More housing now...

New York’s housing shortage is driving up rents, fueling homelessness and causing all manner of economic pain and strain. If leaders started swinging wrecking balls at apartment buildings, there would be widespread outrage. So why is it okay for judges and politicians to swing wrecking balls at perfectly legal plans to build new homes in a city desperate for them?

The last two weeks have seen a collective anti-gentrification panic kibosh more than 4,500 new apartment units, 1,190 of them affordable.

First on the Demolish the Future City tour: Harlem.

A modest rezoning proposal would have created 1,500 apartments, 500 of them affordable, in five new buildings at Lenox Terrace. Under the deal, the developer, the Olnick organization, promised renovations and extended affordability for 1,700 existing units at the middle-class complex.

Caving to fears about gentrification, the

City Council shouted no. In fact, the quickest way to gentrify an in-demand city is to freeze housing supply. (See San Francisco.)

Nor will rejecting this deal prevent new buildings from going up on-site; Olnick can erect four new market-rate rental buildings as of right. Pols are cutting off affordable housing to spite their faces.

Stop two on the Demolish the Future City tour: the Lower East Side.

At Two Bridges, developers, complying fully with underlying zoning in place since the early 1960s, seek to build three tall towers that would yield 3,000 new housing units, roughly 700 of them affordable.

Folks worried about losing sunlight and gaining new neighbors sued. Judge Arthur Engoron handed them victories once, then again last week, with little legal rationale beyond “these just feel too tall.”

New Yorkers who hate new buildings can either work to change zoning laws before the fact, or they can move somewhere with many fewer people. Check out maps.google.com. There are plenty.