The Housing Crunch: Parking vs. Apartments on the Upper West Side

November 19, 2024

The Housing Crunch

Why New York City has something for everyone, except somewhere to live.

An exterior view of an apartment building on West 108th Street, with a green lawn across the street.

An affordable housing development on West 108th Street in Manhattan faced opposition from some in the community who did not want parking garages to be torn down to make way for the project. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

A Breakthrough for Affordable Housing on the Upper West Side

	By Mihir Zaveri

On West 108th Street in Manhattan, between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues, a modern 11-story apartment building stands in stark contrast to an aging parking garage with boarded-up windows at the other end of the block.

The building holds almost 200 homes that were made to be affordable to the poorest New Yorkers. During a ribbon-cutting in 2022, the Manhattan borough president, Mark Levine, called the development “one of the most important affordable housing projects in the city.”

He also said it was the “toughest land use fight” he had ever been in. Even before the development was formally proposed in 2017, thousands of residents banded together against it under the moniker “Save Manhattan Valley,” referring to that part of the Upper West Side. Opponents discussed filing a lawsuit to try to derail the project.

But they lost the battle.

In New York City, where the housing crisis has become a top political issue, new developments often face intense backlash. Opponents say they are worried about traffic and noise or any change to the character of the neighborhood. They say projects will be bad for the environment or for children. The West 108th Street project faced all of that — and still opened its doors.

Here is what happened and why it matters in the broader fights over where to build more housing around the city.

What Was There

This stretch of West 108th Street used to have three city-owned parking garages. For many years, the city eyed building new homes there as part of an urban renewal program. But residents said they needed the garages, which held more than 650 cars.

In the mid-2000s, the city’s housing department even proposed selling the garages to the operators for some $20 million, to make money while still giving people a place to park.

The councilwoman representing the area at the time, Melissa Mark-Viverito, pushed back, urging the city to consider building homes. “It’s really prime real estate, and the city should not just really give it off so easily,” she said at a Council hearing.

A nonprofit organization, the West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing, was a leading candidate to develop the property. The federation already operated a shelter next to the garages known as Valley Lodge, owned two dozen other buildings in the area and had worked with the city before.

The inside of a studio apartment, with a view of a bed as seen from a full-size kitchen.

A look at one of the affordable apartments at the development on West 108th Street. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

The Project

In 2015, the West Side Federation and city officials began discussing ideas with members of the community board and other neighbors. They unveiled their plans the next year.

The city would sell the land to the nonprofit for $2 — essentially a giveaway. The garages would then be demolished to make space for affordable housing. The group’s shelter would also be rebuilt and incorporated into the housing development.

In one 11-story building, there would be 199 affordable apartments, the majority of them for people who had been homeless. There would be another 80 or so units of several sizes that rented between $456 and $1,510 per month. Another building, which would be built later, would have about 80 units for older people.

The Resistance

West Side Federation said at community board meetings that many people in the neighborhood supported the project. But Paul Freitag, the executive director and chief executive of the group, said in an interview that he had also confronted a “well-funded” opposition.

In a report from Save Manhattan Valley, the group and others claimed that:

The city and developer had overlooked at least 10 other possible sites for the project, even though this area already had too many affordable homes and shelters.
The loss of the parking garages would lead to an uptick in traffic and greenhouse gas emissions, and the demolition would release hazardous materials — like gasoline, asbestos and lead — into the neighborhood.
The development would disturb students at a middle school across the street and would increase the risk of car accidents in the area.
The Central Park Medical Unit, a volunteer crew that responds to emergencies in the park, used the garage to store ambulances and charge equipment.
The development “would also curtail the use and enjoyment of playgrounds and sports fields in the area by substantially reducing the amount of sunlight they receive.”

Eventually, Save Manhattan Valley presented the city with a petition signed by at least 2,000 people, saying that the project would “destroy an important community resource” and “drastically change the character of the neighborhood.”

By then, Mr. Levine represented the neighborhood on the City Council, with the power to essentially approve or reject the development. In a statement to the news publication West Side Rag in 2016, he said he was “not yet ready” to support the plan until there was a better sense of how the added cars on the street would affect the neighborhood.

Why It Succeeded

Mr. Freitag, the developer, said that a few things helped, despite a “brutal” fight.

One was that his organization, the West Side Federation, had more than 40 years of history building trust and a track record of running buildings on the Upper West Side.

The project also was tailored to give the community many things it wanted, such as bathrooms for the park next door, a health clinic and a community space where people could hold events.

The project would also come to include a small parking area for the Central Park Medical Unit ambulances. Mr. Freitag said that his group also told the middle school that construction could pause during testing times to minimize disruption. The project was split into two phases, to keep one parking garage running for a few years after the first two were demolished, Mr. Freitag said.

And the rents were very, very low.

How the Money Works

In short, the project is heavily subsidized.

The land that the West Side Federation received for just $2 was appraised at about $55 million. In addition, the developer received $9 million from the city to help pay for construction, and also raised about $33 million through a federal tax credit program. Because of those tax credits, the West Side Federation also does not have to pay property taxes.

And because dozens of the units are for formerly homeless people, the tenants are typically using government-funded vouchers to help pay their rents. So while they may not be paying very much — if anything at all — the government sends the West Side Federation about $1 million a year to help cover the costs of renting the units.

In sum, a lot of public money is needed to make projects like the West 108th building very affordable.

But the subsidies make a big difference to people like Andre Goode, 60, who spent four and a half years in city shelters before he moved into a studio apartment in the building shortly after it opened. His main income today is through supplemental income payments from the federal government; 30 percent of that goes to the West Side Federation, and the rental assistance subsidies take care of the rest.

Mr. Goode, an artist, said that living in a permanent home gives him space to paint and draw in solitude. He said that he struggled with anxiety and social activities, but that being around neighbors had helped him get outside his comfort zone. He wants to teach others what he learned about art.

“Even though I have that small room, it’s really a big space for me to be free,” he said.

The skyline above Madison Square Park at dusk, with cars driving along the street.

Some people wonder whether New York City’s housing crisis is caused in part by landlords who choose not to rent available units so that they can claim tax breaks. Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Q&A ✏️

I received two similar questions from readers recently:

Do you have data for the number of empty apartments in N.Y.C.? I believe that our housing crisis is completely manufactured by landlords not renting their empty apartments — or renting out to “ghosts.”

and

Several apartments in my rent-stabilized building are being cleaned out after the tenant vacates and left unrented. The porter tells me there are many all over both sides of my building. Tax break? Waiting for increased rent? I can’t figure why they wouldn’t want to collect monthly rent?

New York City has nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments. They make up an important chunk of the city’s affordable housing stock — about 26 percent of all the apartments that rent for less than $1,100.

Many tenant advocacy groups accuse landlords of intentionally leaving units vacant in order to remove them from rent regulation and raise the rents.

Landlord groups deny this practice, saying that they aren’t allowed to raise rents enough to make necessary repairs and renovations, and therefore the units are being left empty.

This issue has grown more contentious as public officials, citing a housing shortage, push for more development. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find verifiable public information that helps cut through the noise in a sober, accurate and unbiased way.

But there are a few clues: One analysis by the city’s Independent Budget Office suggested that most vacant rent-stabilized apartments remain that way for less than a year.

A 2023 city housing survey found a vacancy rate of less than 1 percent in rent-stabilized apartments, though the report looked only at apartments that might be considered rentable. Even 1 percent, though, equates to something like 10,000 homes, allowing for the possibility that there are small clusters of empty units in different buildings and apartments.