Affordable means income regulated. Rent is capped and tied to a share of Area Median Income, and you qualify by earning within a set range, with both a floor and a ceiling.
Applying is free and happens through NYC Housing Connect. Nobody should ever charge you to apply. Each lottery has its own deadline and its own income and household size requirements.
The eligibility tool is a guide, not a decision. The listing itself is the authority on who qualifies.
These are nonprofits contracted by New York State to provide housing services in a defined area. Not city agencies, not landlords. Most offer tenant rights counselling, help with repairs and code complaints, eviction and foreclosure prevention, and help applying for affordable housing. Services are generally free.
New York State Homes and Community Renewal, known as HCR or DHCR, is the State's housing agency. It supervises rent regulation, Mitchell-Lama, and the money that finances affordable housing across the state. Two of the things it does show up directly in your neighborhood.
Neighborhood Preservation Companies are nonprofits DHCR contracts to provide housing services in a specific service area, sometimes called a catchment area. Most offer some combination of managing affordable housing, tenant rights counseling, help with repairs and code complaints, foreclosure and eviction prevention, help applying for affordable housing, and assistance for landlords of small buildings.
Services are generally free. Each company serves a (sort of) defined area. If you are reading this in CB6, the one closest to you is probably either the Fifth Avenue Committee or the Carroll Gardens Association.
Mitchell-Lama is middle income housing, both rentals and co-ops. Created in 1955, the developments are privately owned but income regulated, and many have income ceilings well above the city lotteries. A one person household can qualify up to roughly $141,750 in a non federally assisted development, and a four person household up to roughly $202,500.
Most Mitchell-Lama openings are waitlists, not lotteries. You apply to each development separately, and a place on the list can take years to move. Some lists are open, some are closed. Veterans may be entitled to a preference at developments with an open list.
It all moved to one site in 2025. NYS Housing Search replaced the old Mitchell-Lama Automated Waiting List, and now carries every HCR funded listing, lottery and waitlist in one place. If you applied before May 2026, your existing applications can be linked to a new account.
| Neighborhood | Studio | 1 BR | 2 BR | 3+ BR | Listings | At signing |
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Housing and its price are often discussed, directly and indirectly. In every corner of New York City, even more so. Those discussions can be indirect, like with the countless articles pondering “why are so many young adults living with their parents?” I haven’t read all of them, but the bottom line is it’s due to housing costs.
This page aims to simplify and clarify what housing costs are based on what’s available at a given time. I used all listings from 2010 to today based on StreetEasy.com’s listings. I broke it down from micro (cb6/ neighborhoods) to macro (borough and citywide).
Rest assured, it’s not just staring at numbers that I’d say are too high; it’s also got every active “affordable housing” lottery open across NYC. I put “affordable” in quotes, as that may be better described as “less expensive housing”, but I digress. I’ll keep making updates, but check it out and let me know what you think.
Mike RacioppoDistrict Manager, Brooklyn Community Board 6
Median asking rent is what landlords list, not what tenants pay. It comes from StreetEasy listings, so it reflects what is on the market now rather than what everyone in the area is paying. A neighborhood with few listings in a given month can swing sharply.
The number in parentheses beside each rent is how many units of that size were listed. A $7,000 three bedroom drawn from 11 listings is a thinner figure than a $3,900 one bedroom drawn from 400.
Colours are relative to the areas shown, not a fixed dollar scale, so the same colour means something different when you switch lens. The exception is the timeline, which uses one fixed scale across all years so you can see rents genuinely rise.
Council district figures begin in January 2023, when the current boundaries took effect.