> Doesn’t NYC have a housing crisis already?

New York has a problem. San Francisco has a crisis.

I just negotiated a 2% rent cut. Like four luxury buildings opened nearby and sucked out our building's highest-earning renters by offering lots of perks for marginally more rent. I asked my landlord if he wanted another vacancy or to keep a hassle-free tenant--he budged.

And my experience is not that unique. "Manhattan rents dropped 3.8 percent in March [2018] from a year earlier, the most since 2011" [1].

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/pick-a-ne...

No, NYC doesn't have a housing crisis. Rents are certainly higher in NYC than the average for the nation, but there are plenty of relatively affordable areas within an hour's commute of downtown, and the only transportation cost you'd pay is $116.50/month for a MetroCard. Subtract out all the substantial costs of paying for an automobile and NYC can even compare favorably in cost of living to some other cities that have less rent but still effectively require car ownership.

Also, NYC doesn't have nearly as much of a NIMBY problem as many other American cities. We continue to build lots of housing here.

NYC has absolutely just as much of a NIMBY problem as other American cities it's just the government at large cares less and people don't worry about traffic in the same way suburban areas being upzoned do. 25% of manhattan has some type of historic designation around it. Additionally, during the same period where the brooklyn and queens waterfront boomed with construction due to targeted rezoning, huge swaths of manhattan were downzoned from hells kitchen to the majority of the east and west village.

Additionally, there are hundreds of thousands of people who are rent burdened in New York, even in those places with so called cheap rent such as within south bronx.

Just a note from someone who moved from NYC to a suburban area a few years ago: a car doesn't cost that much (as I thought anyway). Outside of the fixed costs, insurance is about $70 a month, and gas at $60 a month, so that's about $130 in total a month, just a bit over the $116 in unlimited train rides in NYC. (And yes the fixed costs are much higher, I will admit.)

You're forgetting the actual cost of the car itself, plus maintenance. The average monthly auto payment in the US is sitting aroudn $500. If you buy the car up front with cash, then you need to count the opportunity cost of that money over time, and depreciation.

And then there's also registration, emissions testing, annual inspection, and other miscellaneous fees that vary by jurisdiction, but that can easily cost hundreds per year in total.

NYC is expensive and there is a lack of affordable housing. Cheaper than SFO though as there are hundreds of new apartment buildings always being built.

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/buildings/html/nyc-active-major-... https://www.nynesting.com/new-developments

Yea NY's problem isn't like SF's or Bostons. NYC knows how to build and will build, it's just they need to build even more and faster.

Nothing stays forever in NYC which is kind of why it is such a great city.

LIC is decades past gentrification.

>anything to help people who already live there is what should happen.

People who live here will benefit from this. NYC has a much more diverse candidate pool than SV - 47% of our tech workers are immigrants. Our schools are more diverse; there are more programs to teach underrepresented groups CS skills. They will benefit from this.

>gentrifying forces of a thousands of tech employees.

Can you explain how gentrification will actually play out, and how it's different than 25k jobs being created organically over the next decade?

>$1.5 billion in housing

Just because Amazon has been given an incentive doesn't mean that housing gets short sticked. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hpd/about/press-releases/2018/07/m...