Progressives are jumping on the Community Service Society’s finding that a third of New Yorkers are paying over half their income for rent to call for even harsher rent controls, but the real cause of the city’s housing crunch can be found in the New York Building Congress report that the Big Apple is on track to construct only about 11,000 new housing units this year, half the 2022 number.

Until the laws make it financially practical to build new housing (and upgrade old units), the housing supply will keep shrinking — and, since no one can repeal the law of supply and demand, that means prices will keep rising.

And progressives keep restricting the supply.

They’ve blocked renewal of the 421-a tax break for private housing developers, which was behind 75% of the new affordable units built over the last 20 years.

And they passed the 2019 “Tenant Protection Act,” which has forced landlords to take 43,000 units off the market because they can’t afford to bring them up to code.

Even if the progs don’t add to the pressure, a perfect storm is brewing: Property taxes are soaring even as the city keeps rent hikes far below inflation (not to mention other rising costs) for rent-stabilized buildings.

Hundreds of small landlords are now underwater as costs exceed their rent-roll income; soon enough, it’ll be thousands — which means an ever-growing number of buildings deteriorating toward uninhabitable conditions.

Heck, the city’s public-housing stock is in crisis, too — yet progs oppose the private-management reforms that are the only way to turn it around.

Letting builders and owners turn a profit is the only way to end this growing crisis, but the dominant left keeps pushing in the other direction.

If things don’t change, the city will soon start shrinking fast, because no one except the super-rich will be able to find a place to live.