The balance of units would be reserved for renters making around 60 percent of the area median income - in New York City, about $64,440 a year for a family of three.Ī large number of newer hotels, most in the boroughs outside of Manhattan, could be candidates for conversion, but many are in light-manufacturing districts that cannot have permanent housing under current rules. Other occupants could include low-income families, young adults leaving foster care and survivors of domestic violence, among others. In one popular model, a majority of the units are reserved for homeless people recovering from mental health or substance abuse issues, with tenants paying no more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Supportive housing can take the form of single-room units with shared kitchens, but it more commonly refers to studio or multi-bedroom apartments for individuals and families. Rosenbaum said, whereas it costs an annual average of $36,000 to place the same person in supportive housing, a rent-subsidized form of housing with on-site health and job services available to residents.
The conversions could also be a cost saver for the city, which spends an annual average of $56,000 for each person in the shelter system, Mr. “And, more than that, we could have done it in a year, rather than the five years it typically takes.” Houghton said, comparing hotel conversions to ground-up construction that costs an average of $500,000 to $600,000 for each unit. “You were seeing projects that conceivably could have been 50 percent cheaper than what we normally spend,” Mr. In 2020, with some hotel owners considering discounts of up to 40 percent below pre-Covid prices, the math finally seemed to pencil out, said Ted Houghton, the president of Gateway Housing, a nonprofit that advises affordable housing developers. And those numbers are likely an undercount, according to the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group.Ĭonverting underused hotels into affordable housing has long been recognized as an option, because of the similar floor plates and plumbing, but the asking prices were often too high for nonprofit developers. Department of Housing and Urban Development. An estimated 78,000 people were homeless in New York City when an annual estimate was done in 2020, the latest year data were available, compared with about 53,000 in 2010, according to the U.S.
buildings and how the ingenuity of engineers helped build landmarks.Īt the same time, homelessness is hovering near a record high. Hidden Feats: Our critic looks at some supertall N.Y.C.An Evolving Skyline: The high-rise building boom has transformed the city’s skyline in recent years.Luxury Developers’ Loophole: Soaring towers are able to push high into the sky because of a loophole in the city’s labyrinthine zoning laws.The Downside to Life in a Supertall: 432 Park faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high-rises may share its fate.Testing the Limits: Only three of New York’s 25 tallest residential buildings have completed safety tasks required by the city.Promised support from Mayor-elect Eric Adams could also jump-start several projects, although much of that progress will depend on how - and when - the city and state act. Bargains may be disappearing, but the hotel industry hasn’t yet recovered, and more projects could become feasible for nonprofit developers with the right mix of regulatory relief and funding. The window of opportunity has not closed completely. model could help alleviate the affordable housing crisis at a pivotal moment, when these conversions can still be done at scale. And supporters say that a different approach to the S.R.O. In part, the situation reflects a wariness of single-room occupancy, or S.R.O., units, which can conjure memories of flophouses in the 1970s and ’80s, although a 2008 study of 123 supportive housing developments in New York by the Furman Center at New York University found no evidence that they negatively affected nearby property values. In many cases, hotels that were candidates for permanent housing have instead been converted into transient shelters, because of regulations that were onerous or made the alternative cost-prohibitive, several nonprofit groups said. Nonprofit developers’ plans to buy and convert some of the city’s more than 700 hotels into housing have been thwarted by a mix of regulatory and zoning hurdles that will likely only intensify once the tourism industry recovers and more speculative investors re-enter the market.