Report Says Lower Manhattan Will Lose Thousand-Plus Affordable Homes By 2030
In May, the administration of Mayor Zohran Mamdani provided an update about citywide affordable housing goals, in which it reaffirmed a commitment to include 925 new, income-limited and rent-protected apartments at a development on city-owned land at 100 Gold Street (adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge), in addition to 2,775 market-rate apartments.
While this update was welcome news for local advocates of affordable housing, a new analysis from the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD), an umbrella organization of 100 non-profit affordable housing and economic development groups that serve low- and moderate-income residents throughout New York City, provides context that may temper the enthusiasm.
ANHD recently published the 2026 edition of its annual “Housing Risk Map.” This analysis cites Community District 1 (which encompasses Lower Manhattan) as one of the five most threatened among the 59 such zones in the five boroughs when measured by the number of Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) units that will expire between now and 2030.
LIHTC is a federal program that confers income-tax credits upon housing developers in exchange for a promise to set aside a subset of the units they create as rent-restricted apartments for lower-income households. By law, LIHTC benefits expire after 30 years. At that point, the owners of such properties have three options: to apply for a new round of tax credits (while maintaining affordability protections), continue operating the property as affordable housing without new subsidies, or opt out of the program and reposition the former LIHTC property as market-rate housing. Historically, the first of these options is common in areas where rents are flat or declining, the second is nearly unheard of, and the third is most prevalent in communities where rents are trending upward, such as Lower Manhattan.
The ANHD report says 1,153 such units will lapse out of LIHTC protections within Community District 1 over the next 42 months. This total will absorb the entirety of the 925 units heralded by City Hall, and leave an additional local deficit of 228 affordable homes. Moreover, construction at 100 Gold Street is not expected to begin before 2030 (assuming the current schedule does not slip), and is likely to require between three and five years once ground has been broken. This means that, in the most optimistic scenario, Lower Manhattan is slated to lose more than 1,000 affordable homes several years before any of them are replaced.
The dearth of affordability in Lower Manhattan can be viewed against the backdrop of a statistical analysis by George M. Janes & Associates (a planning consultancy with expertise in zoning, statistics, and quantitative modeling), which the firm is conducting on behalf of Community Board 1. In an update presented to CB1 in May, Mr. Janes noted that while the Mamdani administration has announced with great fanfare that it intends to designate multiple communities as Affordable Housing Fast Track districts, Lower Manhattan is unlikely to be among these.
As a case in point to illustrate the decline of affordable housing at the local level, Mr. Janes cited the example of 70 Battery Place, in Battery Park City. From 2007 through 2021, the entire 209-unit building was rent stabilized. But as various subsidies and affordability covenants began to sunset, in 2022 that tally had declined to 155 units. By 2023, just 43 units retained any limits on rent increases.
These trends notwithstanding, there are some encouraging local portents. The Battery Park City Authority announced in February a deal to preserve rent stabilization for approximately 430 apartments at Gateway Plaza through the year 2069. This followed similar moves by the Authority to preserve (and, in some cases, expand) local affordability. In 2025, the BPCA finalized an agreement related to Tribeca Bridge Tower (on North End Avenue), providing for 31 affordable units through 2069. And in 2022, the agency negotiated an agreement to maintain 70 affordable homes in Tribeca Pointe (on Chambers Street), also through 2069.
Mr. Janes also pointed to new affordable units at three recently opened Lower Manhattan residential buildings: 25 Water Street (330 rent-protected apartments), 7 Dey Street (63), and 55 Broad Street (143).