The New York Real Estate Board recently confirmed what every New Yorker feels: we are in a housing free-fall. With a staggering shortfall of up to 540,000 units and a vacancy rate of just 1.4 percent, the pace of new construction is glacially slow. But the solution might be hiding in plain sight, tucked away behind the chain-link fences of our city's woefully underutilized golf courses.
But there's no need to wait for the details. Landlords are not the cause of the nation's housing crisis, and any plan that reduces investment in housing is only going to make matters worse. The crisis is a simple problem with a complicated solution. The problem is that the United States does not have enough housing. The hard part is building more.
Industry watchers on both sides of the aisle say President Donald Trump's recently announced goal of banning "large institutional investors" from buying single-family homes won't address the root cause of high home prices: a shortage of homes. Major investors, including hedge funds and private equity firms, own hundreds of thousands of single-family homes around the US, which has raised concerns that Wall Street-backed groups are outcompeting individual homebuyers, especially first-time buyers, and driving up home prices.
The United States is short 4 million housing units, with a particular dearth of starter homes, moderately priced apartments in low-rises, and family-friendly dwellings. Interest rates are high, which has stifled construction and pushed up the cost of mortgages. As a result, more Americans are renting, and roughly half of those households are spending more than a third of their income on shelter.
The new city will be laid out on a compact grid, with interlocking streets, rapid-transit routes and greenways for pedestrians and cyclists. The city's least dense residential neighborhoods will be zoned for 85-foot apartment buildings, taller than essentially every apartment building erected before 1880. House hunters will be able to purchase row houses as if they were shopping for real estate in 19th century Brooklyn, not in cookie-cutter suburban sprawl.
Home prices have risen more than 50% since the pandemic. About a third of American households now spend more than 30% of their income on housing. In 2014, the median age of a first-time homebuyer was 31. In 2025, it was 40 the highest on record. The core of the problem is simple: Too much money chasing too few homes. How many more homes does America need? I've seen estimates ranging from 2 million to 5 million.
Only about 56% of people on council housing registers in boroughs like Islington and Lambeth are rehoused each year Councils are removing thousands from waiting lists due to having no realistic chance of being housed Council housing now overwhelmingly goes to those in the most severe need Only about five per cent of Londoners on the waiting list for a council home have any chance of being rehoused, a City Hall inquiry has been told.
I've been reading more articles arguing that our housing shortage is artificially createdthat it's caused by the increasing concentration of homebuilders and the decline in private homebuilders. The theory suggests that public builders are hoarding lots to drive prices up when they could be selling more homes and lowering prices. I initially dismissed this narrative. But unfortunately, it's gaining traction among politicians who tend to believe anything implying the crisis isn't their fault and is beyond their control.
Urban Catalyst is updating their dual high-rise proposal into two eight-story residential buildings. The project shifts from earlier office and housing concepts to focus solely on apartments, delivering 626 units across sites at 147 E. Santa Clara St. and 95 N. Fourth St. This adaptation uses wood-frame construction for efficiency and cost reduction, allowing the development to progress amid economic realities while addressing the city's housing needs.
Almost half of the 3,690 town and village councils in France that have the authority to raise the rate of taxe d'habitation bills on second homes have done so, according to official figures. Taxe d'habitation bills will start dropping into the letter boxes of second home owners in the next few days - and some may well be in for an unpleasant surprise.
The ongoing rise in the number of homeless students, now more than double what it was in 2010 even as the overall student population has shrunk, is a reflection of both the city's acute housing shortage and the surge of migrant families who have filled homeless shelters in recent years. Since the influx of asylum seekers began in summer 2022, the city's public schools have absorbed an estimated 50,000 new students in temporary housing.
the majority of Americans find housing costs in the U.S. unreasonably high, according to a recent survey conducted by Tavern Research for the Searchlight Institute. While housing economists attribute the crisis to a chronic shortage of housing, the survey shows a variety of opinions on the causes, including blaming investors, building material costs, landlords, and elected officials. The survey also highlights that a majority of Americans welcome more home construction in their communities, recognizing the benefits of increased housing availability.
The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity was a good example. It was explicitly designed to add a little housing in every community, but not the same amount in every community, to avoid changing their character. It was proportional, meaning dense areas like Midtown South would get more units than low-scale neighborhoods such as College Point, Whitestone, Bayside, Douglaston and Little Neck, all of which Paladino represents.
The legal process to prove rightful heirship can be complex and costly, and disproportionately affects families in underserved communities, said Byron Batres, founder and CEO of Scrivnr. Scrivnr's mission is to make legal services accessible so families can resolve title issues and fully claim what's rightfully theirs. Scrivnr's press release cited recent data from The Pew Charitable Trusts, which estimates that tangled title properties across Philadelphia are collectively worth more than $1.1 billion.
Given the unaffordable prices of a standalone house in Randwick, a vibrant suburb in the city's east, they opted to renovate a sunroom. We had to take a creative approach and create a flexible third bedroom, Henderson says. Otherwise we would need to move away from here, and we'd be moving further away from jobs, further away from work and schools. The compromise we came up with was to remain where we were, but create a third space.
A town in Brittany has passed a local decree banning the construction of second homes amid an increasing housing shortage for local people. The coastal town of Cancale in Brittany, population 5,500, has passed a decree banning the construction of new buildings to be used as second homes, amid what local authorities describe as a "crisis" in housing shortages for local people.
