Thousands of desperately needed public housing apartments are sitting empty across New York City — even as scores of families wait years for a place to live, a new investigation found.
The number of vacant New York City Housing Authority units more than doubled in recent years, from about 2,840 in 2022 to roughly 6,740 by 2025, according to a report on the probe released Tuesday by the city Department of Investigation.
On average, vacancies stretched to up to a year — up from four months in 2021 — a staggering slowdown for an agency facing a massive housing crunch, with 165,000 hopeful families stuck on NYCHA’s waiting list, the DOI said.
The report found that the average cost of turning over a NYCHA apartment came out to a whopping $52,000, including $17,000 for lead abatement, $25,000 for asbestos abatement and $10,000 for general renovations.
Investigators also warned that the prolonged vacancies were not only a waste of scarce housing, but also posed a public safety risk for public housing tenants.
“NYCHA apartments that sit vacant reduce the already limited availability of the city’s public housing stock, and without appropriate security measures, pose a public safety risk for public housing residents, employees and contractors,” acting DOI Commissioner Christopher Ryan said.
Police reclaimed 548 NYCHA apartments from squatters between January 2022 and May 2025, resulting in 81 arrests on charges including trespassing, drug possession and weapons offenses, investigators said.
The report found that after a tenant leaves, NYCHA staff often install a generic “move‑out” lock so that one key can open every vacant apartment in a building.
That practice, combined with the lack of regular security inspections, has left empty units vulnerable to crime, the DOI said.
A NYCHA spokesperson said most of the agency’s vacant units were undergoing required environmental remediation and major repairs.
A City Council report last year blamed the logjam in getting new tenants placed into empty apartments on stricter lead and asbestos rules, stalled repair funding and a bungled restructuring by NYCHA that shifted turnover work to a central office, leaving some units sitting empty for months with no progress.
Costs to get empty apartment ready for new tenants can “vary widely,” the DOI noted. Limited funding can slow down renovations, according to the report.
In the meantime, families hoping to get placed into public housing units were left to linger on NYCHA’s waitlist — for several years.
While NYCHA does not say how long it takes to move hopeful tenants into apartments, families waited more than four years on average in 2024 — 24 months longer than the standard US family, according to USA Facts.
DOI inspectors urged NYCHA officials to conduct monthly inspections of vacant units, reduce shared keys and use any new funding to speed up apartment turnarounds.
NYCHA, which runs 177,565 apartments across 2,410 buildings, said it had accepted nearly all of the DOI’s recommendations.
But the report’s shameful findings are a black mark the public housing giant amid New York’s housing crisis.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has promoted a series of “Rental Ripoff” hearings billed as a forum for tenants to air housing grievances.
But the sessions have focused on private landlords, sidestepping the city’s role as NYCHA’s landlord — and the thousands of public units that sit idle while a massive waiting list grows.
Recent polling found roughly one‑third of New Yorkers are considering leaving the state within the next five years, citing the high cost of living among their reasons.
Most renters making less than $70,000 per year paid more than half of their income toward rent, according to the 2023 Housing and Vacancy Survey, which is conducted every three years by the US Census Bureau.
That survey put New York City’s rental vacancy rate at 1.4%, while the rental vacancy rate for apartments renting for under $1,100 per month was only 0.39%.
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