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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. It's never any surprise when housing makes headlines in New York City, it certainly makes headlines in all our lives. There are at least three stories right now in which affordable apartments, or the lack thereof, are making news. There are new rules that take effect in January for how landlords can use their housing stock, or anybody can use their housing stock for Airbnb rentals.

There's a new push in city council to stop landlords from asking prospective tenants about past criminal convictions in many cases. There is Mayor Adams who once said he won't set a big numerical target for new housing in the city like recent past mayors have done. Remember when he said that? Now he is doing just that. 500,000 new units in the next 10 years, he says. Here's the mayor last week on why.

Mayor Adams: In the last decade, New York City grew by nearly 800,000 people, but we added just 200,000 homes to our city. It's not complicated. We have more people than homes. This shortage gives landlords the power to charge any price they want and leaves too many New Yorkers with no place to go.

Brian Lehrer: I think he got one of those Andrew Yang T-shirts that says math. How can he do it, and will progressive or conservative backlash in various neighborhoods block the way? With me now, Eddie Small, senior real estate reporter at Crain's New York Business, who has also previously reported for the real estate site, The Real Deal, and covered the South Bronx for DNAinfo. Eddie, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Eddie Small: Thanks for having me, Brian. Happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with the mayor's big new housing plan. He did come into office saying he was more interested in the quality of affordable housing, not so much a big number. What changed?

Eddie Small: I think the housing crisis maybe just got too big to ignore. I guess to be clear, the mayor's recent plan, he's not just saying he wants 500,000 affordable new housing units, he's not really saying he wants a specific type of unit at all, he's just saying he wants 500,000 new homes. My understanding is that could be affordable, that could be condos, coops. It could be pretty much anything, just because I think it's becoming clearer and clearer at all levels of government that New York really hasn't built enough over the past decade to keep up with population growth.

I think you saw that a lot of the rising rents over the summer when they were hitting record highs drove that point home. I think it just became a little too big for Adams to not come out with a number.

Brian Lehrer: Didn't de Blasio take basically the same approach? I forget what his number was. I think it was 200,000 maybe. He didn't say 200,000 affordable units, he said 200,000 units. I remember speaking to his Deputy Mayor for housing, Alicia Glen, who said we need all kinds of development and some of it is just math. To a certain degree, the math is about supply and demand. If there are 500,000 more units in the city, even if they're all market rate, well, then hypothetically, the market rate would go down, because supply and demand would start to come back into balance. I just don't know if it really works that way in real life.

Eddie Small: That's certainly becoming the growing consensus, not even just at the city level, Governor Hochul gave a very fiery speech a few days before Adams' announcement about how New York is a national leader in blocking housing and how she really wants to hit the ground running and build more and just make it easier to build next year. I think the theory is there's not enough housing in the city right now.

If we add more, it will ultimately benefit everyone, whether you're looking for a market rate unit, an affordable unit, if there's just more housing in general, that gives you, as a renter, or a prospective homebuyer, more options, and in theory at least, that should make things easier on the buyers' side.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some phone calls on any of these three housing topics, for you as a tenant, apartment seeker, or a landlord. First of all, when should a landlord be able to ask about an applicant's criminal record? We'll get to that issue, and how should it be allowed to be used to pick and choose among competing applicants for an apartment rental? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, if you've ever been on any side of that, or just want to weigh in.

When do you support new construction in your neighborhood and when not, if there are going to be 500,000 built over the next decade? Airbnb, ever a good idea in New York City? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Eddie Small, senior real estate reporter at Crain's, or you can tweet @BrianLehrer. Eddie, as you know, part of the mayor's proposal is to do something developers always ask for, which is reduce the amount of paperwork, including environmental reviews of what big housing developments would affect environmentally in an area. Is that the biggest one from a development industry point of view, the environmental review?

Eddie Small: I think the biggest one, from their point of view, depends on who you're talking to. There are so many rules and so many different steps in the land use review process. I'd imagine pretty much every developer would have a different complaint about the one that is [unintelligible 00:06:19] the most. Adams singled out environmental reviews for smaller projects in particular.

He basically said, the smaller projects tend not to have an environmental impact. He framed it as something that the city is almost just doing to make itself feel good and [unintelligible 00:06:37] an environmental impact report on a project that isn't going to have much of an impact on the environment. My understanding is the larger projects will still have to go through this. It's the smaller ones that he's exempting, because history has shown that they just-

Brian Lehrer: Don't have an impact.

Eddie Small: -don't have a big environmental impact.

Brian Lehrer: Have you seen any pushback from environmental groups?

Eddie Small: Not too much yet. I think a lot of people are still sifting through the details of the plan. I imagine there will be. If you're trying to get rid of an environmental review, I'd imagine we'd get some pushback from environmental groups. I think at this point, a lot of advocacy groups and members of the council and everyone are still sifting through the details and seeing where the points of agreement are and where the pressure points might be.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have any sense of how much of a difference reducing the red tape will make, according to the mayor or industry leaders or anyone else, to the number of units that can get built here in the next decade?

Eddie Small: It's one of the three main components of the plan. He said, reduce red tape, make sure we're building everywhere, and then partner with the city and state. Certainly, it's a complicated process to partner with the state and federal government. Certainly, it's a complicated process to build anything in New York. Getting rid of red tape is a broad point. I do know, pretty much anyone involved with the city's land use review process doesn't like it.

Whether you're a developer or a member of the Council or a member of the administration, that's something that pretty much everyone agrees it's bad, and the red tape is a big reason for that. The consensus on how to fix it has never really emerged. Red tape is certainly a problem. We'll see how many of these bits and pieces that the plan picks away at. I think the theory is they would add up eventually and make it a lot easier to get housing done.

Brian Lehrer: On the mayor's desire to build everywhere in the city, as you said, it seems to me there are at least two kinds of backlash to building more densely in various neighborhoods. One, I might characterize as more liberal or progressive, the other more conservative. The conservative argument is just simply, "I don't want more density in my neighborhood. I don't want more people having to crowd me on my subway platform or my subway train."

Also, in higher-income areas, more density is probably going to mean more people with lower incomes moving in, so there's a race and class backlash in some places. The other, the progressive objection is, "Oh, this sounds great in theory, add more apartments and it'll be more affordable to live in this neighborhood," but no, not really, if you build in a lower-income neighborhood, it's going to add more market-rate apartments, even if there's a guaranteed percentage, 20%, 30%, whatever it is, of affordable apartments.

Then that's gentrification. The value of the neighborhood goes up and people get displaced. There are more conservative and more liberal or progressive reasons that people in any given neighborhood might not want more density. That's politically tough, right?

Eddie Small: Oh, it's very politically tough. Any big project is going to get some backlash for, I think I agree, the main reasons that you just said. We have seen recently, Mayor Adams and Speaker Adams come out more aggressively in favor of big projects even before the local council member has officially signed on. We saw that with Innovation Queens in Astoria, we saw that with Throgs Neck in the Bronx, and I think those both spoke to the conservative and liberal critiques of big new developments.

We have seen a little more of the mayor putting his money where his math is, and in terms of developing everywhere really, getting out ahead of the local council member who represents the districts where these projects are going, and really emphasizing the points that he made in his announcement. Just that we need more housing. We can't keep saying we have a housing crisis and then keep saying no to new housing projects. I think that is something that would've to continue going forward, if he really wants to hit this 500,000 number, is being pretty aggressive and pretty upfront about supporting these projects, even when there's community pushback that extends to the local council member.

Brian Lehrer: As we continue with Eddie Small, senior real estate reporter at Crain's New York Business on some of the housing stories in the news right now. Liz in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Liz.

Liz: Hi. Yes, I just wanted to say that just building housing doesn't solve the problem at all. As we've seen in neighborhoods like downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City where there's huge luxury condos or buildings going up all the time, some of those buildings still remain somewhat empty, and that there needs to be caps on what market rate apartments can go up to, and good cause eviction, and just things that actually protect low-income people looking for housing, and what low-income people looking for housing means is very wide in New York. That it's very difficult for people with even good salary jobs to find anywhere to live.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Liz, thank you for all those points. Let's take a couple of them. One, on good cause eviction. Without going into all the details of that bill in Albany, it would make it harder for landlords to get tenants out of apartments unless there is good cause of one type or another. If they fail to pay their rent, that's considered good cause for an eviction. It would make it harder for landlords basically because they want turnover to be able to rent it to somebody for more money to be able to get rid of tenants. That's a progressive initiative that so far has failed in the generally progressive New York State legislature. Has Governor Hochul indicated that she's any more sympathetic to that now than she was before?

Eddie Small: Not particularly. I do think there's going to be more pressure on the State House to do something on good cause this session just because it's been overturned twice at the local level now in Newburgh and in Albany, they both passed local good cause eviction laws there, and in both instances, the court overturned them and basically said this conflicts with state rent laws, so it's not allowed at the local level. That really drove home the point that if good cause is going to happen in New York, it will need to happen statewide.

I think there's going to be a lot of pressure from tenant activists on the legislators this coming session to do something on good cause. In terms of whether or not that's successful, we'll have to wait and see.

Brian Lehrer: Her point about market-rate housing not solving the problem and there needs to be very specific large numbers of specifically affordable units built for people of different income levels. The math of that is that the government is between a rock and a hard place here, where they want developers to build a lot of affordable housing, but developers need to make a profit if they're going to do it just in the context of the private market. There's only so much government money to go around for subsidized housing. Somewhere in that nexus of moving parts, I think any mayor is stuck walking a fine line between trying to get as much affordable housing built as they can, but market reality is pushing back.

Eddie Small: This is where the 421-a controversy comes in. That's an affordable housing tax break also from Albany. It expired in June. It basically gave developers a tax break for designating a certain amount of units in their buildings as affordable. Developers have long insisted this is the only way affordable housing works in New York City, otherwise, the math just doesn't work out. We are businesses and we need to make a profit and this is the only way to do it. Opponents just say it's not effective, the units it creates aren't actually affordable. It's poorly enforced.

Brian Lehrer: That's it. Do you think there's any chance in the next state legislature session of getting a new version of 421-a or something like it so that the tax breaks for the developers really only go to the developers if they're building a lot of affordable housing and there isn't so much abuse that people say there is?

Eddie Small: I think there's a chance at least. Hochul had proposed a program to replace 421-a earlier this year that was meant to cut down, in particular, on some of the higher income levels that developers could still use and designate as affordable housing under the old program. That didn't make it through the budget, it didn't make it into the legislative session. It didn't ever seem there was that much energy behind a big push for renewing 421-a or enacting her different program. It was called 45 W.

I would expect there'll be another push for that this year. That was one of the components of Adams' plan, was to advocate for some type of tax break to come back in Albany. I don't know what it will look like. I would imagine it'll be at least somewhat different than the 421-a program. If what Hochul did last year or earlier this year is any indication, I think trying to crack down on those higher income levels and make sure the apartments actually do go to people who aren't making a ton of money would be part of that new program.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Alex in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alex.

Alex: Hi, Brian. Love your show, longtime listener. Amazing stuff you do. I just wanted to say that I'm a real estate agent here in Brooklyn and I represent both tenants and landlords, and I just wanted to say that the good cause eviction proposals could really make it tough for smaller landlords to ensure that they have good tenants. I'm talking about people who have owned buildings here with maybe four to six units, maybe less, been here a long time, just want to be good neighbors, good citizens, et cetera, and they're not looking to fleece anyone.

Landlords really need to be able to check tenants' backgrounds. I just wanted to say that as long as not everybody assumes that every landlord in the city is a huge corporation and a huge developer, people need to know that there are a lot of people who have raised families here, bought a building many years ago, and just want to be good landlords. That's all.

Brian Lehrer: Alex, thank you very much. On that checking of backgrounds, as we run out of time, and we'll do more on this in future segments, this bill that city council is considering, and we're going to have few members of city council on later in the week, to make it harder for landlords to check the criminal backgrounds, actual convictions of people who are applying for apartments. Do you see it going through and what do you see as the biggest argument on each side?

Eddie Small: The biggest argument in favor of the bill is that this is another contributor to the housing crisis and the homelessness crisis. People commit a crime and they go to jail for that, and then they have a hard time finding an apartment because of this criminal background check. They're released and they're trying to get their life back together. The fact that they can't find housing because of this criminal background check is something that prevents them from finding housing and adding to the homeless population.

The main argument in favor of the bill is basically that it's a way to help ease the housing crisis, help these people get started again, and help reduce the homelessness crisis in the city. The main argument against it is safety concerns for the landlords and for the other tenants who are going to be living in their buildings. I think you'll see some version of it get through the council. I don't know if it'll be the version that's proposed now. It does seem like there's a decent amount of support for it. Tough to predict what's going to happen at the city council or in Albany, but right now I would say probably somewhat likely that a version of this bill makes it through.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor who's been fairly sympathetic to landlords, especially small landlords, reminds everybody that he's a small landlord himself, as the rat infestation fine story from last week reminds us, the mayor's own property. I would've expected him to be more against this than he appears to be, although he does seem to want to add more exceptions, meaning certain kinds of crimes like sex offenders, the landlords, I think would still be able to exclude.

The mayor wants to add more kinds of people with past criminal convictions that might be considered a potential danger more than others. I guess we're going to see those city council mayoral branch negotiations going forward. We thank Eddie Small, senior real estate reporter for Crain's New York Business for walking through these various stories with us. Eddie, thanks a lot. We really appreciate it.

Eddie Small: No problem. Thanks for having me, Brian.

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