Source: New York University

Date Published: 06.26.2026

Press Link: NMHC and NYU SPS Release Groundbreaking Housing Affordability Toolkit

Publication Link: https://urbanlab.nyu.edu/publication/nmhc-housing-affordability-toolkit/

The NYU Urban Lab at the NYU School of Professional Studies’ Schack Institute of Real Estate, working in partnership with the National Multifamily Housing Council, is the source of The Housing Affordability Toolkit, a research-driven roadmap arguing that the nation’s rental affordability crisis can be solved, not just managed, within 17 years. The report finds that 22.4 million U.S. households, roughly half of all renters, are rent-burdened, and it separates the crisis into distinct problems requiring different solutions: about 10.1 million “subsidy-dependent” households earn too little to afford housing regardless of supply, while millions more are burdened primarily by undersupply, with regulatory costs alone accounting for over 40% of the cost of building a new apartment. To close the gap, the toolkit recommends a three-part strategy: preserving and creating lower-cost housing that doesn’t rely on subsidies (including naturally occurring affordable housing), reducing development barriers through measures like streamlined approvals and tax abatements, and building new public-private partnership programs to expand access to both existing and newly built housing. Toolkit author and NYU Urban Lab director Matthew Kwatinetz notes that relying solely on tax credits would take 157 years, longer than the span since World War II, underscoring why the report calls for an integrated, executable plan combining deregulation, targeted subsidies, and preservation rather than any single tool alone.

Our Partners at NMHC: https://www.nmhc.org/

For more information on NYU SPS | Schack, visit us at: NYU SPS Schack Institute of Real Estate