NEW YORK — More tenants living in New York City’s least expensive housing units aren’t paying their rent — a trend that risks further destabilizing the city’s affordable housing market.
The uptick in rental delinquency isn’t new. It started six years ago, when the pandemic flung the city’s economy into chaos and plunged low-income New Yorkers into dire financial straits. But even as the city has rebounded, rent collection rates in affordable housing remain short of pre-pandemic levels. As costs balloon, landlords say insufficient rental income is threatening their ability to stay afloat.
The issue has confounded owners and operators of these buildings, many of them nonprofits, which are often celebrated as a model for addressing the extreme dearth of housing options for very low-income people…