Keys to the City Coalition is a student-led initiative researching, writing, and organizing around the affordable housing crisis in New York City. The decisions being made today will shape the city we inherit.
New York City is in the middle of an affordable housing shortage that touches every borough. Rents have outpaced wages for over a decade. Longtime residents are being priced out of neighborhoods they have lived in for generations. And young people, the ones who will run this city in twenty years, have almost no voice in the policy conversation shaping it.
We think that is a mistake. Housing is not just an economic issue. It is about who gets to belong, who gets pushed out, and what kind of city we are building together.
Our work starts from research, not just opinion. It begins with Keys to the City, a published study on affordable housing policy read through the lens of the preferential option for the vulnerable.
Vacancy rate: 2023 NYC Housing and Vacancy Survey. Rent burden: NYC Rent Guidelines Board, 2026 Income and Affordability Study (ACS 2024 data).
The housing crisis is not spread evenly across this city. Tap a borough to see what renters there are actually paying. The figure shown is the share of renter households spending at least half their income on rent, which is what housing researchers call a severe rent burden.
Simplified map, approximate outlines. Severe rent burden: New York City Rent Guidelines Board, 2026 Income and Affordability Study, published April 2026, drawing on American Community Survey 2024 data. Vacancy rates: 2023 New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, the most recent edition of a survey conducted every three years. For neighborhood-level detail, see the NYU Furman Center's CoreData.nyc.
Far and away the worst in the city, and the only borough where renter incomes actually fell in 2024, dropping 5.3 percent after inflation. It also has the tightest rental market in New York and the highest unemployment rate. 61.2 percent of Bronx renters pay at least 30 percent of their income toward rent.
We follow the trends: how rents, rent burden, vacancy, and eviction filings are moving across the five boroughs, and which neighborhoods are pulling away from the rest. We work from published data and write up what we find for a general audience.
We break housing policy down into plain language for people who are not planners or lawyers, through public explainers and open discussions, because a debate this consequential should not require a specialist to follow.
We connect with the people already doing this work: tenant associations, housing nonprofits, community board members, researchers, and residents. We would rather join an effort that exists than start a parallel one.
Most New Yorkers know rent is too high. Far fewer know that the Bronx severe rent burden rate is 37 percent, or that the citywide vacancy rate is the lowest since 1965. We put those numbers in front of people, in maps and plain writing, because a problem people cannot see clearly is one they will keep tolerating.
"A city that cannot house its own people has already decided who belongs in it."
Keys to the City examines New York's affordable housing shortage through the framework of Catholic Social Teaching, and specifically the preferential option for the vulnerable. It asks a question most housing debates skip past: not just what policy is most efficient, but who a policy is actually for.
The paper became the foundation of this Coalition. It is also the standard we hold ourselves to. Every position we take should be able to survive a footnote.
Read the PaperWe are students, not experts, and we would rather stand on someone's shoulders than pretend we got here alone. Four researchers shape how we think about housing. If you are new to the issue, start here.
Why we read himDesmond argues that eviction is not only a symptom of poverty but a cause of it. If you read one book on this list first, read this one.
Why we read herThe closest thing to a direct precursor of our own work. Rosenbaum studies how New York's housing market treats immigrant families across generations, which is the question our research asks from a different angle.
Why we read herEllen's work on neighborhood change is where you learn that a housing policy and a school policy are frequently the same policy. She also directs the Furman Center, which produces the data we rely on.
Why we read themThis book explains why the public meeting, which sounds like democracy working, often functions as a veto held by whoever has a free weeknight. Read it before your first community board meeting.
Our figures come from primary sources, not secondary coverage. The NYU Furman Center for local New York data, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies for national context, and NYC Housing Preservation and Development, NYCHA, and the City Comptroller's office for official city numbers. When we cannot source a number, we do not use it.
You do not need to be a policy expert. You need to care. Here is how to plug in.
If you are already working on this and there is something we could usefully help with, tell us. Research, summaries, turnout at hearings.
Work With UsPoint us at work we should be reading, correct something we have gotten wrong, or invite us to a conversation worth having.
Get In TouchShare the research, come to a community board meeting with us, or just tell us what is happening on your block.
Say HelloKeys to the City Coalition is a student-led initiative based in New York City. We started with a research paper and a conviction: young people cannot wait until adulthood to start caring about the city they will inherit. Today we are a growing group of students who believe housing policy is too important to leave entirely to adults, and that the strongest advocacy starts with the strongest research.
Matteo DeNicola is a senior at Xavier High School in Manhattan and the founder of Keys to the City Coalition. He grew up in Brooklyn, in a family that has been in the borough for three generations, which is part of why the question of who gets priced out of a neighborhood does not feel abstract to him.
His research paper Keys to the City, published on SSRN, examines New York City's affordable housing shortage through the framework of Catholic Social Teaching, and specifically the preferential option for the vulnerable. The paper argues that housing debates tend to measure efficiency while quietly skipping the prior question: who is this policy actually for. It is the piece of work the Coalition is built on.
At Xavier, Matteo has taken the school's motto seriously. "Men for others" is easy to put on a banner and harder to schedule into a week. He founded the Coalition because he wanted a version of service that meant staying with a problem over time, reading the data as it came out and following where it pointed, rather than showing up for a single afternoon.
He plans to study sociology in college beginning next year. It is the discipline that asks how structures like housing markets shape the lives of the people inside them, which is the question the Coalition exists to press.
For speaking requests, research questions, or anything else: info@keystothecitynyc.org