What can New York learn from cities around the world taking “big swings” to confront their housing crises?

New York is facing a housing crisis. The vacancy rate is less than 1.5%. Over half of all New Yorkers are rent-burdened, spending more than 30% of their incomes on rent. Despite the urgent need for housing, New York City lags behind many smaller U.S. cities in new construction. At the core of this crisis is an unquantifiable and intractable problem: access to safe, dignified, and stable shelter is fundamentally out of reach for most New Yorkers.

The housing crisis is not a problem for one sector to solve, nor is it a crisis that can be addressed with a single solution. For a real sea change in housing, leaders in development, tenants rights, architecture, planning, and policy will need to work together in radically new ways.

Global Inspiration for New York City’s Housing Crisis) is a collection of case studies of cities around the globe who have taken big swings to address their housing crises. In exchanges with global housing leaders, Fellows studied efforts to deepen affordability, welcome new arrivals, build buy-in, cut red tape, and advance green solutions from around the world.