Anti Rent-Control Protest
Dan Squadron is having a ‘community convention’ at BMCC on Sunday at 2 to discuss (among other things) ” Rent regulations I sponsor a bill that will close the “owner occupancy loophole†and keep tenants in their homes, and I am fighting for other vital tenant protection legislation like an end to vacancy decontrol. What…
Dan Squadron is having a ‘community convention’ at BMCC on Sunday at 2 to discuss (among other things)
”
Rent regulations
I sponsor a bill that will close the “owner occupancy loophole†and keep tenants in their homes, and I am fighting for other vital tenant protection legislation like an end to vacancy decontrol. What are your priorities for rent regulation laws? What else can I do that will help keep New York affordable and keep tenants in safe, decent and affordable homes?
”
——————–
Let’s politely tell him that
a) Owners should be able to live in their own homes
b) Re-regulating housing will drive up costs for the rest of us and make it impossible to find new apartments as our lives change
c) Rent control/stabilization should be means-tested.
Hope to see you there!
starfish:
The politicians want to ensure that:
a) the tenants never move (because their rents are so far below market)
b) the tenants will have a strong incentive to vote for continuation of dumb economic policy.
c) the landlords will ‘donate’ money to avoid even stricter restrictions
Look at ‘Public Choice Economics’ — it doesn’t cost the politicians anything to destroy the city, but the politicians benefit by getting re-elected.
We all pay for it through higher rents, housing prices, and property/sales taxes, as well as through generally lower prosperity.
Turns out that Squadron is quite a scoundrel:
http://www.r8ny.com/blog/gatemouth/lillian_hellman_squadron_aka_scoundrel_time.html
As I said:
We had the contract in hand and the terms and price were accepted.
But the credit market started to implode, and we couldn’t get the deal done before the deadline to evict the tenant in one of the apartments that we wanted to occupy.
It is quite annoying — the place is still an eyesore, the pipes are rusted out, the rent barely covers the property taxes + heat, and several of the tenants have country homes.
The property sold for less than $300/ft in brooklyn heights.
I have a simple and perhaps naive question:
Why do these politicians support these strict price (rent) contols for the benefit of people who may be quite well off financially?
And why do these politicians think it’s right to prohibit an owner from living on his own property???
oh, we ‘almost’ bought. That is a good one.
I don’t believe that a R/S lease is, or should be, a never-ending multi-lifetime contract to occupy a dwelling at an artificially low rent.
The rights and responsibilities have to be balanced. Much of the R/S and R/C stock has rents that do not support expenses, much less maintenance.
Making the rules even stricter will drive more owners towards abandonment, as we saw in the 60s and 70s.
It will also reduce property tax collections, investment in maintenance, etc.
But even worse, it will make it hard for young people to find apartments, which will choke off new job creation.
Seems to me that Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, Minneapolis, and nearly all other big cities in the US (with the exception of LA, SF, and DC) do perfectly fine without R/S, and uniformly, rents are cheaper there.
I’d come down just to talk for it.
It’s simple, thwack: if you want to buy a RC/RS building, you buy it with the understanding that there are people living there and they have rights too, your inflated version of property rights or no. What’s not to understand?
Absolutely agree with christopher’s points too.
“It’s not limited to one unit. There was a case last year in Manhattan. Developer bought building with lots of rent controlled tenants. Tried to evict almost all of them under auspices that each of his children and each of their separate nannies needing their own space.”
– By Johnny on April 7, 2010 9:56 AM
That case was involving rent stabilization, not rent control.
http://gothamist.com/2008/06/04/from_tenement_t.php
I believe RC has stricter guidelines
Pete:
My wife and I almost did this — we had a contract out on a house. The house is an 17 footer in 7 apartments (bottom floor is a 1br; all others are mini-1brs or studios.
We would have paid a lot more than the owner got, and the city would have gotten about 50-100k more since then in property taxes, not to mention taxes on renovations, additional jobs, and multipliers from increased economic activity.
So what exactly did the current tenants (who are not poor) do to justify a city/state subsidy of 100k?