A new poll found that voters in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island overwhelmingly support housing reforms aimed at expanding development, as many continue to struggle with affordability , long commutes and limited opportunities to buy homes.

The survey , which came from the housing advocacy group Open New York and conducted by Global Strategy Group between Aug. 31 and Sept. 6, questioned 600 likely New York voters ahead of the 2026 general election. The poll found that 89% of outer-borough respondents consider finding affordable housing in their communities "challenging," including 52% who described it as "very challenging."

Those concerns were more pronounced than statewide figures, which showed 84% of voters consider finding affordable housing challenging. Annemarie Gray, executive director of Open New York, said the housing crisis outside of Manhattan is strong. “The outer boroughs are struggling with limited and unaffordable housing options, and the people living there know it better than anyone," she said. Housing costs also take up a significant share of household budgets. Among renters and homeowners with mortgages in the outer boroughs, 42% said they spend at least half their household income on housing, compared with 30% statewide, according to the survey.

78% of outer-borough renters said they would like to purchase a home in NYC but "cannot afford one they would want." One-third of respondents said their commutes are longer than they would prefer because they cannot afford to live closer to work.

Gray said nearly nine in 10 outerborough residents say finding an affordable home in their neighborhood is a struggle, and a third are stuck with longer commutes because they cannot find homes closer to where they work.

"Those same voters have done the math on what would help, with 84 percent backing the reforms passed this year and more than half expecting those reforms to bring affordable housing to their own community," she said. "Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island want New York to build so they can have more options in their own communities.”

According to the survey, respondents expressed strong support for several housing policy changes. 81% supported allowing multifamily housing near rail stations, and 75% backed converting vacant or underused commercial properties into housing without first requiring a rezoning.

More than half of outer-borough respondents expect the reforms to result in more affordable housing in their communities, while 35% anticipated no difference. Outerborough New Yorkers speak out Meanwhile, some outer-borough residents said the city should curtail more housing until infrastructure can keep up. "We need more schools and hospitals before more houses can be put in," Stephanie Hazan from Staten Island said. Miriam Hernandez, another Staten Island resident, said the borough is already experiencing overcrowding and traffic congestion to keep building more housing. "They shouldn't be building any more affordable housing here," she said. "We already have enough people on this Island." Martin, from Queens, put it simply that "everyone deserves a chance to live in the city." Meanwhile, another Staten Island resident, Jonathon Samanka, said more infrastructure is needed to meet the housing demand in the borough, but stopped short of calling an end to development throughout NYC.

"We just need to be more specific with what gets done instead of a blanket one-policy, one-city theory that the current and past mayoral administrations have applied," he said. "Make it borough-specific, and if even more, almost neighborhood-specific if it’s pertinent to issues."

Open New York said the survey included 600 likely voters, with an oversample of 200 respondents in the outer boroughs. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points overall and 6.9 percentage points for the outer-borough sample.

Barbara Russo-Lennon is a digital editor at amNewYork.

All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines . Schneps Media does not endorse the views shared by readers in our comment sections.