As a new dad and a lifelong tenant, Ben knows how hard it is to find an apartment you can afford that is actually big enough for a family. In fact, Ben doesn't know many, if any families that aren't under-housed, where family members have to share at least one room. Ben himself spent much of the pandemic renting a market rate one-bedroom with his wife and daughter. This is in part because there is no requirement for developers to build anything other than studio and one-bedroom apartments and in the Mayor's quest to build 300,000 units of affordable housing, our city has lost sight of the most important element of all this, the people who live there. As a result a recent report found that the city is actually losing thousands of apartment a year to conversions that are merging apartments to create 2- and 3-bedrooms. The fact is we need to build more apartments with 2, 3 and 4 bedrooms.
As Borough President, Ben will require our affordable housing plans to count the people who can live in an apartment, not just the number of units, and force every new building to include apartments big enough for families.