Stopping Big Rent Hikes at Ex-Mitchell-Lamas
The state has closed a loophole that allowed landlords to enact huge rent hikes upon exiting the Mitchell-Lama program. Under the loophole, owners of Mitchell-Lama rental buildings constructed before 1974 will no longer be able to raise rents to market rate by claiming that leaving the program amounts to a unique and peculiar circumstance. (Instead,…
The state has closed a loophole that allowed landlords to enact huge rent hikes upon exiting the Mitchell-Lama program. Under the loophole, owners of Mitchell-Lama rental buildings constructed before 1974 will no longer be able to raise rents to market rate by claiming that leaving the program amounts to a unique and peculiar circumstance. (Instead, the units will become rent-stabilized.) The new regulation comes as government programs like Mitchell-Lama subsidize fewer and fewer units in the city: Between 1990 and 2006, the city lost 27 percent, or 32,422, of its apartments in subsidy programs, according to data from the Community Service Society. Although the regulation may have an impact on many of Brooklyn’s Mitchell-Lama buildings, it won’t matter at its largest one. The present or future owners of Starrett City could bring rents at the 5,800-unit complex to market rate if they left Mitchell-Lama, since the development was completed in 1974.
Albany Bars Rent Rise for Thousands [NY Times]
Starrett City’s Owners Look to Leave Mitchell-Lama [Brownstoner]
Photo by West Side Neighborhood Alliance.
Thank you Benson for being a constant voice of reason among the sea of limousine liberals
very bad things happen when economic profit is someone’s only goal.
NOP;
I will answer your questions below, just so as to not seem evasive. Let me state up front, however, that your questions demonstrate that you miss the fundamental point.
Whatever the arguments for or against the subsidies you mention (mortgage interest deductions, public schools and property tax exemptions for churches, there is a huge difference between them and Mitchell Lama housing: THEY ARE OPEN TO ALL. The Mitchell Lama program is nothing more than a CLOSED lottery system that is funded by the taxpayer. Moreover, this closed lottery system promotes all the negative values associated with such systems. It rewards the liar, the insider, the union crony, the corrupt (you don’t believe that people pay bribes to move up on the list?). They promote a sense of entitlement. Aunt “Mimi” feels that she is “entitled” to her second 3BR apartment when she visits NY from Florida. After all, she’s “entitled” because she was once “poor”.
As to your specific questions:
-mortgage interest deduction: I don’t support it. It should be eliminated. It is nothing more than a handout, as you state.
-property tax exemption for churches. I support it. We have a separation church and state in this country: let’s keep it that way. I don’t want government using its power of the tax to tilt the playing field for particular churches.
-public funding of education. I support it (though I would prefer vouchers). Education is the TRUE way to promote social mobility, as opposed to these rigged lotteries known as Mitchell-Lama and the projects.
Benson
“Every one of you greed-crazed landlords (not the nice landlords, you are exempt) who post on this site will have done to you exactly what you are gloating over doing to other people with less money than you have. Your Wall Street investments will be wiped out, your properties will become worthless…”
The market will crash, but only for properties owned by bad people?
rotflmao
i am rich
Montrose:
“Do we ask brownstone owners who bought thirty years ago for less than $100K, to sell, because it’s “not fair” that they got (now)cheap houses? Them’s the breaks.”
And if your M-L goes market legally, like Starrett City, them’s the breaks, too. I guess you don’t have a problem with that.
Benson’s right — once you back off (or can’t come up with) a moral argument and fall back on, “It’s legal, therefore, it is acceptable,” you have just justified all the things you usually deplore here in open-market housing.
Sickening to see the ugliness behind those prettied-up brownstone facades. Mark my words: Every one of you greed-crazed landlords (not the nice landlords, you are exempt) who post on this site will have done to you exactly what you are gloating over doing to other people with less money than you have. Your Wall Street investments will be wiped out, your properties will become worthless, you will not be able to pay your mortgages, and you will have no renters left to exploit. That’s what all this rage is really about: It’s the slowly dawning awareness that you cannot keep going up into the economic stratosphere forever. Power like the kind you have accumulated can flip in an instant. My friends: You are going down.
its pretty lucky for anyone who bought before 2000.
NYC is filled with lucky people who play their cards at the right time.
just because you didnt doesnt mean you have to ruin the party. Everyone always bitches about bitter renters. Talk about bitter buyers and renters who complain too much.
people live in rent stab apartments.
deal with it
Benson:
Then you’ll agree that mortgage deductions should end; churches and universities should pay full property taxes; and people with grown children should stop paying taxes for parents with school-age kids — hand outs, all.
NOP
Benson, that is such a misrepresentation of my position.
However, if you want to talk about those who should be rewarded for creativity, thrift, and initiative, why do the residents of M-L housing not qualify? Your contention is that they are somehow now getting over on the system, and cheating the rest of us, by the fact that they fairly, legally qualified for these apartments forty years ago, and they have the nerve, the absolute nerve, to stay in those apartments to this day. Who wouldn’t? It’s not human nature to give up your home, unless one chooses to buy elsewhere, or move out of the city. Those people qualified for the housing. Why should they be villified for taking advantage of a resource that was established to aid the middle class in housing? That’s what it is for.
The people bitching on this board are not those who care about fair and equitable housing in this city, they are mostly those who are too young, or didn’t live here at the time, maybe didn’t know about it, or just missed the boat to get into a Mitchell-Lama program, or a rent stablilized apartment. That is the luck of the draw that I mean. Let’s not make too much out of a simple phrase.
Why do we expect others to do what we would never do, and would consider crazy? If someone told you you had to move out of your home that you legally obtained, and lived in most of your adult life, because you were holding up the line for other people, you’d laugh your head off, or reach for the shotgun.
M-L is not projects, not a lottery, not a gift, not free, and not languishing in the hands of the unworthy or the unmotivated, or irresponsible. The people in these apartments, again, many now OWNED by them, have been paying for them, and continue to pay for them. Lucky? Maybe. Unworthy? Not.
This is not Boston, NYC’s housing needs are much larger and more complex than Boston’s. Let’s see some documentation on the new fairness of Boston’s housing, especially as it affects the middleclass and poor. Then we can discuss the merits, and whether or not it would work here. Just telling me it’s so don’t make it true.