Opinion: Building a Safer City Requires Housing, Not Criminalization

“Yes, we are seeing more people on the streets, and many of them are in crisis. But unless we deal with the root causes of homelessness, we are just going to be looking at a revolving door of incarceration and hospitalizations that only exacerbate the problem.”

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The governor gave her State of the State address last week, with bold claims about what she will do to ensure New York, and New York City in particular, feel safer. Her recent proposals—which have been echoed by Mayor Eric Adams and even more progressive mayoral candidates—include increasing involuntary commitments of unhoused people, adding more police to the subway, and expanding the surveillance state.

While the mayor and the governor are right that something needs to change, these policies misdiagnose the problem and will not solve it. We have decades of data that remind us that incarceration and involuntary hospitalization do not make anyone safer. While politically satisfying, these solutions just perpetuate the cycles of poverty, destabilization, and violence that erode public safety. 

But New Yorkers are feeling less safe, and they’re not imagining that something has changed. The biggest difference we’re seeing now—and the main reason New Yorkers are feeling the rise of mental instability—is because we are living through the most dramatic increase in homelessness that we’ve seen in New York City since the Great Depression. 

The statistics are staggering. In 2024, our state saw a 53 percent increase in homelessness compared with 2023, with more than 158,000 unhoused people. New York has the highest per capita rate of unhoused people of all the states in the country. So yes, we are seeing more people on the streets, and many of them are in crisis. But unless we deal with the root causes of homelessness, we are just going to be looking at a revolving door of incarceration and hospitalizations that only exacerbate the problem. 

Too many New Yorkers are one unexpected emergency away from losing their housing, and the cost of rent is ever-rising. The city’s latest Housing Vacancy Survey showed that the vacancy rate in low-rent apartments was so low it’s basically nonexistent, while median rents continue to climb. The city’s median asking rent was nearly $3,700 per month in October 2024, an amount that’s simply out of reach for most New Yorkers. 

With the cost of living rising exorbitantly and unpredictably, people are increasingly thrust into highly stressful, unstable situations that can catapult into a downward spiral of mental instability and homelessness. The experience of living on the streets will turn a period of mental instability into a full blown crisis. 

Homelessness, like mental illness, is the result of a complex web of cause and effect. But at its core, New York has a housing crisis because our housing market is responsive to the demand for investment, not the demand for affordable housing. We have corporations, speculators, private equity, and foreign investors buying into the New York real estate market to enrich themselves further. Many of these apartments sit empty, driving up rents and further reducing the supply of housing. This represents a market failure, and it reminds us that the private market will not solve the problem it created. 

We must do more to ensure people are not losing their housing at the same moment they teeter on crisis. In practice, this looks like increasing access to housing vouchers, bringing all supportive housing beds back online, expanding Right to Counsel for people facing eviction, and doing more to ensure rent stabilization laws are strong and enforced. 

But the intractable problem of affordable housing also requires new, bolder solutions. Decoupling housing from the private market may sound like a pipe dream, but it’s the standard that’s been heralded as the secret to thriving, affordable communities in places as diverse as Vienna and Singapore. 

In Vienna, social housing is income-restricted, but only when residents first move in. They sign a one-time lease, and their rent rarely rises. The units are known for being well designed and maintained, and 80 percent of the city’s population qualifies for the housing. This system supports a diverse population of mixed income neighbors, as residents’ income levels change over time. 

Can you imagine what would be possible for individuals and our New York community if the rent was permanently affordable and predictably stable? New York City neighborhoods would be affordable for teachers, artists, and nurses. We could reverse the exodus of Black neighbors we’ve seen in recent years. And yes, we could keep people in their homes and prevent the epidemic of stress and mental illness that comes with never knowing if your life will become even more unaffordable. 

This is why we introduced a bill in New York to create a Social Housing Development Authority that would create and build social housing in New York State. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has introduced a similar bill at the federal level, called the Homes Act. And we’re seeing similar proposals from our colleagues in places like California and Seattle.

Of course, social housing alone will not solve the mental health epidemic we’re seeing. We need to invest in wraparound services, access to support, and affordable healthcare and medications. There are people whose trauma and mental health are so poor that they do need to be hospitalized or provided with extensive care, and they should be able to access high quality care at low or no cost.

But when you are using hospitalization—or worse, incarceration—to solve the issue caused by insufficient affordable housing, you set yourself up to fail. The hospitals will never have enough beds, nurses, or resources to fill in the gaps for adequate housing. And without it, people will continue to spiral downwards and the problem will get worse.  

We applaud the governor and the mayor for focusing on the health, well-being, and safety of New Yorkers. But if they’re serious about it, they have to start with housing. 

Emily Gallagher represents Greenpoint and Williamsburg in the New York State Assembly. Cordell Cleare represents Harem in the New York State Senate. Oksana Mironova is a housing policy analyst with the Community Service Society.*

*CSS is among City Limits’ funders.

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