Brick by brick

Once every three years, the U.S. Census Bureau swings by to take the temperature of New York City’s never-ending housing maladies — and its just-released Housing & Vacancy Survey results from 2017 show a city well on the mend, with a net gain of 69,000 new homes, apartment buildings in better condition than ever and the bite rents take out of incomes no bigger than before.

The typical tenant pays $1,337 a month, and the typical apartment for rent goes for $1,875 — not cheap, but hardly a king’s ransom. Even crowding has eased.

Give Mayor de Blasio loads of credit for keeping the trends heading in the right direction — the New York City Housing Authority excepted — by strongly committing to housing development in the face of NIMBY opposition, pressing code enforcement against slumlords, and, though we disagreed with his means, tamping down rents for regulated tenants.

Why homelessness grows and grows to record heights despite housing’s gains, despite record-low unemployment, despite dropping welfare rolls, despite the city’s attempts to help the needy pay rent, and despite a sharp drop in evictions is something the mayor has yet to satisfactorily explain.

Also for de Blasio to address is a growing hole at the heart of this city: a record 248,000 homes officially occupied by no one at all and not on the market at any price, up by 50% since 2011 and by a third since the mayor took his first oath of office. That’s 7% of all the residences in the five boroughs — most commonly because they are “held for occasional, seasonal or recreational use.”

Be they Russian billionaire stash pads, revolving-door Airbnbs or suburbanites’ night-at-Lincoln Center pieds-a-terre, these dead zones must stay within steady sight for the mayor and his promised property tax commission.