NEW YORK — As he waited for the bus in a neighborhood packed with two-story homes, Bradley Shields wondered what he’d have to do to get ahead of this city’s soaring rent prices.
Shields, 57, had just made a $3,000 payment for his apartment in the Ozone Park section of Queens to get current on his rent — $2,500 monthly for a studio apartment. Shields, a retired sanitation worker who has been forced back to work in the construction industry, envies friends and family who live in areas of the city where subsidized housing units are more plentiful.
“In the Bronx and other places, you are seeing new buildings that people can rent for $1,000 or $1,500 a month,” said Shields, who grew up in this community near John F. Kennedy International Airport. “Here, they are overcharging people. They are robbing people, and I feel I can’t retire because my income doesn’t meet my needs.”
After New Yorkers surged to the polls on Nov. 4, electing a progressive new mayor and approving three ballot measures to expedite construction of affordable housing, the debate over how, and where, to build more low-cost housing is about to land on Shields’s doorstep.
With just under 60 percent of the vote, New Yorkers agreed to speed up construction of housing projects and spread them into areas of the city where production of subsidized apartments has waned because of community opposition. The measures could provide a crucial tool for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has vowed to build 200,000 new affordable units over the next 10 years.
Mamdani is scheduled to meet President Donald Trump on Friday at the White House. He is expected to make the case for his affordability agenda after Trump threatened to yank federal funding for the city in response to the assemblyman’s election victory.
To accomplish his goals on housing, analysts and local leaders said, Mamdani will have to make outer-borough communities in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island the new center of the housing debate. Single-family homes are plentiful in these communities, and home values have surged, but few apartment buildings or multifamily dwellings have been built in recent decades.
The issue poses an early challenge for Mamdani, who won with widespread support from renters but now must govern a city where one-third of residents are homeowners. It’s a test facing political leaders nationally as they navigate demands to make life — not just housing — more affordable for vast numbers of Americans.
Although most residents in Queens’s Ozone Park supported both Mamdani and the ballot measures, neighborhood association leaders, some homeowners and local elected officials say they will maintain their opposition to higher density. They worry it will change the character of neighborhoods and compound ongoing challenges such as a shortage of on-street parking.
“A lot of people are fearful and say they may move,” said Aracelia Cook, president of the 149th South Ozone Park Civic Association. “If you have apartment buildings going up, that is not leading to homeownership and how it used to be. The mother, father, two children and white picket fence is going out the window.”
The same debate is taking place in states and cities around the country.
Lawmakers in Massachusettsand Californiarecently approved sweeping changes to land use policies to ease construction of additional housing in neighborhoods where dense development was previously off-limits. Mayors across the country, including leaders of Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, also have boosted their city’s stock of affordable housing in new areas.
But New York remains the hub of the nationwide debate over housing costs. Incomes have struggled to keep pace with surging rental prices, which are among the highest in the nation.
According to New York University’s Furman Center, just over half of New York City households are “rent burdened,” spending 30 percent or more of their income on rent. The median rent on a one-bedroom apartment is $4,734, according to RentHop, an online rental agency. The vacancy rate for housing units stands at just 1.4 percent, according to the city housing data.
Reforming housing approvals
An outgrowth of the “City of Yes” initiative from Mayor Eric Adams (D) to build more houses in low-density neighborhoods, the ballot referendums were designed to change New York’s process for approving new developments, the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP).
The process, which critics contend is too long and cumbersome, involves reviews by local community boards, the city planning department, borough officials and the city council. The ULURP process began in the 1970s during a period of broad skepticism over new growth and empowered neighborhoods to have more say over zoning.
As projects made their way through the ULURP, new development was often derailed by the 51-member city council. The body traditionally voted in unison to abide by the wishes of a single member whose district was affected by a project.
“Developers were basically choosing where to build new housing based on where the council members were receptive, as opposed to where it was needed,” said Catherine Vaughn, co-founder of Abundance New York, a pro-housing advocacy organization. “A ton of districts have essentially built no housing because of prevailing NIMBY attitudes in the district.”
The ballot measures allow developers of taxpayer-financed affordable housing projects to bypass several steps of the ULURP process, including council review. Other provisions steer new projects to 12 neighborhoods where the production of affordable housing has been slowest.
According to an analysis by the Furman Center, one of those areas probably would include Ozone Park, a diverse community of about 52,000 residents.
The ballot referendums also would make it easier for developers to change zoning to allow small and moderately sized housing developments in residential neighborhoods.
“These questions will supercharge [Mamdani’s] ability to achieve his goal,” said Andrew Fine, interim executive director of Open New York, a housing advocacy group.
Council member Joann Ariola (R), who represents Ozone Park, noted that she and most members of the city council vehemently opposed the ballot measures.
“What they did is completely dilute our power to say yes or no to what is happening in our community and voice our opinion for the people in my district,” Ariola said. “People moved into the outer boroughs because they wanted one- and two-family homes that they could own, and live in, and they wanted bedroom communities.”
Newcomers in Ozone Park
Settled in the late 1800s, Ozone Park was initially a retreat for wealthy New Yorkers “drawn to its clean and refreshing air,” according to city planning records.
The community became a haven for Italian and Irish immigrants who built middle-class homes and opened small businesses along a subway line that connects the area to Manhattan.
In recent decades, the demographics of the community dramatically changed with an influx of new residents from South Asia and Indo-Caribbean regions.
Meanwhile, median gross rents in Ozone Park and adjoining Howard Beach have increased from $1,760 in 2006 to $2,100 in 2023, according to the Furman Center. About 35 percent of residents are “severely rent burdened,” meaning they spend more than 50 percent of their household income on rent.
But the community has produced no affordable housing units since 2010, according to Furman Center data. Renters say they are feeling the strain.
Shields, for example, said he feels like New York is trying to “push” him out of the city. He pays his $2,500-a-month rent from an income that includes a monthly $967 Social Security check and about $2,100 from construction and mechanic jobs.
“I’ve been taking care of myself all of my life,” said Shields, who added he is eating cheaper food to stay within his monthly budget. “And now I feel like I can’t take care of myself.”
At Ozone Park’s Luxury Laundry and Wash, Jenny Afar, 50, was glued to her cellphone, scanning rental properties on Facebook Marketplace, hoping to spend no more than $1,500 month on a new apartment.
“Some guy just messaged me, and the guy says it’s $1,900 for a basement apartment, which is crazy,” he said. Afar, a Guyanese immigrant who takes home $600 a week working as an airline cabin cleaner at JFK Airport, added, “I can’t afford that.”
Rhykel Rodriquez, a real estate broker in Ozone Park, said limited supply and rising prices are the key source of strain for local renters.
Rodriquez said it’s common to have “at least 10 people” show up to tour rental properties when they hit the market, sparking “bidding wars.” And growing numbers of tenants are unable to make their monthly payments, he said.
“Out of 10 apartments, I will probably hear complaints of four tenants that don’t pay the rent or come late on the rent,” Rodriquez said. “Tenants are coming to us looking for affordable housing, but we really can’t help them.
“If all those 10 tenants standing in line to look at one apartment had another apartment to look at, it would be easier for them.”
Ozone Park community leaders acknowledge that past debates over affordable housing had racial overtones. But today, Whites make up just 14 percent of Ozone Park residents, and homeowners from an array of demographic groups expressed unease about more affordable housing in their community.
Diane Pratas, 65, who has owned her three-bedroom home in Ozone Park for 29 years, said she voted for Mamdani but remains skeptical that her neighborhood can absorb new housing.
She paid $175,000 for her house in 1996 and estimates it is now worth more than $1 million. Unless new affordable units are placed on “city-owned land,” Pratas doesn’t see how developers would be able to build affordable units in her community.
“The big problem is the housing market, because houses are too expensive,” Pratas said. “If they come and tear down these homes to build apartments, it’s not going to be affordable.”
Sam Esposito, president of the Ozone Park Residents Block Association, also opposes new housing in the community unless it is part of a broader plan to address school overcrowding and parking.
The competition for on-street parking is so fierce in Ozone Park that it leads to frequent heated arguments, including a triple stabbingin 2022 and another stabbing last month, Esposito noted.
“People have three or four cars per family,” said Esposito, who owns several rental properties in Ozone Park. “And if you have two units in one building, now you are looking at eight cars per building.”
Even some Ozone Park residents who say they need affordable housing question how such properties could be built there.
As he waited at the laundry, Ivan Garcia, 33, noted that he pays $700 a month for “one room” in a three-bedroom house where even the living room can be rented by someone who sleeps in it. Garcia, a construction worker, said he chose to live in Ozone Park because it feels like a relatively safe, tightly knit community.
“This is an area for people who buy their houses,” Garcia said. “It’s supposed to be difficult to find apartments or even rooms for rent. … Where are they going to fit more affordable housing?”
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