Advocates look to landmarking to protect the city’s affordable housing stock. The Real Estate Board of New York isn’t buying it, but preservations are pushing back in turn.
A new REBNY report released Monday stated that from 2007 to 2014, buildings in landmarked districts saw 23 percent of their 44,430 rent-stabilized apartments go market-rate, compared to only 5 percent of the 821,250 regulated units in non-landmarked areas.
Greenwich Village, which lost 1,432 rent-stabilized units, and the Upper West Side, which lost 2,730, were the hardest hit neighborhoods proportionally.
“This report refutes the notion that historic districts are a good means of preserving existing affordable housing,” said REBNY President John Banks in a statement.
Preservationists pushed back, however.
“Without landmarking, many of these areas would have seen the wholesale demolition of buildings, including those with rent-stabilized housing. It’s clear on its face that many more units of rent-stabilized housing would have been lost in these areas,” wrote Andrew Berman, head of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, in a statement. – Ariel Stulberg