Habitats for more of humanity

Thirty-nine years ago, an ex-president named Jimmy Carter picked up a hammer and joined a young nonprofit called Habitat for Humanity to rebuild a six-story building in Manhattan’s East Village. He and other volunteers restored what was then a dilapidated tenement with hundreds of broken windows and without a roof, creating a foothold of decent and dignified housing in a neighborhood awash in drugs and crime.

When Carter came back for the 30th anniversary of that work, he said: “You could stand on the second floor, if you could get up there, and you could look up and see the sky,” he recalled. “The garbage was more than knee-deep. And there were fires where people were living, and cooking up food and dope.”

Habitat for Humanity has gone on to build millions of homes worldwide. They do admirable, indispensable work. But in stark contrast to times when swaths of New York were neglected and abandoned, this city is, broadly speaking, a desirable place to live where far too few people can afford habitable housing. It costs too much to produce housing, and, not coincidentally, we get too little of it.

New York City’s construction costs are among the nation’s highest, the result of a range of factors including costly land, a regulatory gauntlet that often takes years to run, high labor costs and more. As a result, affordable housing inevitably necessitates millions in taxpayer subsidy to pencil out. Once-in-a-blue-moon attempts to build more cheaply and efficiently, such as a high-profile attempt at modular construction in Brooklyn in 2014, wind up on the scrap heap.

It’s long past time for the city and state to undertake a systematic look at all the inflationary factors and try to drive the cost of construction lower. We’re glad Mayor Adams is focused on the problem, and we’re glad Gov. Hochul is pressing to goose housing construction in this year’s budget. But this is going to require a sustained, all-hands effort — a lot like building a Habitat for Humanity home.