Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
As a reporter covering housing in the New York City region for The New York Times, Mihir Zaveri never imagined that decoding housing laws would open a door to so many different stories about the city.
“It feels like housing transcends pretty much everything, though — it’s a way to understand the diversity of New York,” said Mr. Zaveri, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and now lives in the South Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Over the past nearly six years, he has explored why New York City housing is so expensive to build, investigated the structural and regulatory failures that led to the partial collapse of an office building in Midtown Manhattan last month and dug into the mystery of the city’s highest-paid plumber.
“I’ve always been interested in government and civic issues,” said Mr. Zaveri, who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. “It just beckoned to me, the idea of covering things without fear or favor, of giving voice to the voiceless,” he said. He went on to earn a master’s degree in journalism in 2014.
In an interview, Mr. Zaveri shared the challenges of covering housing in the city and the story lines he’s watching. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How did you first become interested in covering housing?
I came to The Times in 2018 from The Houston Chronicle, where I was covering county government. I found that covering housing and neighborhoods was a way to understand a place deeply, to get a look at the needs and priorities of a community.
So in 2020, I joined The Times’s Metro desk and eventually made a pitch to cover housing. It gave me this unique lens into New York City. So much of politics, for example, is very Manhattan-focused; there are certain powerhouse neighborhoods around the city.
What did you have to get up to speed on, or what was most challenging starting out?
The easy narrative for a long time was that developers building big developments in neighborhoods was perceived as a top-down, negative force. But then you zoom out and you think about the housing shortage. You have to consider the needs of a neighborhood versus those of the city, region and state. There are so many forces interacting, and finding a way to respect the nuance while also telling the story has been the biggest challenge.
Where do you find story ideas?
I’ve been covering housing for years now, and there are a lot of people in government, the real estate industry and the tenant advocacy and legal worlds that I’ve built relationships with. Often people will just reach out and say, “Hey, did you know this was going on?”
But one of my goals is not to be limited to sourcing in the circles I’m already in. I try to reach out to people on community boards, as well as in advocacy and neighborhood groups, and to landlords from around the city. Every week, I try to expand my network. And I sometimes just find ideas by walking around the city and thinking, “Huh, that looks weird” or “I’ve never seen that before.”
What have you learned since you started on the beat?
There are five different ways to look at every issue, and every one is valid. No one person or political viewpoint is necessarily right. That’s a broad claim, but it’s one of the lessons I bring to every story. It’s a core tenet of journalism. But it’s doubly true in housing. The ability to have an open mind and to hear from many different perspectives is really important.
There’s also a historical aspect of housing that has been very interesting to me, where you understand that a lot of these flash points are tied to the evolution and history of a place, like a neighborhood that gentrified. It’s not just a story of left and right politics. It’s a story of past, present and future, and how those interact.
What is the most interesting neighborhood in New York City right now?
East New York. This is a neighborhood with a rich cultural history that’s also in the middle of an evolution. Early in the de Blasio administration, they focused on rezoning there. The idea was to create a place that would allow people to have affordable housing and to commute easily into Manhattan. New York City has been a place of change over the decades, and this area is a fascinating example.
What other story lines will you be watching in the coming year?
Now that Mayor Mamdani has frozen rents, what does that mean for people, and what ripple effects will that have for landlords and tenants? Also, to what degree do we need to rethink how we approach financing or sustaining public housing? Almost everybody agrees it’s a vital part of the city, but building it is expensive, and that expense makes certain areas accessible only to certain people. How does the city grapple with that?
If you could live anywhere in the world, and money were no object, where would you choose?
Honestly, New York City. I live here, but I certainly haven’t had access to the types of homes that, if money were no object, you might choose. I also love to travel to nature destinations around the world, and it’s easy to do that from New York.
The post How a Reporter Finds Human Stories in Housing appeared first on New York Times.
