Amid a Growing Housing Crisis, Thousands of Public Housing Units Remain Empty in New York City

New York City is in the middle of a brutal housing crisis, yet thousands of apartments are sitting empty. Nearly 5,000 vacant units could house families, but most of them are uninhabitable due to long-overdue repairs. The average turnaround time to fix and re-rent these apartments is now over 400 days. That’s more than a year of wasted time while shelter populations grow and people are forced onto the streets.

The backlog of repairs is no secret. Capital repair needs have ballooned to over $78 billion, with problems like mold, broken elevators, lead paint, and heating failures piling up year after year. Many of these vacant apartments remain empty not because people don’t want them, but because the city hasn’t prioritized making them livable.

Meanwhile, public officials keep talking about building new affordable housing, but there’s far less urgency when it comes to fixing the affordable housing we already have. It’s a lot easier to make grand announcements about new developments than it is to roll up sleeves and deal with the slow, bureaucratic disaster of getting existing units back online.

This isn’t just a question of funding, it’s a question of will. City agencies often face layers of red tape and outdated procurement processes that slow down even the most urgent repairs. Labor shortages and supply chain delays have added to the pile-up, but administrative inefficiency remains the biggest bottleneck. Without a coordinated effort to streamline repairs, these empty units will continue to languish while the crisis deepens.

Every empty apartment is a missed opportunity. With vacancy rates citywide at historic lows, these units could make an immediate impact. Instead, they are treated as afterthoughts in a system that prioritizes flashy new projects over basic maintenance and common sense. That’s why the Urban Builders Coalition works not just to advocate for new affordable housing construction, but also to raise public awareness about the thousands of homes already here—sitting empty, ignored, and waiting to be restored.

If New York is serious about addressing its housing crisis, it needs to fix what’s already broken. Bringing these vacant public housing units back into circulation should be step one. Otherwise, the crisis will only keep getting worse.