At night, the Brooklyn apartment where Kimberly Diaz, 25, was trying to raise her two small daughters was a minefield of clothing, toys and fitfully sleeping bodies.
In one bedroom were her twin brother, youngest brother and godfather, while her brother-in-law and his sons slept in the second bedroom. She shared a twin bed in another room with her two girls, and her sister and her five children piled onto air mattresses at their feet.
That meant nine people, ranging from 2 to 26 years old, lived in her bedroom alone.
“It was chaos,” Ms. Diaz said from the Brooklyn homeless shelter she fled to three months ago with her daughters, ages 2 and 3. “I had a lot of anxiety; I had panic attacks. We were a can of sardines.”
“My babies need more than just a bed,” she added. “They need freedom.”
Congested streets, packed subway cars, overflowing sidewalks — New York is a city of crowds. But in its poorest corners, home can be a similar crush: Apartments in New York City are among the country’s most overcrowded — frequently defined as having more than two people per bedroom. Eight percent of households citywide are overcrowded, but the figure balloons to 27 percent for families who have at least one child and less than $100,000 in income, according to data from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
This is far from the trope of, say, a gaggle of 20-something interns camping out in a West Village studio for a summer. The reality of overcrowding in New York City for most is stark: Nearly 40 percent of single adults and 20 percent of families with children cited overcrowding, discord or unlivable conditions as the reason they sought refuge in city-run shelters, according to a study by the Coalition for the Homeless.
And these numbers stand to grow, as the vacancy rate in the city plummets toward an all-time low, and the cost of living races ever upward.
When multiple households share a space they are said to be “doubled up.” Experts disagree about how many people are camped out on floors, air mattresses and couches or overcrowded in apartments, with high-end estimates of over 200,000 New Yorkers. Some consider this group of people a sort of hidden homeless: those technically with roofs over their heads, but forced by sky-high rents and low vacancies to wedge into homes intended for far fewer people.
“It’s the dirty little secret of the housing crisis in New York City,” said Dave Giffen, the executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless. “Nobody calls them homeless, but they are.”
But some experts, like Lyz Gaumer, the chief research officer for New York City’s Housing Department, expressed caution over interpreting the data about these so-called doubled-up households. Dr. Gaumer said these may be intentional, multigenerational homes — grandparents and children living under one roof, for example, she said — and not necessarily residents in crisis.
Overcrowding once was mostly a product of the urban blight and decrepit housing stock of the 1970s through the ’90s that left people with few desirable options. Now it appears more closely tied to a historic shortage of available housing: a rental vacancy rate of just 1.4 percent, the lowest in nearly 60 years. For apartments that cost less than $1,100 a month, which is considered to be affordable to a broad range of people, the vacancy rate is less than half a percent.
“The lack of available of housing essentially traps people in place,” said Sean Campion, the director of housing and economic development studies at the Citizens Budget Commission. More than 80 percent of those experiencing overcrowding are renters, he said.
For seven months, Dienabou Diallo, 49, felt trapped in a one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx. She had emigrated from Guinea-Bissau in West Africa with her three teenage children last fall and was packed in with nine extended family members, unable to afford anywhere else.
“I came to the United States hoping to see better, but it was a very difficult and worrying situation,” Ms. Diallo said. “We were all stressed out in the house. You had to wait for the toilet, especially, and sleep on the ground.”
Overwhelmed, Ms. Diallo and her children moved into a homeless shelter operated by Win, in Brooklyn last month.
At the shelter, the family of four share a tidy single room with two bunk-beds, one against each wall. Ms. Diallo, who is to begin training to become a home health aide, said it is a relief.
But not all people seeking to flee overcrowding or doubled-up situations can or do turn to a homeless shelter. Nearly 20 percent of families with children denied housing in homeless shelters were rejected because the Department of Homeless Services found they had other options, like bunking with family or friends, according to a 2023 report by the New York City comptroller’s office. But some advocates say many such arrangements are unlivable.
“Living in doubled-up and overcrowded situations, it leads to poor health, higher stress and worse educational outcomes for children,” said Christopher Mann, the assistant vice president of policy and advocacy for Win. “Where do you do your homework? Where are you going to have the space to really concentrate if everyone is living on top of each other?”
The Department of Homeless Services said it used specific criteria to determine shelter eligibility, and to ensure that families deemed ineligible were not in overcrowded situations.
Last year, Mayor Eric Adams’s City of Yes initiative paved the way for the construction of 80,000 new homes and spending $2 million on affordable housing; policymakers have estimated that 500,000 additional units would be required to ease the housing crisis.
Until then, experts like Mr. Giffen say the quiet crisis of overcrowding may only rise.
“The increased numbers of low-income households, decreasing number of affordable apartments — the laws of physics demand that they exist somewhere in physical space,” Mr. Giffen said. “Where are they going to go?”