NYC housing crisis hits ‘DefCon 1’ as rents jump to more all-time highs

The city’s housing crisis has hit “DefCon 1” — with average rents for a one-bedroom in Manhattan hitting an all-time high of nearly $5,500 last month, and Brooklyn following suit, according to new data and critics.

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“We need bold action. This is a crisis,’’ New York City Comptroller Mark Levine posted on X over the weekend, along with a link to the latest figures from the inhabit blog by real-estate giant Corcoran Group.

The dismal June stats reveal that renters paid an average of $5,408 for a one-bedroom in Manhattan, with studio prices not far behind at $4,014.

In Brooklyn, the average one-bedroom cost renters $4,297 a month.

As for the overall median rent for an apartment in Manhattan, it hit $5,295 last month, while those in Brooklyn shelled out a median $4,350 a month, or a roughly 8% increase for both boroughs year-over-year, according to the data focused on the two areas of the city.

All of the figures were record highs, continuing a troubling trend.

“NYC’s housing affordability crisis is at DefCon 1,’’ Levine tweeted, referring to the US military’s highest level of alert.

“We need to push harder on every front to address our housing shortage.”

The crisis continues despite the recent approval of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s long-promised and controversial rent freeze on the city’s nearly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments by the Rent Guidelines Board.

Of those now rent-frozen apartments, a staggering 57,000 sat empty in 2025 — a 5.6% vacancy rate, according to data obtained by The City Reporter.

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Levine suggested some of his own solutions.

“Update zoning, invest more City $ in affordable units, lower the time & cost City bureaucracy imposes on construction, get 1000s of vacant regulated units back on the market,” Levine wrote.

But most of the rent-stabilized apartments that lie vacant are currently warehoused because their owners can’t afford the needed renovations, considering the frozen rents, according to critics.

“Expense items are not proportional to the income the properties generate,” griped landlord Lav Bauta.

Bauta’s firm, Zion Equities, owns about 800 New York City rent-stabilized units and manages thousands more.

“Rent-stabilized properties incur the same, or greater, expenses as their fair-market counterparts: insurance, wages, supplies, elevator service, utilities, etc.” Bauta said, “There is no support or control mechanism to cap expenses while incomes have been capped.”

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