Growing up in Sunset Park, I saw firsthand how essential it is that families like mine — who have benefited from effective government support — participate in the decisions that shape their communities and their city. From voting in local elections to shopping at neighborhood markets, the power and dignity of choice should belong to everyone. By being able to choose where we live, and to influence the strength and diversity of our neighborhoods, we can embody that power.
As a public servant working to create and preserve the city’s housing, it is my responsibility to give the power of choice to everyone: those who’ve lived in New York for generations or those who have just reached our shores, the college students just returning from abroad to their elderly New-York-or-nowhere grandparents, the teacher and the janitor who both make the classroom beautiful. These New Yorkers, and many more, cherish and enrich their neighborhoods, and they should have a leading role in shaping how we protect, support, sustain, and enjoy our city.
This philosophy of participation should inform where we live. It informs Where We Live NYC, the city’s comprehensive roadmap to building a more inclusive, healthier, fairer city through housing access and community enrichment.
Last month, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) released the final Where We Live NYC 2025 plan. This new plan, developed through a holistic, creative, and practical public engagement approach, updates Where We Live 2020 and reasserts the city’s commitment to creating and preserving housing in all neighborhoods with resources, support, and amenities that allow them to thrive. Through this report, and the process that created it, the city recommits to the principles of equity, opportunity, and access.
While Where We Live NYC began as a federal mandate based on the Civil Rights Act of 1968, New York has made the process its own: In 2023, the City Council cemented New York City’s commitment to affirmatively furthering fair housing by writing a requirement into local law that the city update its fair housing framework every five years, no matter the federal requirements. HPD embraces this task, to ensure that engagement is robust, energetic, representative, and carried out in ways that encourage participation, including workshops, stakeholder briefings, a public engagement campaign at 21 local libraries, “office hours,” and an online questionnaire — all gathering reflections that appear throughout the final plan.
The product reflects the city’s continued and unequivocal dedication to confronting segregation and fighting housing discrimination, and to ensuring that every New Yorker has access to a safe, affordable home in the neighborhood of their choice. Along with many of the original goals and strategies from Where We Live NYC 2020 (refined and updated to reflect social change and achievements), Where We Live NYC 2025 introduces new commitments that reflect today’s housing challenges.
First announced in August, these commitments include implementing a public awareness campaign for the Fair Chance for Housing Act, fighting for expanded access to rental assistance, exploring interventions to address rising operating and rehabilitation costs for multifamily housing, identifying solutions to improve accessibility in existing buildings, and ensuring the city’s climate adaptation efforts are shaped by fair housing principles.
Over the next year, we will carry this work forward through the development and release of an equity framework that identifies key barriers to advancing fair housing, a long-term housing needs assessment, and citywide and community district-level housing production targets. The city puts forth these new goals and strategies in response to not only the demands of the moment, but also the success of the recent past: Where We Live NYC 2020 established six goals, 19 strategies, and 81 actions to advance fair housing, while also changing the housing policy agenda, broadening the focus on quantity to include access, quality, and location. Through five years of collaboration and dedication, the city has completed 50% of those actions and advanced 90% of them, embedding fair housing principles into housing and neighborhood development, preservation, and policy.
Where We Live 2025 also profiles the fair housing experiences of different groups of New Yorkers, such as immigrants and people with disabilities, in greater detail than Where We Live 2020. To shed more light on the fair housing challenges New Yorkers face, the city released five new reports exploring how race, gender, income and other factors shape the housing conditions of people with disabilities, immigrants, families with children and older adults. A new short film, “Where We Live NYC: Voices from the Fight for Fair Housing,” captures powerful, real-life stories of New Yorkers who have overcome significant challenges to secure housing. Their stories reveal how discrimination persists in our city and highlight ways New Yorkers are pushing back and advocating for change.
This release comes at a time of intense pressure in New York City’s housing market: Too many New Yorkers struggle to find housing in the neighborhoods they prefer or to stay in the communities they’ve long called home. That’s exactly why we must stay committed to ensuring that every New Yorker, regardless of race, disability, age, or any other protected characteristic, can live in a home and neighborhood where they can truly thrive.
As acting commissioner of HPD, I am fortunate to serve alongside the many networks of professionals, civic leaders, government officials, housing advocates, urban planners, and visionaries working to keep New York a diverse, vibrant, and equitable city where all families can thrive. Our Where We Live NYC fair housing plan is one of the key roadmaps guiding us toward that goal of a city where every New Yorker has the option to live in a community of choice and opportunity.
Ahmed Tigani is acting commissioner of New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).