Within the 1970’s, John Lennon and Yoko Ono rented the highest flooring of a modest multi-family brownstone at 105 Financial institution Road in Greenwich Village. They favored the relative anonymity of residing within the space and the group of 5 different households with which they shared the constructing.
Subsequent door at 107 Financial institution, composer John Cage and his accomplice, the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, shared their constructing with one other household.
Immediately, these two buildings have been mixed and reworked right into a single mega-mansion townhouse — bought for over 70 million {dollars}—one of the vital costly residential offers in Decrease Manhattan.
This isn’t an remoted case. Over the previous 20 years, New York Metropolis has misplaced a minimum of 9,300 housing models to related conversions. At a time when town’s emptiness fee is simply 1.4%, we can not afford to lose properties that exist already.
When multi-family buildings are transformed into single-family residences, the influence extends past the lack of models. Fewer residents imply fewer prospects for native companies, much less exercise on our streets, and a gradual erosion of the neighborhood cloth that makes New York Metropolis particular.
With a traditionally low emptiness fee, New York Metropolis wants extra housing, not much less. That’s the reason we launched the Teardown Tax Act.
Our invoice imposes a $50,000 surcharge for each residential unit eliminated and never changed from the housing provide throughout multi-family-to-single-family residential conversions. The income generated can be directed to the Landmarks Preservation Fee’s Historic Preservation Grant Program, serving to preserve and restore the buildings that anchor our neighborhoods. On this manner, when housing models are misplaced, there’s direct reinvestment within the affected communities.
This proposal just isn’t about stopping improvement. It’s about aligning incentives in order that improvement helps, somewhat than diminishes, our housing inventory. And we all know this method can work. Chicago carried out the same teardown tax in 2021 and has since seen significant reductions in demolitions of middle-class multi-family properties. One neighborhood noticed a 90% discount in demolitions, whereas one other skilled a 40% lower. If Chicago can do it, so can New York.
The Teardown Tax Act is one piece of a broader housing technique. Constructing new housing is important, however so is defending and preserving the housing we have already got.
We must be asking a easy query: are our insurance policies encouraging the creation and preservation of properties, or permitting them to vanish?
New York can not remedy its housing scarcity by decreasing its housing provide. This laws is an easy step towards guaranteeing that our housing insurance policies mirror that actuality.
