Every time I see another announcement celebrating affordable housing in New York City, I ask the same question: affordable for whom?
I was born and raised in the South Bronx. I grew up watching my mother stretch every dollar so the rent was paid, food was on the table and her children could still enjoy the occasional trip to the Bronx Zoo, Botanical Garden, Coney Island, or the aquarium.
She taught me that being responsible means understanding exactly what your money can and cannot do. Today, I am a working mother and a healthcare professional with more than 15 years in my field. I earn what many people would call a respectable middle-class salary. Yet when I look at apartments in the Bronx, I am often expected to pay close to $3,000 a month. That may be a number on a housing chart, but in a household budget it can swallow an entire paycheck.
Last year, I thought I would apply for an affordable apartment and finally have a real chance of qualifying. Instead, I discovered that my salary either placed me above the income limit for the lower-rent units or matched me with a rent that someone earning my income was supposedly able to afford.
The calculation saw my annual salary. It did not see the taxes taken from my paycheck, transportation, utilities, groceries, family responsibilities, or all the other bills that still have to be paid. It did not sit at my kitchen table at the beginning of the month while I figured out what had to be paid immediately and how much would be left for food.
On paper, I earn too much to need help. In real life, I do not earn enough for the housing they call affordable. That is the gap nobody seems willing to address. New York City says housing is generally affordable when it costs about one-third or less of a household’s income and affordable-housing eligibility and rents are tied to Area Median Income.
But a percentage on paper cannot show what remains after a working family pays for the basic necessities required to live
and get to work. I understand that no housing program can calculate every family’s private expenses. But when a rent labeled affordable can consume most of a worker’s take-home pay, the formula is missing the reality it claims to measure.
This is not an argument against helping lower-income New Yorkers. They need and deserve housing they can afford. I am asking why the system behaves as though their needs and ours cannot be addressed at the same time. Middle-income New Yorkers keep hospitals, schools, offices, transit systems, and small businesses moving. We work, pay taxes, raise families, and follow every rule placed in front of us.
Then we are told we make too much for meaningful assistance while the market charges more than we can reasonably carry.
I have asked local elected officials and people running for office a simple question: Where do working families like mine fit? I hear speeches about units created, development, and affordability, but rarely a direct answer. What is the plan for the Bronx resident who earns too much for a deeply discounted apartment but too little to pay market rent without sacrificing necessities?
Affordable housing should allow a family to pay the rent, buy groceries, travel to work, handle the electric bill and still breathe. It should not force people to decide whether the landlord or the refrigerator gets paid first.
The Bronx deserves housing policies built around the people who actually live here, not merely percentages that look good in an announcement. We need more genuinely affordable middle-income units, clearer explanations of whom each development is meant to serve, and leaders willing to answer the question directly.
Until then, I will keep asking: affordable for whom? Because if lifelong Bronx families who work here, raise children here and contribute to this borough cannot afford to remain here, calling an apartment affordable does not make it so.
Jennifer Torres is a lifelong South Bronx resident and healthcare professional.
