Should Landlord Subsidize Tenants' Good Life?
A familiar story with the same violins playing in the background: A group of pioneering artists with under-market rents fighting the evil landlord who wants to maximize the profitability of his property. In this case, it’s a particularly colorful gang of circus performers and nonprofit publishers, many of whom will have to leave New York…
A familiar story with the same violins playing in the background: A group of pioneering artists with under-market rents fighting the evil landlord who wants to maximize the profitability of his property. In this case, it’s a particularly colorful gang of circus performers and nonprofit publishers, many of whom will have to leave New York if they lose the court battle over whether they are protected by rent stabilization laws. As big a bummer as it is for them (and arguably for the fabric of the neighborhood), we can’t see why the landlord should have to subsidize these folks any longer. No one forced them to move here twenty years ago–they did so because it was the best deal they could find at the time. It’ll be interesting to see what the judge says.
The Good Life on South 11th Street [NY Times] GMAP P*Shark
Photo by justiNYC
4:24 pm you’re not cliche, you’re just being earnest and not cynical. It’s so funny, it’s not enough that some people give up the comforts of security, stability, social status. They also have to apologize for it. Don’t.
3:23 — don’t move to philly! we can’t let them win!
3:35 — I think BAM is not exactly a starving artist institution (though I LOVE IT and am glad you do). I just don’t think that having a giant arts center makes up for the mass exodus of actually WORKING artists. Just like doctors and teachers and cops and traders, the city needs working artists like marrow in its bones. I don’t think they need to be subsidized, but they should not be ostracized or forced to be illustrators and graphic designers for a living. Can’t we have a little room for creativity? Just a little? Just leave one or two buildings in williamsburg off the condo plan?
Anon 4:12 PM, how can you say that BAM and the museum will survive when so many of you appear to be anti-CT. That’s a bit hypocritical. You want to schmooze at the gallery openings but you’re against the very things that would allow the ‘artists’ and ‘academicians’ to survive in nyc. Not everyone can or desire to hold a coporate job paying six-figures. Some people prefer to remain true to their passion (100%). I’m laughing a bit as I say this because I know that several of you will seize upon this and call it cliched, out-dated and a lot of crap.
This blog is hilarious. Some people get so easily offended. I can see the plight of both sides. Unfortunately some people are parasites and others are so tunnel-visioned that they can’t really see the big picture. call it ‘overblown’, but we need fairing housing laws (for landlords) and we also need affordable housing in order to maintain our current lifestyle.
“I guess from the sounding of this post we might as well do away with BAM and any other decisions to create a cultural haven in Brooklyn. If its left up to all you tightwads the brooklyn museum will never get a new building erected near the atlantic yards/BAM…”
By this reasoning Lincoln Center would have shuttered long ago, since the area is so expensive, and then Upper West Side co-op prices would have collapsed.
It’s too bad if you have to move to Philly. But frankly you could move to Albania and BAM and the Brooklyn Museum would do just fine.
Also, I can’t speak for every brownstone neighborhood, but anyone who moved to Park Slope in the last decade because it was “hip,” “edgy” or “artsy” has a really dorky idea of what those terms mean. Yet its property values have somehow managed to keep from collapsing.
Art is part of the bedrock of civilization. Without it, a society stagnates. Re: the poster whose wife works as an illustrator. How many jobs are there like these are out there. Most struggling artists work in retail or in the hospitality business (e.g., as waiters). You can’t sell art at 1972 prices on that type of salary.
I don’t think that the couple on South 11th Street should be allowed to stay there at those rent…but you’ve got to realize the crisis that exists for poorer ny’ers to find affordable housing. No one has addressed the issue of where the ‘creative’ and ‘service’ sector will live if the market continues to expand at its current rate. Small town America is dying because many of the youths are moving to bigger cities like nyc. Rents are going up and will continue to do so. Who will be interested in commuting 2 hrs to a restaurant to work as a chef or waiter? Only the desperate few. Which leads me to believe that there will be an eventual degradation of services. If you think it’s hard to find good help these days, what will it be like 10 years from now?
3:23, if you need a co-squatter in philly, look me up!
I have two tenants paying less than $200/mo. each for rent controled one bedroom apartments in a building I own in downtown Manhattan.
One’s a drunk who bothers the other tenants because he plays his tv at extreme levels most of the day and night.
The other’s a middle aged woman who I rarely see around. She probably has an apartment somewhere else too, but I can’t prove it.
I just got a heating bill of $3200.00 just for the month of February for the 22 unit building they live in.
Of course, as many of you point out, I have other tenants paying much higher rents, but why in the world is it fair for the City of New York to force me to subsidize these people?
Yes, I chose to be a landlord, but I assumed the rent laws would be abolished long ago. I assumed wrongly that the Courts would have stricken them down by now.
Did any of you morons ever think that people who currently live in Philly probably DON’T want your stuck-up ass moving in?
Stay with your own overblown kind or get shot in West Philly. Either way, I like it.