Gelinas on Housing

Nicole Gelinas discusses the ingenuity of socialist New York City's rigged housing system -- a lottery set up to benefit those lucky by accident of birth, or political connections, at the expense of all other residents of the city.

Of Bloomberg’s 165,000 “affordable” homes, he’ll build 112,200 for New York families earning less than $50,240. The problem: this category includes 1 million New York families. Bloomberg will build another 18,150 units for families who earn between $50,000 and $75,000. The problem: another 300,000 families qualify. And what about New Yorkers who earn more than $75,000, but who don’t earn enough to disqualify them from middle-income housing? Bloomberg will build 34,650 apartments for them—but nearly 400,000 families are eligible.

Indeed, before the mayor had even broken ground on most of his 165,000 apartments, advocates at a May affordable-housing conference were saying that the city should build 500,000 “affordable” units. Unless Bloomberg effectively nationalizes the city’s entire private housing stock to ensure that everyone who he believes “deserves” affordable housing gets affordable housing, all he has done is create a lottery in which 10 percent of the people who qualify win. But this isn’t a voluntary lottery; everyone else pays through higher home prices and higher taxes.