The point is that NYC is still having little in the way of vacancies, and Manhattan's vacancy rate has dropped a lot as far as I can tell from 2021 to 2022. NYC still needs more housing.
I am pointing out that the Corcoran Group's survey is much more likely to reflect current vacancy rates then the older government survey (which still shows low vacancy rates across New York City).
Companies regularly publish their own internal research for publicity. And pointing out that New York City still has low vacancy rates is a valid point to make.
People want lower rents and the ability to be able to easily move between different housing units. Building more housing lowers rents and enables people to move much more easily to where they want to live. The people demand more housing.
Polling also shows that plenty of people in America want more housing to be built: https://www.sightline.org/release/poll-strong-majority-of-washingtonians-support...
People in New York City also feel the same way: https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/rpa-org/pdfs/RPA-NYC-Issues-Survey-Topline-F0...
Most vacant units are in between residents and will have someone else in them within a few months to a year: https://ggwash.org/view/73234/vacant-houses-wont-solve-our-housing-crisis
And we also know that the higher the vanacy rate is, the lower rents tend to be and the lower homelessness typically is: https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/
Building more housing will lower prices and reduce homelessness and unaffordability.
Think of it this way: housing is like one of those moving square puzzles, and the more open spaces you have in it, the easier it is to move around the squares. The higher the vanacy rate is, the easier it is for people to get lower rents because of the competition.
And despite all that spending, homelessness is still high in New York City. And we can turn to surveys of homelessness that don't give the homeless any benefits from participating in them, and they still find that homelessness is high in New York City.
As above, the current programs and rent control still have New York City at extremely high rents and high homelessness. They are not cutting it.
Vancouver tried a vanacy tax. It was good, but only brought a grand total of a few hundred units onto the market (because of the aforementioned most vacant units just being between residents). Vanacy taxes are only going to fix a tiny portion of the issue.
Allowing the construction of much more housing lowers rents and homelessness. It also lowers the profit per unit of landlords. Building much more housing is siding with ordinary people who need lower rents and lower homelessness.