Friday Links
Rowhouses, Cobble Hill. Photo by fake is the new real. Home Prices Fall in More Than Half of Biggest Markets [NY Times] EV Couple Can Boot Rent-Control Tenants [NY Post] Case of Nerves on Rent Rules Hits Owners [NY Sun] How Good Are Zillow’s Estimates [RE Journal] Oro Condos: Now For Sale [Myrtle Minutes] Thinking…
Rowhouses, Cobble Hill. Photo by fake is the new real.
Home Prices Fall in More Than Half of Biggest Markets [NY Times]
EV Couple Can Boot Rent-Control Tenants [NY Post]
Case of Nerves on Rent Rules Hits Owners [NY Sun]
How Good Are Zillow’s Estimates [RE Journal]
Oro Condos: Now For Sale [Myrtle Minutes]
Thinking of Spring: Fence Replacement [Forum]
Brownstoner Bloggers Going Full Time [Colin O’Malley]
Feedback on 649 Washington Open House [Brooklynian]
C-Roy, 11:40 here. Not that I want to start up a big pity party for myself, but there are those that have handicaps asides from mental impairment. If it makes you feel any better, while I lived in that apartment I worked and paid my taxes like everyone else, and was able to save enough money to buy a small place of my own. I now have the pleasure of being a homeowner with the security that no one can kick me out on a whim. I’m proud of this, and I will gladly pay my taxes if it can help someone in the same situation I was in. Not everyone is a mooch looking to beat the system. Sometimes some of us (no pun intended) just need a leg up.
Rent control is a middle class subsidy. There is no economic justification whatsoever for it.
Also 11:59- let’s not mention the rent stablized users that drive Escalades.
Though C-Roy’s tone is harsh, I agree with what s/he is saying, because my worldview is informed by having busted my backside off to get good grades in (public) school and, during the summer, experience and credentials (working for cash and interning in the public sector) from roughly age 14 (9th grade, when GPA starts to matter) to 25 (when grad school ends) so that by the time I’m in my thirties I can pay off, if I’m lucky, grad school and undergrad loans and afford a brownstone in Brooklyn that I *share* with tenants, and their foibles, because that’s the only way I can afford it.
Now really, how am I supposed to have much sympathy for the guy living in this building for $625 since 1978, when I was barely in elementary school?
This doesn’t mean that I dont’ feel for him and his plight, or that I would do the same thing were I in the position of Mr. & Mrs. Landlord (in fact I wouldn’t), but come on, there’s something wrong with this equation.
The free market “let the poor go the wall” sentiments on this site are repulsive. I’m also pretty sure they are motivated by jealousy of those who happen to enjoy affordable rents. Look people, in 1978 the East Village was a f*** of a scary place to live. And I’ll bet that building is just a no-frills, clapped out, walk-up tenement. It’s not like those tenants have been enjoying luxury housing for all these years. And as someone who recently owned a small coop in a walk-up and paid $450 mtn, I can tell you that collecting $625 in rent per apt is enough to run the building in the black. It’s pure manipulation of the existing laws for the new owners to assert that they are converting a 15-apartment building into a one family. If one of them has a Greek shipping magnate for a papa, why don’t they buy an empty building and convert that? This is a sad day for all New Yorkers who care about the preservation of affordable housing.
Hey, C-Roy…you got a problem with how NYC operates? Then maybe you should move.
11:59. We’ve found a point of agreement. I say get rid of those subsidies too.
11:44 I think you are talking about an entirely different isssue.
No one is saying Mr. Putz doesn’t have a right to quality housing. He just doesn’t have a right to quality housing in the East Village for $625/mo. See the difference.
Take your $625 move to Jersey or BX or Queens and catch a longer train or get a roomate.
Let’s not mention all the real estate subsidies and tax breaks landlords and developers get, shall we?