Topline: The New York City Department of Education has spent $5 billion on rent to private landlords for school buildings since 2010 — including many that are vacant — a New York Post investigation found. Many of them are overpriced, and 28 preschools have sat empty for five years while the city continues to pay rent.
Key facts: The city ordinarily owns its own school buildings, but $235.6 million was paid in rent to private landlords in 2024 alone, The Post reported.
The city has paid more than $48 million since 2006 to rent a building in Queens that houses three high schools. It would have cost only $10 million to buy the property outright in 2006. The three schools have just 1,400 students combined. One of them, Voyages Preparatory High School, has a graduation rate of 29%.
Another school building in the Bronx had a market value of zero when the city started renting it in 1983. The rent has since cost $52.2 million in total.
At the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women in Manhattan, which the city spent $74 million to rent from 2009 to 2019, 86% of students are “chronically absent,” meaning they miss at least 18 school days per year.
The 28 preschool buildings were first rented under former Mayor Bill deBlasio, who rolled out universal preschool for all 3-year-olds in the city. They were supposed to open between 2020 and 2025, but the majority are “completely empty,” according to the Post. Others were repurposed as charter schools and even a Department of Education “welcome center.”
Some of the preschool locations made no sense, paying no attention to where there is demand for 3K seats. One building in Queens is in an area where existing preschools are struggling with low enrollment, while parents in other neighborhoods with high demand have their children on waiting lists 100+ deep. It costs $500,000 per year to rent.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani says six of the empty buildings will open this fall.
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Critical quote: “In 90% of the cases it is always better to own than rent, especially considering the many layers of bureaucracy — think payroll dollars — involved to get a lease executed through the DOE and the many hands and eyes that touch that lease costing millions in salaries on the government’s payroll,” real estate broker Adelaide Polsinelli told the Post. “There are many layers of redundancy that a site goes through before the DOE approves it and all the hired professionals involved to oversee the buildout.”
Summary: With New York City facing one of the worst debt crises in municipal history, common-sense budgeting rules like buying buildings instead of renting them should be obvious.
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