in New York City cannot be separated or considered in isolation; ; each feeds the other. What we are now seeing is the housing crisis exploited by City Hall and the developers to exacerbate and juisify the overdevelopment crisis. We are also seeing what happens to privately owned businesses as well as tenants in afordable hosing when historic low-rise buildings are torn down to make way for cost-intensive new construction.
When a rare old 19th-century private house like the one at 137 West 14th Street that’s part of some assemblage is torn down, the small, independent window-blind business that had been housed in it is also forced to look for new premises–and good luck with finding something comparable.
Goes without saying: the rents in whatever new building is going up there, be they commercial or residential, will be astronomical.