Homeless shelters drop Manhattan property values by up to 17%: study
The city’s homelessness crisis has a new cost — home values.
Manhattan houses located near shelters lost as much as 17 percent of their value, according to a study released by the city’s Independent Budget Office.
The findings provide new fuel to opponents of City Hall’s plans to open 90 new shelters across the five boroughs in a bid to house roughly 58,000 homeless New Yorkers.
“I support homeless shelters, however I feel if the city opens up a shelter next to a residential building or very very close by, then they should compensate anybody living in [that] building for the difference of the value that it goes down,” said Michael Fisher, a West 58th Street resident who opposes the plans to open a shelter at the shuttered Park Savoy hotel on Billionaires Row.
Manhattan home sellers near adult homeless shelters take a 7 percent to 17 percent hit compared to properties farther away from the sites, the IBO found.
The study found that if a property over 500 feet away from a shelter sold for $1 million, a comparable residence within that radius sold for about $929,000 — a 7 percent drop.
Homes within 1,000 feet of multiple shelters took an average hit of 17.4 percent.
The report is based on city Department of Finance data on all Manhattan residential sales of condos and one- to three-family stand-alone homes between 2010 and 2018.
The IBO commissioned the study at the behest of Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who emphasized that the negative impact only refers to transitional shelters.
“Permanent supportive housing doesn’t affect values at all,” she said.
City Hall, shelter providers and homeless advocates quickly went on the attack, blasting the study and its methodology.
“This report is not only wrong on the facts, it’s morally indefensible,” said spokeswoman Avery Cohen. “Anyone who would withhold help from a family in need to make a bigger profit reselling a home has to take a hard look in the mirror.”
Cohen said the study’s methodology was flawed because it only examined a small slice of Manhattan’s real estate market — focusing on just small buildings and condos — to draw sweeping conclusions.
Additionally, City Hall argued the IBO failed to account for other factors that influence property values, like proximity to subway stops.
Shelter providers and homeless advocates unloaded on the IBO’s study, too.
“The City’s Independent Budget Office has done a tremendous disservice to all New Yorkers by releasing a stunningly flawed, statistically dubious study that lacks basic research methodology,” said Christine Quinn, the former City Council speaker who now runs shelter provider Women in Need.
“In doing so, they serve only to reinforce a negative and damaging stereotype about homeless shelters and families in our communities.”
In turn, IBO spokesman Doug Turetsky blamed the study’s “limitations” on the Dept. of Homeless Services for failing to provide a complete list of when shelters opened.