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Comment by mastercheif | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that it’s essentially illegal to build new hotels in NYC.

This is because NYC’s hotel labor unions successfully lobbied to enact a law requiring city council approval to build new hotels in the city. Effectively damning any new developments to endless hand wringing and grandstanding from NIMBYs and other interests.

Many new hotels in recent years were staffed with non-union labor, this was their way to secure leverage in perpetuity.

I’m sympathetic to the union’s position, but this law is going to damage the city’s economy and make NYC unaffordable for many wishing to visit.

https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2022/12/09/how-special-are-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/nyregion/hotels-tourism-n...

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> The problem is that it’s essentially illegal to build new hotels in NYC.

I really wouldn't classify this as a problem. It's completely possible today to book a hotel room in NY at all manner of price points. The prices are not noticeably different than anytime in the past few years.

There is a ton of hotel inventory in NYC. If I was a resident, I wouldn't even want more hotels built because the city is already full to the brim with tourists and lacking space for affordable residential property.

> lacking space for affordable residential property

We are not space constrained. Like in California, housing shortage is a policy choice by New York’s voters. (In this case, we chose to shift some of the burden onto tourists versus property owners.)

> We are not space constrained.

I'm sorry but New York is famously space constrained. There is no new Manhattan land showing up any time soon.

> New York is famously space constrained

Facts over fame.

New York City’s population density, 11,200/sq. km [1], doesn’t even make the top-100 list globally [2]. There are a handful of blocks in Midtown, the Wesr Side and downtown that approach anything close to densities where our ability to build constrains us.

> There is no new Manhattan land showing up any time soon

I have a flat next to a surface-level parking lot in central Manhattan! We have a ton of infill potential before even asking about the two- and three-story buildings that make up most of our residential structures.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_Cit...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_pop...

> Facts over fame.

You said NY was not space constrained. It's a fact that it is space constrained. Maybe you could squeeze out a bit of density but it is most definitely space constrained.

I think you're both sort of right? NYC is dense for a US city, but not really so for a global city. We're sort of space constrained on an island like Manhattan -- since it's an island -- but much of the outer boroughs are 3 story buildings (with of course exceptions in places like downtown brooklyn, williamsburg, LIC, etc.) There are places in Manhattan we could build more high rise condos, but it's probably easier to focus on the outer boroughs. No one is going to bulldoze brownstone brooklyn, but if we even built more like Paris, which has a population density of almost 2x NYC without skyscraper condos, there certainly would be a huge amount of extra capacity.

I'm not a big fan of what happened to my neighborhood (Williamsburg) with all the giant condo buildings that have gone up over the past decade or so, but people do need places to live and we probably should be growing denser across the entire city. There's definitely a lot of space left, just not a lot of will to change things.

The city is already the sixth largest tourist destination in the world.

If you actually ask the average resident they would probably shrug or have a negative opinion of lowering the barrier to tourism. This also isn’t uncommon, major destinations like Barcelona and Venice are trying to limit arrivals outright.

> > The problem is that it’s essentially illegal to build new hotels in NYC.

Let's build a cruise ship in China or the Netherlands and then use it as a floating hotel in NYC

If you damage the city's economy, would that not lead to a reduction in housing costs eventually? If you can't build your way out, destroy demand.

Tourism isn’t even particularly good at being an economic driver in a rich economy; nearly all the jobs it creates are low paid, because by definition you’re limited to people’s travel budgets.

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