The Indypendent e-news
With rent regulation laws set to expire June 15, housing advocates are increasing pressure on New York Gov. Cuomo to renew and strengthen the statutes.
For the past month, a broad coalition of housing, labor, human services and educational groups has occupied the state capitol’s staircases and hallways to show their frustration with Cuomo’s budget cuts and inaction on legislation to protect affordable housing. These mini-Madisons culminated in a capitol camp-out last week, during which 300 people spent the night in the capitol.
Rent regulation laws, which limit the amount of rent that landlords can charge on more than one million apartments in the New York City area, affect more than 2.5 million residents.
“If the rent laws end, as leases expire landlords would not be obligated to offer renewals and could charge as much as they can get away with,” said Jim Lister, a member of Vocal New York.
In addition to renewing rent regulations, advocates, along with key state legislators including Assembly members Hakeem Jeffries and Linda Rosenthal, are also working to repeal vacancy destabilization, a policy that allows landlords to increase tenants’ monthly payments on formerly rent-stabilized apartments once the rent hits $2,000 a month and the apartment is vacant. Tenant advocates began working to repeal vacancy destabilization two years ago, when the Democrats took control of the State Senate, and they’re hoping to achieve this goal by the end of April. As June approaches, tenants will run out of leverage to force a favorable deal on the rent laws.
The Community Service Society estimates that 300,000 units of affordable rent-regulated housing have been lost since vacancy destabilization became law in the 1990s. Tenants’ groups also want Cuomo to re-regulate these lost units in addition to renewing the rent laws.
Cuomo’s base, the Committee to Save New York, an astroturf group composed of Wall Street and real estate interests, will certainly push back against rent regulations, especially since they already defeated the millionaire’s tax and backed every penny of budget cuts. The group is running a public relations campaign to build public support for austerity — though tenants counter that it does not cost the state anything to renew and strengthen the rent laws.
The landlord lobby is also urging its Senate Republican allies not to strengthen amendments and to hold out until June to end rent regulation — a frightening prospect for tenants.
Despite the odds, tenant advocates are continuing their efforts to get Cuomo to reconsider.
On a recent day in the capitol, about 50 members of Vocal New York, one of the most boisterous presences in Albany, protested outside of Cuomo’s second floor office.
Comments
Let's start with the basics: 'Tenant advocates' represent politicians and those tenants lucky enough to have a below-market apartment.
Rent control hurts the vast majority of New Yorkers including most renters in NYC.
We, the NYC Renter's Alliance for Housing Choice represent the market-rate tenants who are and will be hurt by restrictive rent regulations. We're the middle class people who rent the apartments that have been 'decontrolled', and we don't want to see 1/4 of the apartments that we rely on to house ourselves taken away.
We're the young couple that moves from two studios into a one bedroom, or the new family that moves into a two-bedroom, or the older empty nesters who move from a walk-up into an elevator building. Strengthening rent regulations would make our apartments more expensive, harder to rent, and more likely to turn into condos to avoid being re-rent-controlled.
We're the new employees at your company who moved here from somewhere else. We're your friends children finally getting an apartment of our own. We're the divorced parent getting a new apartment in our kids' neighborhoods. Again, with 'stronger' rent control laws, we won't be in NYC, and our jobs won't either.
We're also the condo and homeowners who are paying much higher taxes because the rich rent-controlled tenants live in million-dollar valued apartments that pay a pittance in property taxes, and we want to make sure that everyone in NYC pays their fair share.
If you want to join us, send an email to nycrenters at gmail.com
NYC Renters' Alliance for Housing Choice
Rent stabilization is not just about the rent. It's about the tenant's right to a renewal lease; the fact that only a judge can evict you; that if you become disabled (and when you become a senior) and your income drops, you can get help with the rent; that you can organize a tenant association without fear of retaliation; that you can ask the state housing agency for a rent reduction if the owner cuts services. Those protections die when rent stabilization dies.
Rent regulation levels the playing field between landlord and tenant - just like collective bargaining levels the playing field between employer and employee.
In your personal interest, the bill to repeal vacancy decontrol would actually re-stabilize many apartments removed after December 2006, and roll rents back. So contact Governor Cuomo: 212-681-4580.
What are you talking about, Sue?
Ever since Market Rate renter and his friends destroyed the labor movement, wages have gone through the roof.
Now anyone can afford Manhattan market rents!
It is imperative that we save rent stabilization not only for the rights that it provides folks that live under it but because it is not right that families that have lived in New York City for many years will no longer be able to live here. I am born and raised in New York and I want the right to stay here at an affordable price.
Rent regulation does not infringe on anyone's rights but it attempts to improve the lives of folks that rent apartments because landlords shouldn't be able to do whatever they wish without reason. I certainly appreciate the fact that I can't simply lose my home on the whim of some stranger.
I am glad and proud to to know that there are people who are striving to inform others that their rights are under attack. I am also hopeful that state legislators, ESPECIALLY CUOMO, will do the right thing and not only renew but strengthen rent regulation.
I've been living here in my apartment in Bed Stuy for years with my wife Alice. As a bus driver it's hard to make ends meet so I need rent stabilization to keep my one bedroom apartment. If Mr Wizenheimer Market Rate Renter ever comes aroung here I got only one thing to say, "Bang Zoom! to the Moon"!!!
New York City Renters Alliance for Housing Choice- It is sad to see that you may have it confused. It is not just affordable housing but fair housing. You should be able to afford to live in your home with rent protections that don't allow a landlord to take advantage of you. Without those protections landlords have the incentive and capability of destroying neighborhoods just to make money. It is because we look to make sure that our future genenrations can have a safe and affordable place to live, we fight for the repeal of vacancy destabilization and the strengthening and renewing of the rent laws. I talk to renters everyday, and it is sad to see how landlords are actively displacing families from their homes in order to get people who can afford to pay the ridiculously exorbitant amounts. There are people living in areas that the rent is 4-6,000 dollars and because the rents have gone so high they have had to move to the outerboroughs or smaller communities where the rents are less than $2000. This seems like a real bargain for them without realizing that the apartments are actually less than $2000 AND HAVE BEEN INCREASED BY MOVING OUT LOW-MODERATE INCOME FAMILIES. Those same children, those same neighbors, those young couples, the old empty nesters are being taken advantage of on both ends. Those that already live in the community cannot afford to stay in their homes after having lived there 30 or 40 years because of greedy landlords who want to line their pockets. This is not about race or class, this is about money. Market rate renters should fight just as hard for the protections they deserve. We should not be pitted one against the other but instead unite for fair and equitable housing.
Anyone who is against rent controls is against the New Yorkers who helped build this city. Landlords are very clever and have found a way of pitting renters and co-op owners against each other. Co-op owners may identify with landlords but find out to late that they do not have the same rights as a landlord. They are renters too, just on a different level.
Cuomo's "Committee to Save NY" is headed by Rob Speyer; part of the Tishman-Speyer family that bought Stuyvesant Town Peter Cooper Village in 2006 for a stupefying $5.4 billion. That is "billion" with a "b" and it turned out to be a bust. Stuy Town's affordability has been pulverized by Tishman Speyer's "to-market, to-market" plan and even after the Roberts decision win, the re-regulated rents are luridly high in Stuy Town/Peter Cooper. My "formerly market rate" neighbors should get much better than this. We are all part of the essential NYC middle class for whom rent regulated housing is key. We have salaries, so don't need a NYCHA rent but we aren't moneybucks so can't afford a market rent.
Cuomo knows all the above, but he is content to have the "Committee to Save NY" front for him. That is shamefull. Simply shameful.
"Market rent" is a ridiculous concept. The workforce class of NY needs affordable housing. Until we have the millions it takes to buy, we need regulated rents. If Cuomo does not strengthen the rent laws THIS YEAR he will have sided against ALL working NYers whose shelter depends on rent regulations.
Gov. Cuomo needs to end vacancy destabilization - that will be the real battle. The slow phase out of rent stabilization is occuring and most of the poltiical class is onboard with that. There's too much real estate money in state politics for the Democratic governor (largest contributors Tishman-Speyer) and the Repubican State Seante for them to roll on vacancy destabilization. If tenant groups can pressue hard enough, alot of market renters would get their rent stabilization back, so the ramifications are that hundreds of thousands of deregulated tenants could get some rights back and a check on outrageous rent increases. That is something for market renters to think about.
Rent Stabilization makes as much sense as price controls on food, clothing, laundromats, restaurants etc. Why should rents be "stabilized"? Why not price controls on other necessities of urban living?
There is near-unanimous consensus among economists that rent control does not improve the availability or quality of affordable housing. In a 1992 survey, 92.3% of economists asked agreed that "A ceiling on rents reduces the quality and quantity of housing available." Only 6.5% disagreed with the assertion. Economists from differing sides of the political spectrum, such as Paul Krugman and Thomas Sowell have criticized rent regulation as poor economics which, despite its good intentions, leads to the creation of less housing, raises prices, and increases urban blight.
We need to eliminate state interference in the housing market, not expand it. Landlords do not set prices, markets do. See commercial rents in New York the previous two years. Rent stabilization only compounds the problem by limiting the amount of available units and thus raising their prices.
Boston and Cambridge did away with rent control and the world didn’t end. It didn’t become super wealthy people only. In fact, rents stayed pretty much the same and the social makeup of the city didn’t change.
Vacancy decontrol does not adversely affect any existing tenant and, in fact, has been shown to improve conditions of their tenancy without an increase in their rent payments.
Vacancy decontrol creates an incentive for landlords to harass tenants out of their apartments so they can bump up the rent - their "goal" of course is to de-stabilize the unit after it hits $2000. What they do to people is horrific.
I work at a hospital in NYC and can barely afford to pay my rent as it is. Without rent stabilization my husband and I would have to leave NYC. Costs are so far out of hand that no one can afford to live here any more. Anyone who says we "don't need" rent stabilization is out of their mind.
City Hall News nominated the Rent Stabilization Association's president, Joe Strasburg, as its biggest loser of the week. Help vote Strasburg in! He was caught on video speaking freely about his landlord group buying the NY state senate and calling the both governors Cuomo names. He also sings Pedro Espada's praises.
http://realrentreform.blogspot.com/
RENT STABILIZATION IS A FORM OF COMMUNISTS, IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD THE RENT GET OUT! WE NEED PEOPLE WHO CAN STAND ON THEIR OWN TWO FEET IN THIS CITY. AN D CUOMO IS A BUM LIKE HIS FATHER.
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