“Fare evasion has increased $500 million, according to the MTA, since pre-pandemic,” said Andrew Rein, the President of the Citizens Budget Commission.

Projects using the 421-g tax incentive added about 13,000 units of new housing and an additional 17,000 units were converted or built in the submarket without the incentive, according to an analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission.

A Citizens Budget Commission report released Friday notes, for example, that average per-unit monthly operating costs hit $1,471 last year, which is “$609, or 70%, greater than the average per-unit cost of operating a rent stabilized building built prior to 1974,” with sharp increases “driven primarily by efforts needed to combat deferred maintenance.”

“It takes sleeves-rolled-up work,” Andrew Rein, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group, told The Times. The City Council, which must approve the budget, has challenged the mayor’s budget cuts; its willingness to do so is a good thing.

The CBC blasts “decades of deferred maintenance, insufficient capital investment and inadequate management,” but the pandemic was the potential final straw.

CBC President Andrew Rein said the NYPD’s $452 million overtime allocation for the coming fiscal year is at least $350 million lower than they’re likely to shell out, based on the agency’s OT spending in recent years.

In the eight years before the pandemic, tax revenue grew an average of 4.7% per year, roughly matching city-funded spending, according to Ana Champeny, the vice president of research at the Citizens Budget Commission. That enabled former Mayor Bill de Blasio to hire thousands of new employees and expand city-funded programs without having to consider layoffs or cost-cuts to balance the budget.

The latest NYPD budget for Fiscal 2024 — about $10 billion — is likely $1.6 billion less than needed for pay raises and overtime over the next few years, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission.

It was really about how do we make it so that people can still live in their homes, get to their jobs — but it’s not free,” said Kathryn Garcia, Hochul’s director of state operations at a post-budget Citizens Budget Commission event when asked about the rebates for cap and invest.

But it’s already clear which parts of the city have seen the slowest housing growth: A 2020 Citizens Budget Commission report identified low-rise outer-borough areas such as Bensonhurst, Maspeth and Kew Gardens as having approved the fewest housing units per 1,000 residents since 2010. Hell’s Kitchen, Downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City built the most.

A recent study from the fiscally hawkish Citizens Budget Commission found the mounting CityFHEPS demand could jeopardize the program‘s long-term sustainability and recommended supplementing its budget with federal and state funds.

Andrew Rein, chair of the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission, said: “We would have a significant budget problem to solve even if we didn't address the immigration crisis. We can't solve the city's fiscal crisis by just focusing on one part of it."