Speaker Quinn Bears Bad News for Real Estate Crowd
As the featured speaker at Tuesday’s quarterly gathering of the Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable, Council Speaker Christine Quinn didn’t tell the audience of developers, property owners and brokers what they wanted to hear. If the City wrests control over rent stabilization from the State, as is expected, Quinn said that it would likely work to…
As the featured speaker at Tuesday’s quarterly gathering of the Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable, Council Speaker Christine Quinn didn’t tell the audience of developers, property owners and brokers what they wanted to hear. If the City wrests control over rent stabilization from the State, as is expected, Quinn said that it would likely work to undo the pro-landlord steps that have been taken in recent years regarding decontrol and destabilization. She also didn’t give the impression that 421-a program would be reinstated anytime soon. The one bit of news that didn’t elicit a groan from the crowd: She does not expect that the city will raise property taxes later this year. Oh, and she also made glowing comments about Two Trees when asked about the prospects for its proposed Dock Street development.
Similar to what happened when the Subway fare was directly controlled by politicians – If the city council ends up controlling rent increases for Stabilized housing it is inevitable that NYC will face abandonment and huge housing blight over the next decade.
I wouldn’t be an NYC school teacher in some schools I can think of if you paid me $500K. Good luck to them.
ditto…I know a number of people whom I went to high school with who took state and city jobs. The benefits, vacation time and pension are enviable. I just think that if I did that I would have committed suicide along the way from the day-to-day interaction with most of those people.
East NY;
My wife comes from a family of NYC public schoold teachers. I mean no disrespect to your wife or any individual NYC schoold teacher. It is a tough job, no doubt about it.
Having said that, I remain firm in my statement that both NYC and NYS lawmakers are beholden to the teacher’s union. The teacher’s union is the largest lobbyist in both NYC and NYS.
Moreover, I know first-hand that the teacher’s union is just an extension of the Democrat party in NYC and NYS. I have a friend who was a dedicated teacher at Frnklin Lane HS in East NY, your old nabe. He was truly dedicated to the job, and wanted to make a difference. He was so good that he was being considered for the position of principal. He was told point-blank that he had to join the local democratic machine in order to get this position. He quit.
I have a cousin who works at Port Richmond HS in Staten island. He regales me with the story of union rules, patronage and such. This is what I’m talking about.
I’ll tell you this too: after 30 years of travelling heavily in the private sector, I would love to have a second career as a school teacher. I won’t do it, however. The reason? I don’t want to put up with the union-mentality crap, that I see in my wife’s family all the time, and my cousin tells me about. I don’t want to deal with a union grievance for working some overtime ahead of some old, do-nothing fart who has seniority.
Once again, Est NY, I mean no disrespect to individual school teachers, like your wife.
“While we bat around “tax-the-rich”, the fact of the matter is they also get huge tax breaks.”
One thing to consider bxgrl, is the defintion of “rich” varies on who you ask, and those earning (if I remember the range correctly) $135-225K actually pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than any other group in US society (those below having lower marginal rates, credits etc. which begin to phase out, and those above earning plenty of income from non-salary sources at lower tax rates). These people (middle class in NYC perhaps), while being well aware that people can survive on much less, don’t count themselves as rich and are apt to think they are already paying their fare share. And when it comes to city taxes, they think “city employees getting to retire after 20 yrs on 2/3rds salary” while they, like most people, have to work till they drop and save their own retirement money, company pensions being as prevalent nowadays as gas-lighting.
Seems to me everybody on all sides are pissed off now. At least spring is around the corner.
At least the Speaker is honest. That is some amazingly candid speech for a politician. She probably knows that rent control is harmful, but if that’s the price we must pay so that she can get elected, it’s worth it to her!
I’m not a teacher, bxgrl, my wife is. But thanks. Her school is not dangerous at all, but it is at times is short on supplies and funding. She and other teachers often do their part to fill the gaps. They deserve MORE money, not less, and they certainly aren’t “recipients of government largesse.” They’re hard-working professionals who expect to be fairly compensated for their efforts – just like anyone else.
ENY- my sister and brother-in-law are also teachs and pretty much just like you and your wife . I’ve worked all my life, paid my taxes, never asked for handout- so I agree with you. NYC teachers have it very very tough and they are often in dangerous schools.
I don’t think all these issues are DEM/REP- they’re about greed and ineptitude at every level and in every political entity. for years NYC has been shortchanged- we generated far more tax dollars than we ever saw returned. We basically supported the entire state and the state assembly was majority Republican.
While we bat around “tax-the-rich”, the fact of the matter is they also get huge tax breaks, as do corporations. They have accountants who are very creative and know every loophole and deduction. The real issues isn’t how tax money is generated, its what gets done with it. And frankly, NYS has been doing a lousy job. In NYC neither party does a good job. Bloomberg is certainly better than Guiliani but if you went over the city budget line by line you’d find plenty of misued fund there too.
That said, I don’t like Quinn- she obviously votes selfi-interest and sucks up to the mayor.And as far as the landlord thing- as much as I believe in reasonable rents, that’s not going to happen if we screw the landlords either.
Thank god for the NRA.