If that’s not making enough of a dent, it’s not evidence that it’s not helping at all.

Compared to CA, NYC is building like crazy from my anecdotal observation.

Your article talks about 16k condos over 6y, which is ~3k/y. That's not zero, but that's really not very much housing compared to the ~8M population of NYC. I know this isn't the total of New York housing construction, but it's so little you wouldn't expect it to help much.

For example, during the 1920s NYC was building housing at about 7%/y! Housing was much cheaper then, and through the period of low demand, but when demand picked up again we didn't let people resume building at anywhere near historical rates.

The storefronts are only there because of significant state tax credits for including them.

Like all things real estate, there’s some other tax angle where the owners make more money demanding commercial rents above what the market can afford than actually renting it. They probably securitize the losses somehow.