This section draws on the latest census and administrative data to assess both recent and long-term trends in New York City’s rental housing landscape. Although the share of renter households has declined modestly over the past decade, the city remains overwhelmingly renter-majority—unlike the nation as a whole, where most households own their homes. Renter incomes have generally increased, but gains have not always kept pace with rising rents, and affordability and housing quality vary widely across neighborhoods.

Between 2013 and 2023, the share of renter households in the city declined slightly, from 68.0 to 67.5 percent (Figure 1). The decade drop was far less than the 1.7 percentage point decline nationwide. The Bronx continued to have the city’s highest renter share (79.9%), while Staten Island remained the lowest (33.4%). Manhattan experienced the largest decline over the decade, down 2.4 percentage points. In contrast, Brooklyn and Staten Island were the only boroughs where the renter share increased—reflecting subtle but notable shifts in the composition of homeowner and renter households depending on the borough.

Figure 1:

Renter household incomes rose citywide during the same period. By 2023, the median renter household earned $63,698—a 19.7 percent increase over 2013 in inflation-adjusted dollars (Figure 2). Still, this lagged the national growth rate of 25.7 percent. Brooklyn saw the largest gain (37.6%), followed by Queens (22.4%). Incomes grew more modestly in Manhattan (10.9%) and the Bronx (9.0%) and declined in Staten Island by 6.7 percent.

Figure 2:

Over the past decade, median gross rent in New York City rose by 13.5 percent after adjusting for inflation, well below the national increase of 23.9 percent (Figure 3). Gross rent includes contract rent plus estimated utilities and reflects the full cost of housing. Rent growth was uneven: Brooklyn saw the steepest percentage increase (17.9%), followed by Staten Island (16.0%) and Queens (12.3%). The Bronx recorded the smallest gain, just 2.1 percent. While rents remain highest in Manhattan, real rent growth over the decade was concentrated in the outer boroughs—often in neighborhoods where income growth was also strongest.

Figure 3:

To more precisely capture market conditions for newly available units, we supplement this analysis with StreetEasy asking rent data. Between 2022 and 2023, median asking rents rose 3.7 percent citywide (Figure 4). Brooklyn again led with a 4.8 percent increase, while Manhattan recorded the smallest gain (1.3%). These data have limitations: they reflect only advertised rents, do not account for lease renewals or below-market units, and span only a one-year period of change between 2022 and 2023.

Figure 4:

Despite rising incomes, affordability remains a persistent concern. Just over half of renter households were rent burdened in 2023—spending 30 percent or more of income on rent (Figure 5). Between 2013 and 2023, the share of moderately burdened households fell from 24.4 to 23.0 percent, and severely burdened households dropped from 29.6 to 28.9 percent. These citywide figures obscure variation across income groups, however. Low-income renters saw the largest decline in moderate burdens (9.7 percentage points), while very low-income renters saw a notable reduction in severe burdens. In contrast, moderate- and middle-income renters experienced smaller shifts, with some facing increases in severe burden.

Figure 5:

Over the past decade, renter incomes have not consistently kept pace with rental housing costs. Between 2014 and 2019, incomes gradually caught up to rent levels, with 2019 marking the most affordable point since the Great Recession (Figure 6). That trend reversed during the pandemic: by 2021, renter incomes had fallen to 110 percent of their 2007 value—down from 119 percent in 2019—while rents climbed to 126 percent of their 2007 value. Incomes partially rebounded to 117 percent in 2022, then dipped again to 115 percent in 2023. During this period, rents held relatively steady at about 125 percent of their 2007 value. While median gross rent edged down slightly in real terms between 2021 and 2023, renter household income also declined in 2023, underscoring the fragility of the post-pandemic recovery in affordability.

Figure 6:

Beyond affordability, indicators of housing quality suggest that recent trends may be driven by some combination of increased HPD enforcement activity and growing physical distress in the multifamily stock. Between 2023 and 2024, the rate of new housing code violations rose sharply (Figure 7). Non-serious violations increased by 10.5 percent, while serious violations rose by 15.6 percent—more than double the historical average annual increase of 6.9 percent. These trends may reflect changing conditions in the city’s rental housing stock, particularly among older multifamily buildings.

Figure 7:

Eviction filings in 2024 remained well below pre-pandemic levels, as shown in Figure 8 by comparing the 2017–2019 average to 2024 filings. Even year over year, filings declined by 9.6 percent between 2023 and 2024. Still, housing courts saw 119,646 new eviction filings in 2024. This total was higher than in 2020, 2021, and 2022, when the pandemic and emergency policy interventions both sharply curtailed filings and limited court operations.

Figure 8:

Geographic disparities in eviction risk remain stark. In 2024, eviction filing rates ranged from 12.7 per 1,000 rental units in Stuyvesant Town/Turtle Bay to 159.7 per 1,000 in Morrisania/Crotona (Figure 9). The Bronx had the highest borough-wide rate (104.1), followed by Queens (47.1), Brooklyn (45.2), Staten Island (42.9), and Manhattan (36.6). The eight community districts with the highest filing rates were all in the Bronx; the ninth was in the Rockaways. These figures highlight the geography of housing instability, even as citywide eviction filings trend downward.

Figure 9: