New York City—like all cities in the United States—is scarred by a long history of discrimination, segregation, and injustice. This history has particularly affected neighborhoods in which people of color make up the majority of the population. The legacy of these practices can be seen in persistent and stark disparities in health outcomes and access to resources. Our city’s neighborhoods are not equally healthy, well-connected, or protected from climate risks—and these outcomes continue to be strongly tied to race and ethnicity. For a longer discussion of neighborhood-based disparities, see Chapter 5 of WWL2020.
Achieving fair housing means ensuring every neighborhood has the resources and amenities that its residents need to thrive—including affordable housing, healthy and safe environments, and quality public services.
Since 2020, the City has responded to these challenges through a wide array of strategies. The Taskforce on Racial Inclusion & Equity (TRIE) was formed in response to the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the very same communities impacted by historical disinvestment and structural racism. TRIE helped ensure equity was central to the City’s response and recovery, from equitable distribution of vaccines to the expansion of broadband access to 200,000 public housing residents to address the digital divide.
To address wealth disparities, the City has accelerated opportunities for Community Land Trusts to create and preserve community-owned or shared-equity housing, and a new pilot program will allow tenants in affordable housing to leverage their rental payments into better credit scores.
Race, income and other aspects of social equity are integrated into more mechanisms of government decision-making, including every land use change. In 2022, New York City voters passed three historic ballot measures:
- Adding a preamble to the City Charter outlining a statement of values and vision for a just and equitable city for all to guide government
- Establishing an Office of Racial Equity, a citywide Racial Equity Plan, and a Commission on Racial Equity to advance and evaluate racial equity as well as ensure accountability
- Creating a True Cost of Living measure to track the cost of meeting essential needs and living with dignity in NYC
In the Fall of 2023, the Mayor’s Office of Equity & Racial Justice and the Commission on Racial Equity were established, and the City will soon publish its first Citywide Preliminary Racial Equity Plan and the City’s first True Cost of Living Measure, a powerful tool to better understand what it takes for New Yorkers to live with economic dignity.
Neighborhood planning can achieve affordable housing and other priority community investments
To complement these citywide initiatives, the City has partnered with local communities to conduct place-based planning efforts in neighborhoods disproportionately affected by historic disinvestment. Over the last decade, neighborhood plans have addressed comprehensive neighborhood needs through the lens of affordable housing—focusing not only on building more homes, but on improving conditions of daily life.
Coordinated planning can help bring more of those resources and amenities into a neighborhood to complement housing investments and help mitigate the consequences of longstanding disinvestment.
In the neighborhoods of East Harlem, Brownsville, Edgemere, the Jewel Streets, and others, the City has collaborated with residents to develop plans for new mixed-income housing on private sites and new affordable housing on public land, coordinated with community amenities and infrastructure commitments. NYC Planning and HPD work closely with other City agencies on developing coordinated capital plans for these neighborhoods that prioritize equitable investment in new and improved parks, schools, and streets. These plans have been important catalysts for change and are bringing significant resources to the neighborhoods. But the scale is limited by resources–neighborhood plans are long-term, resource-intensive efforts that require extensive multi-agency collaboration.
New affordable housing investments are often concentrated in a few neighborhoods that face an array of challenges
Between 2014 and 2024, over two thirds of new affordable homes were built in Brooklyn or the Bronx. Within those boroughs, affordable housing investments were concentrated in central Brooklyn and the South Bronx, neighborhoods where most residents are Black or Hispanic. The significant investment of affordable housing in these neighborhoods over the last decade continues a trend that dates back to the 1970s and is the result of a mix of factors, including the legacy of in rem housing and urban renewal, the availability and lower-cost of land, and City-initiated rezonings which allowed for increased density with new affordable housing.
These investments have produced tens of thousands of high-quality, affordable homes and transformed lots left vacant for decades. But affordable housing development alone cannot address decades of disinvestment; thriving neighborhoods require a wide range of resources and amenities. In some parts of the city, despite important housing investments, significant gaps in quality of life remain and residents are disproportionately impacted by resource and outcome disparities such as heat vulnerability, asthma impacts, and access to broadband internet.
Figure 5.18: Heat Vulnerability Index
Source: NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 2024
Figure 5.19 Asthma Emergency Department Visits for Children Ages 5-17, 2023
Source: NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 2023
Figure 5.20 Broadband Internet Access
Source: American Community Survey 2019-2023, five-year estimates
In areas with a lot of existing affordable housing, the City plans to leverage those assets to address non-housing concerns
To address disparities in resources and outcomes, HPD is proposing a new strategy (6.2) to focus on quality-of-life improvements in neighborhoods with significant existing and planned affordable housing. To be piloted in a few areas, this approach will leverage HPD’s affordable housing partnerships at a hyperlocal scale—a major thoroughfare or several blocks, for example—to influence conditions such as sidewalk cleanliness, accessibility features, maintenance of vacant City-owned lots, and public safety. These efforts will leverage affordable housing assets but offer improvements that benefit the larger community.
