Seth Pinsky, EVP and fund manager at RXR Realty, panelist at Ariel Properties' event

NEW YORK CITY—For New York to continue to thrive, it needs affordable housing. This means not only for the people in the city getting priced out but also for young people, college grads and those with talent to move here to fill jobs, said Seth Pinsky, EVP and fund manager for metro emerging markets at RXR Realty. For a decade, he served as the president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation and before that was a senior advisor to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

As a panelist at the Ariel Property Advisors “Coffee & Cap Rates” bi-annual discussion about New York City's investment sales market, Pinsky said generally the fundamentals of the city are strong. It enjoys near record population, employment and visitorship. But he said it also faces three critical challenges:

(1) Affordability – It's getting more difficult for young middle class people to find affordable housing. Separately, it's also tough for the very poor who have a hard time finding housing, who live in substandard housing or make sacrifices with medical care, food and education for housing, with some driven to homelessness. “We have to figure out a way to address this affordability crisis. Both as a humanitarian issue and also as an economic issue because talent is the key to everything for us,” Pinsky commented.