The Wall Street Journal recently published an article titled “How an NYC Suburb is Actually Managing to Bring Rents Down,” which got further exposure on Fox and MSNBC.  New Rochelle is that NYC suburb in question. 

In this article they stated that “New Rochelle median rent actually declined 2% from 2020 to 2023, while median rent nationally was surging at a double-digit rate,” and that this decrease was due to all the new development.  

If you’re a New Rochelle resident, does that feel right to you? Has your rent gone down?  If you talk to a resident downtown is that the story they will tell you?  It’s certainly not what we’ve heard.  So what’s going on? 

The issue with data models is that they are not perfect, and require layers of assumptions that can be wrong, or only indicative of a small segment of the whole.  This is why you can see different data, on the same subject, that reach completely different conclusions. 

This is true regarding affordability in New Rochelle. The WSJ used ApartmentList.com as its data source. If you look at US Census Bureau Median Gross Rent statistics as an alternative – which even ApartmentList.com states they use because: it’s the “gold standard,” and it helps “mitigate biases in their data” – you get a very different story.

Based on this Census Bureau data (all publicly available on census.gov, report B25064), for 2020 to 2023 (the same timeframe referenced in the article), Median Rents in the US were up 23% while New Rochelle was up 19%. Lower yes, but not particularly noteworthy, and certainly not declining. Even more interesting though is that Westchester County was up only 17%. So, even with all of this development, we are underperforming our neighbors from a rent cost control perspective (see below).

Is the ApartmentList.com data WSJ used “wrong?”  Not necessarily, but it’s not reflective of the lived reality of New Rochelle residents, so there is a flaw somewhere in their data assumptions.

But, this rent change over time is just one aspect of the affordability discussion; the other is the new buildings themselves. One of the most frequent questions we in “Enough is Enough” hear from New Rochelle residents is, “Who are these buildings even for?”  So we started pulling actual monthly rent fee data from each of the 23 completed new buildings to determine how affordable they really are.

The City, and their press releases, are always happy to tout that at least 10% of all new units have to be affordable, and so one of the major benefits of the development plan is that it has generated 1,000+ affordable units. 

This sounds great on the surface, but, in this case, “affordable” has a very specific meaning.  It is defined by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  HUD states that a unit is affordable if someone making 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI) could afford the housing costs (rent + fees) and still have 70% of their gross income left over.  This also sounds great, but, AMI is set at the much wealthier county level, and so for 2025 the AMI for an individual is $119,000 – meaning you need to make $95,200 (80% of AMI) to be able to afford most of these “affordable” units.

So, now understanding all of that, what happens when you layer in the costs of the apartments in these new buildings?  You get the following:

The way to read this is the more units in a specific AMI threshold, the higher that chart area will be. Anything to the left of an AMI threshold will be affordable to someone making that amount, anything to the right will be unaffordable. 

In short, what you’ll see is a vast majority of the units are not affordable for the average New Rochelle resident – where half the residents earn less than $48,200 per year according to the last census – and even the units that are listed as “affordable” based on HUD / county guidelines are still unaffordable.

• 2% of the new units are affordable for the average New Rochelle resident;
• 18% are “affordable” based on the inflated Westchester County threshold for affordability;
• 80% of the new units are above this “affordable” threshold (with 48% of the units even above the 100% of AMI – $119,000 individual income – threshold).

People are starting to see the truth though, and cracks are forming in the City’s affordability narrative.  A recent Instagram post from the city, proudly announcing the lottery for the “affordable” units in developer Louis Cappelli’s “Allen” building, was met with overwhelmingly negative comments.

To be clear, the City isn’t technically lying, they’re playing within the affordable framework that’s been established, but when they, or the Wall Street Journal, try to tell you about the wonders of the development plan, and how it’s solving the housing affordability crisis, you’ll know better.  The City will continue to try to use this “benefit” as a means to push further unchecked development – we need to call them out when they do; they need to do better, we deserve better.  Enough is enough.

Contributor: Shaun Wayawotzki, Co-Chair of NewRo Enough is Enough (newroenoughisenough@gmail.com)

NewRo Enough is Enough is a grassroots group of citizens that feel the 10 year old development plan is not delivering the benefits it promised, and, as such, are calling for the city to enact a moratorium on further downtown building approvals.  The group formed in February 2025 and has a membership of 500+ citizens.