August 5, 2025

New Tools, Commitments, and Community Engagement to Inform Where We Live NYC 2025

New York, NY –The Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) today released a set of new proposed commitments and interactive tools that will help shape Where We Live NYC 2025, the City’s next fair housing plan to be announced this fall. The plan aims to combat housing discrimination, preserve affordability, prevent displacement, and reinvest in neighborhoods that have long faced disinvestment. By releasing the data and documentation behind the forthcoming plan, HPD is inviting New Yorkers to explore what’s driving these proposals, engage with stories and evidence that shaped them, and share feedback to help inform the City’s next fair housing plan.

 The August plan update includes:

• New actions for 2025-2030 and progress to-date for 2020-2025 actions
• Updated maps and charts that illustrate the state of fair housing in New York City
• New interactive housing and demographics data tool showcasing New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (NYCHVS) data
• Short Voices from the Fight for Housing documentary

Grounded in Community Voices

Through workshops, roundtables, and community events across all five boroughs, the City has engaged directly with New Yorkers over the last three years. These conversations, along with an online questionnaire and updated data and interagency collaboration, have helped shape a new set of draft actions that reflect the realities New Yorkers face today. By making both the proposals and their underlying data public, HPD is inviting all New Yorkers into the planning process: to explore the findings, see how they connect to the proposed solutions, and help ensure Where We Live NYC 2025 reflects the needs of communities across the city. 

Each new action helps advance one of the City’s six fair housing goals, first announced in the original 2020 fair housing plan and being carried forward in Where We Live NYC 2025. The new commitments include:

• To Fight discrimination and ensure equal access to housing:
  • Create and implement a public awareness campaign for the Fair Chance for Housing Act.
  • Identify ways to target publicly financed new construction affordable housing to the most at-risk renters.
• To build more housing in all neighborhoods across NYC and the region:
  • Study new housing construction following City of Yes and consider future citywide changes to encourage new housing construction in low-density areas with strong transit access and neighborhood character that supports small apartment buildings.
  • Legalize the new construction of shared housing as-of-right.
• To protect affordable housing & prevent displacement:
  • New actions to ensure that the city's adaptation to climate change is shaped by fair housing principles.

• To ensure access to different types of neighborhoods for tenants using rental assistance:
  • Fight for continued and expanded access to Section 8 vouchers for New York City residents.
  • Develop a revised Exception Payment Standard (EPS) zip code map based solely on median rents, refocusing on choice.
• To expand and improve housing options and accommodations for people with disabilities:
  • Identify solutions to make existing buildings more accessible for New Yorkers with mobility disabilities.
• To improve conditions, services and infrastructure in historically disinvested neighborhoods:
  • In areas with concentrations of affordable housing, invest in a range of actions to improve safety and quality of life.

New Tools for Transparency and Impact

To make the City’s fair housing work more visible and connected to the lived experiences of everyday New Yorkers, a new short film and relevant data are now available to the public. Produced by youth film makers, a new short documentary, Where We Live NYC: Voices from the Fight for Fair Housing, captures what housing discrimination looks like in New York City. It explores strategies for how to fight it through the real stories of four New Yorkers who were denied housing based on race, disability, gender and sexual identity, and source of income.

In addition to the film, HPD is launching the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (HVS) Data Explorer, which gives New Yorkers the opportunity to interact with data about who lives in our city. Users can explore similarities and differences across a wide range of housing and demographic data to better understand the makeup of our city and advocate for equitable housing policies.

We’ve Made Real Progress—And We’re Building on It

Where We Live NYC began in 2017 as a citywide effort to understand and address deep-rooted barriers to fair housing. The 2020 plan laid out six goals and 81 specific commitments to fight discrimination, increase housing opportunity, and support stronger, more inclusive communities. Since then, the City has completed 50% of those commitments, with more than 90% currently underway or complete—progress driven by cross-agency coordination and sustained engagement with New Yorkers.

The draft strategies and new tools are the next step in a broader, citywide conversation. Public meetings will follow in September, giving New Yorkers a chance to respond to what is being proposed, explore the data behind the work, and help shape the final Where We Live NYC 2025 plan, which is set to be released in fall 2025.

To learn more, please visit nyc.gov/wherewelive.