irritates me. Brokers happily list "$3000/month" rent, and you have to email them to find out what their fee is. If you amortize the fee across a 12-month lease, that "$3000/month" might actually be $3250/month (1 month broker fee) or $3450/month (15% broker fee).
Notably almost none of these units are "affordable", except a certain number of lottery-dispensed rent stabilized units that the buildings allocate in exchange for certain tax abatements.
Even so, growth continues to outstrip housing supply, but with the exception of certain historic preservation areas, developers are putting up units as fast as they can. Real estate is still expensive, and developers can't get the land to build on for free, or force people to sell in the face of skyrocketing housing prices.
What you're describing is a city where a large-in-absolute-numbers-by-some-arbitrary-standard amount of housing is being built while also not being enough. As sufficiency for demand is the operative question, I submit that a better set of words is "sufficient" and "insufficient".
Given that it's less than the amount of population growth, I would characterize it as an insufficient amount of housing supply being built.
Yes, demand far exceeds supply, even with growth. The statement that I was disagreeing with was that some outgrowth of NIMBYism or zoning restrictions were to blame for the lack of growth of supply. I feel like the developments that are in progress are indicative of the fact that those are not the problem.
I don't know what the problem is or have good ideas on how to fix it. Possibly the problem is, as I outlined above, that real estate is just getting very expensive, and developers who would very much like to build large-scale housing are simply priced out by the capital expenditure to even acquire the real estate itself. Maybe the affordable housing initiatives have backfired to a greater extent than anyone realizes. Or it's possible that new supply is in fact outstripping demand, but the lead times are such that once the units come online the market will experience a pull-back as they have trouble renting or selling the new units.
For instance, NIMBYs requiring near-infinite shadow studies in SF. It doesn't prevent building, but by raising the costs and extending the timelines it helps reduce the amount that gets built. What does get built costs more. The result is fewer and pricier units, and what maybe could have been a 25% subsidized building is now 10% in order to make the numbers work. Or maybe a building goes from five stories to three and no longer has any affordable housing at all. At scale, lower-margin proposals go from further down the list while still being in the black to being in the red and never being built.
Which is to say that developments in progress should not be taken as proof that there are no problems with zoning or NIMBYs. Just that it's possible to overcome them if there's enough money to be made.
Of course, the point of new development is to ensure the housing price house of cards continues.
Unfortunately in the US, people consider their home an asset that needs to gain value, I'd actually rather have the states or the government own the property instead and just rent it to the people, but that's "COMMUNISM" and the end of the world.
I'm wondering how big the bottom falling out will be.
I used to live in one of the newer high rises in downtown Brookyln and my unit was technically rent stabilized, but since I was paying a "preferential" rent of $2500/month vs the "real" rent of $3700/month (that no one in their right mind would pay), they were able to raise my rent beyond the approved increase once the lease was up for renewal, and could have raised it far beyond the market value if they really felt like it.
1. To have never had your name on a housing court case, even if it was found in your favor or you had a legitimate reason to be in housing court
2. A completed application including the contact information for your last two landlords who have to say nice things about you even if they were crazy/bad
3. Annual income at 40-45x the monthly rent, as reflected in your last two tax returns (hope you were making more money than you actually need to be able to afford the rent 3 years ago!)
4. Letters of reference
5. Months of bank statements
6. Pay stubs
7. Tax transcripts
8. Perfect credit (or 6 months of deposit-- you have $15,000 in cash for this, right? Oh it's okay, do you have a guarantor who makes 100x the rent (hundreds of thousands of dollars) that wants to put their SSN on your rent payment? Oh no?)
Getting approved for a tiny 100 sq ft studio is the same process as getting approved for a 10 million dollar loan. Normal people have no chance. Don't have your financial life in perfect order? You're garbage that doesn't have a right to live somewhere.
I would amend this to state "you're garbage that doesn't have a right to live in desirable New York City dwellings where more desirable tenants are available for the landlord to choose from".