by Ross Hoffman;City Limits (NY)

New York City is experiencing an affordable-housing crisis: working-class neighborhoods are being redeveloped into luxury apartment buildings. As a result, property values increase, leading to rising rents. The original residents of the community have two options: struggle to pay the rent or face eviction. 

It is not a coincidence that the number of homeless New Yorkers sleeping each night in municipal shelters is 78 percent higher than it was ten years ago. This number is even higher if you include people sleeping on a friend’s sofa. There are over 60,000 homeless people living in New York City. 

Many of the homeless are employed with decent jobs, such as security guards and assistant teachers, but after paying the family’s bills are unable to afford rising rents. These working-class New Yorkers end up in overcrowded and cramped homeless shelters. Since the 1980s, the city has been supplementing the shelters by placing homeless people into hotels – clearly a problem exists.

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For the entire column, see

http://citylimits.org/2017/05/08/cityviews-brownfield-redevelopment-must-include-more-affordable-housing/