Democratic Assembly Passes Pro-Tenant Legislation
In a potentially huge set-back to New York City landlords, the New York State Assembly passed a new package of legislation yesterday that strengthen’s rent regulation across the state and gives more authority to the pro-tenant New York City Council. According to The Times, the new rules would “essentially return to regulation tens of thousands…
In a potentially huge set-back to New York City landlords, the New York State Assembly passed a new package of legislation yesterday that strengthen’s rent regulation across the state and gives more authority to the pro-tenant New York City Council. According to The Times, the new rules would “essentially return to regulation tens of thousands of units that were converted to market rate in recent years” and reduce the amount a landlord is allowed to increase the rent upon a vacancy from 20 percent to 10 percent. It’s a matter of fairness, said Jonathan L. Bing, an assemblyman who represents the Upper East Side. We’re trying to give people a way to live out their lives in the neighborhoods they’ve been calling home for decades. On the other side of the coin: This is going to be very devastating, said Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, a group that represents landlords and real estate agents in the city. New York City is the last big city in the country that has any strong form of rent regulation. And at a time when we have an economic recession, when rents are actually going down, this will put another nail in the coffin. In our opinion, the government should spend more time and resources making sure landlords adequately maintain their buildings and abide by the legal terms of their leases with tenants and less time trying to fight the laws of supply and demand. After all, rents are already coming down anyway.
Assembly Passes Rent-Regulation Revisions [NY Times]
Photo by Bobble
Boh hoo no more welfare checks to homeowners. I had to listen to homeowners complain that they still had not recieved their well deserved 400 dollar checks. Well the housing market is going down the drains and if you don’t like that fact that alot of smarter poorer middleclass people will be buying your homes, tough. You should have though about it when you overpaid for your house when you bought it.
Finally. We also need regulation to make sure all these landlords are paying taxes on all thei illgotten rents. I can’t belive I have to pay 14,000 dollars a year in rent to that parasite of a landlord I have and then I only get to deduct 8000 dollars thanks to our Mayor. Meanwhile my landlord declared 0 taxes. Also we need more severe punishments from landlords that put ten people to an apartment and charging each person 400 dollars a month. These are family homes not containers to stuff animals in them. And most of all no TARP money to homeowners. W forclosed homes.
Let’s take a vote. How many truly staunch Republicans who are against against handouts who live in rent controlled apartments are in favor of rent control?
Amen (x3?) to Oxygen’s comment.
It wasn’t so long ago on this board that an unsuspecting tenant asked about bargaining for a lower rent with their landlord. I think the house next door had a fire, with negative consequences for the tenant. A sizable group of folks rallied around — you guessed it — the landlord, who should be protected from income loss beyond their control. At the time, it made me wonder how the Brownstoners would respond to the next round of the rent-stabilization debate, whether they’d extend the same market protections to tenants who lose income in an overheated rental market.
Rent regulation gives the tenant some modicum of parity. The housing laws are evolved from the European legal system…even the term ‘landlord’ is from a time when it was legal to OWN the people who lived on your property, your serfs. LORD of the land.
The laws in the USA grew out of that European system and are unjustly weighted in the favor of the property owner. Rent regulation has thankfully made an effort to bring some legal justice to tenants. Unfortunately, the real estate lobby (and their money) in NYC has had a stranglehold on NYC housing laws. I am glad to see the Democrats making an effort to reverse some of that.
The fact is this: there is widespread predatory landlord abuse in buildings with RS and RC apartments. The business model is based upon converting all the rent regulated units completely to market value apartments (save for the token senior citizen tenant who is allowed to remain for PR purposes, the ethnic minority tenant also permitted to remain for PR purposes, and of course the rare tenant who knows the laws, is tough skinned, and is willing to engage in an eternal fight who the landlord cannot get out or buy out). This destroys affordable housing in NYC. Vacancy decontrol permits the landlords to cook their books and play the odds when illegally boosting an apartments rent to deregulate it.
Of course, many NYC’ers are ignorant of what actually goes down and how the process plays out. You only see a truck pull up to a building and a tenant loading his possessions into it; a couple months later another truck pulls up and a wealthier tenants unloads his possessions. It is a hidden process, you do not see the living hell and harassment tenants are placed under until they relent and move. Hopefully, these new laws will pass and give some relief to the tenants who are being preyed upon based on the current laws.
Rent regulation gives the tenant some modicum of parity. The housing laws are evolved from the European legal system…even the term ‘landlord’ is from a time when it was legal to OWN the people who lived on your property, your serfs. LORD of the land.
The laws in the USA grew out of that European system and are unjustly weighted in the favor of the property owner. Rent regulation has thankfully made an effort to bring some legal justice to tenants. Unfortunately, the real estate lobby (and their money) in NYC has had a stranglehold on NYC housing laws. I am glad to see the Democrats making an effort to reverse some of that.
The fact is this: there is widespread predatory landlord abuse in buildings with RS and RC apartments. The business model is based upon converting all the rent regulated units completely to market value apartments (save for the token senior citizen tenant who is allowed to remain for PR purposes, the ethnic minority tenant also permitted to remain for PR purposes, and of course the rare tenant who knows the laws, is tough skinned, and is willing to engage in an eternal fight who the landlord cannot get out or buy out). This destroys affordable housing in NYC. Vacancy decontrol permits the landlords to cook their books and play the odds when illegally boosting an apartments rent to deregulate it.
Of course, many NYC’ers are ignorant of what actually goes down and how the process plays out. You only see a truck pull up to a building and a tenant loading his possessions into it; a couple months later another truck pulls up and a wealthier tenants unloads his possessions. It is a hidden process, you do not see the living hell and harassment tenants are placed under until they relent and move. Hopefully, these new laws will pass and give some relief to the tenants who are being preyed upon based on the current laws.
Rent regulation gives the tenant some modicum of parity. The housing laws are evolved from the European legal system…even the term ‘landlord’ is from a time when it was legal to OWN the people who lived on your property, your serfs. LORD of the land.
The laws in the USA grew out of that European system and are unjustly weighted in the favor of the property owner. Rent regulation has thankfully made an effort to bring some legal justice to tenants. Unfortunately, the real estate lobby (and their money) in NYC has had a stranglehold on NYC housing laws. I am glad to see the Democrats making an effort to reverse some of that.
…landlords.
The owners are very often only the landlords of the buildings not the residents. If the owners can’t satisfy their greed by reaming the tenants, they should get out of the business and go into credit default swaps or some other legalized scam, rather than trying to bleed their tenants.
I am pleased to see some this legislation. The real estate lobby has directed policy for too long.
Greedy speculative landlords will be put in check. If a landlord is not content to make a modest profit then they are in the wrong business.
My building was purchased last year. The landlord is harassing the tenants, breaking all variety of laws, emptying apartments, harassing tenants with lawsuits, and all forms of BS. They know tenants do not have the time or money to deal repeatedly with frivolous court cases. The landord has his lawyers on retainer and uses the courts merely as a harassing action…often withdrawing the case after the tenant has appeared on several court dates, done purely to harass.
What motors the incentive to screw the tenants, many who have lived here in their HOME, for decades? Pure unrestrained landlord GREED and the laws that enable it.
Unfortnately, many of you do not know the reality of the street. Or of displacing people from their homes…’gentrification’.
You have no clue about the day to day effects of a 20% vacancy increase. Or of vacancy decontrol. The new speculator landlords are not like the old slumlords. They do not even want our money…they want us out of the building and will go to any means to achieve this. The landlord-weighted laws pushed through by the real estate lobby are the enablers for this sort of raw-greed behavior.
Get rid of vacancy decontrol ENTIRELY! That combined with a reduction of vacancy increases will go far towards safeguarding our homes from these predatory