There has been increasing attention on single-room-occupancy housing, more commonly known as SROs, as part of a strategy to address the city’s affordable housing crisis. In a welcome move, the Adams administration and the Department of City Planning’s “City of Yes for Housing Affordability” proposal now appears to be taking this idea seriously.
Once an important part of the city’s housing stock, SROs fell out of favor in the post-war years as they came to be associated with urban decay, and the city adopted prohibitions on new units and tax incentives to encourage their removal. In the 1980s, however, the city recognized that the loss of SRO units had contributed to a surge homelessness, and their further removal was prohibited.
Today, the signs of the city’s persistent and deepening affordable housing crisis are all around us. The recent New York City Housing & Vacancy Survey reported our rental vacancy rate had fallen to a multi-decade low of 1.4%. In the city’s homeless shelters, in November 2023 there were 92,824 homeless individuals, including 33,365 children, sleeping each night in New York City’s main municipal shelter system, according to the city’s Department of Homeless Services.
There is a growing recognition that an “all of the above” strategy is needed to address the city’s housing shortage. There is also an appreciation that traditional apartments are not suitable for all types of households: Recent census data indicate that approximately one-third of city households consist of a single person living alone, and more than two-thirds of households do not include children.
At the same time, shared housing arrangements are generating continuing interest, particularly as an alternative for young adults, but in many cases such arrangements are not permitted under the current city and state housing regulations. SRO units could fill a gap in the city’s housing stock and help to address these unmet needs.
The administration’s “City of Yes for Housing Affordability” proposal would take important steps toward bringing back SROs as a viable housing model.
The Draft Scope of Work for the environmental review of the proposal, released by DCP in September 2023, outlines two primary changes: eliminating the “dwelling unit factor” in the Zoning Resolution — the minimum average square footage for residential units — and allowing rooming units in converted buildings.
The proposal would also help facilitate smaller units by eliminating minimum parking requirements throughout the city. The proposal is expected to enter public review in the middle of this year.
The proposal would eliminate the dwelling unit factor in certain areas of the city identified as “Inner Transit-Oriented Development Areas.” According to the Draft Scope, “[i]n these areas with excellent access to transit, developers who wish to may develop projects consisting entirely of smaller units that accommodate the pronounced trend in New York City toward smaller household sizes.”
The size of apartment in these areas, even though not regulated by zoning, “would be determined by the combination of other relevant regulations, such as room size limits, in the Building Code, Housing Maintenance Code, and Multiple Dwelling Law, as well as market demand.”
Conversions of underused office buildings also have the potential to create a significant amount of new housing, and the “City of Yes” proposals would make these conversions easier. The Draft Scope describes that the proposal would both “extend the city’s powerful adaptive reuse regulations citywide and to buildings constructed in 1990 or earlier” and “would enable conversion to a wider range of housing types, such as supportive housing, dormitories, and rooming units.”
Allowing SRO-type units in converted office buildings would be particularly useful in lowering the cost of these conversions by decreasing the number of kitchens and bathrooms that need to be installed. The Draft Scope indicates that “[t]his action has the potential to create significant amounts of new housing from vacant office buildings and other underutilized nonresidential space, with adjustments to the overall framework that make it easier for conversions to reach lower market tiers and especially underserved niches in the housing market.”
The specific text of the City of Yes amendments is expected to be released when the proposal enters the formal land use review process later this year.
How much these proposals could spur the creation of smaller units is unclear, particularly as other city and state regulations will continue to regulate room size and the number of unrelated people who occupy an apartment. Nonetheless, it is welcome that the Adams administration and city leaders have put SROs back in play as one piece of a larger attack on the city’s housing crisis.
Sullivan is special counsel in the Land Use department at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel.
