Chair Sanchez round 2: rent-stabilized vacancies and Unlocking Doors program

All right, vacancies in rent-stabilized units across the city.

As of April 1st of 2025, the HCR reported more than 57,000 rent-stabilized apartments were vacant, approximately 6% of the overall rent-stabilized universe.

That's 15%.

increase from the previous year, 2024.

However, in the block-by-block report and the rental ripoff report, the discussion around rent-stabilized vacancies and rent-stabilized buildings really focused on the Unlocking Doors program and how unsuccessful it has been.

And so a question here is, what does the city believe is driving the number, the increasing number of vacancies in rent-stabilized units?

Does HPD or the administration believe that there was...

That unlocking doors was structured poorly or what reasons do you ascribe for the reasons for the failure of unlocking doors and

any other details that you can share to address this specific universe of low-cost homes?

Yeah, thank you, Council Member.

So I think we're still trying to diagnose exactly by having conversations with our partners and owners of these rent-stabilized buildings about why unlocking doors

did not have better uptake.

But a couple of things I want to say about just the statistic first is that we do know that the vacancy rate in rent-stabilized housing is very, very low.

We're in the middle now of the housing vacancy survey, which kind of digs in much more deeply and will give us a better picture of exactly what the vacancy rate looks like.

I also want to make sure, with all due respect to my colleagues at HCR, that we're

aren't misunderstanding the data that they're putting out.

I think sometimes these numbers come out and people think these are warehoused units, the same units stay vacant for years.

That's not necessarily the case.

This is like a moment in time.

So, you know, units may be vacant for any reason, either because we've just completed construction and they're going through lease up or because they're just, you know, gone on to turnover.

So I think it's important not to overstate.

You know, what that number that HR puts out says.

To your question about why the take-up has been so low and what to do about it, I think, to be frank, your sponsoring the renewal of J51 will be a huge tool to do a better job in terms of getting units back online quickly.

I think the changes that have been authorized by the state, including the 100% reimbursement, the updated cost schedule, I think these will be like much, much, much more successful in terms of getting rent stabilized.

I will say, you know, under J51 historically, we saw far more co-ops taking advantage of that program than we did rent stabilized buildings.

I think part of our goals going forward will be to do really aggressive outreach to make sure that building owners, whether they have vacancies or deferred capital needs, are fully utilizing J51.

And we look forward to working with you to make sure that gets passed swiftly.

Great.

Excellent.

I think one thing that would be helpful, whether today or in public conversation around these numbers around vacancies, are the differences in methodology like you mentioned, right?

The housing vacancy survey takes a very...

It's a very deep dive on exactly why each unit is vacant.

And there's a very, once you start drilling down, the vacant and available for rent is a much smaller number.

So it would be helpful, I don't know if you have this answer today, but if you can compare that 57,000 that HCR is reporting with the much smaller vacant and affordable, excuse me, vacant and available number that the HVS puts out.

As a first question and second question, is the methodology going to stay the same with the housing vacancy survey now that it's not going to be conducted by the Census Bureau?

And is there anything that we should anticipate or look for with the new release?

Yeah, I appreciate the question.

And I do think we could dive deeper into your question about low-cost units within that universe of 57,000.

And I think I'll volunteer our head of our policy team who's here today to take note that we'll dig into that and get back to you on it.

As it relates to the housing vacancy survey, again, we're

deep into it now and we are working with a new vendor, but I don't anticipate any changes to the housing vacancy survey that would make a comparison look back to the previous surveys challenging in any way.

And so, you know, I think we're just looking forward to getting to February when we'll release the draft report.