NYC Housing Rent Control Battle, Round: 99,999,999,999

Having a body which objectively keeps up with neighbor rents sounds onerous and tedious.

Yes, the RE agencies currently track this (as does the Furman ctr), but the impact of the dada is not presently regulatory.

That's when you get the potential for politics and fraud.

Re: having a tax on leases, I wonder how much we currently spent on enforcing our present rent stabilization and rent controll regulations.

Housing court, DHCR, HPD, etc can't be cheap.

I'm sure REBNY could create an impact statement with represented the impact on it's members as well.

PS the rent control board meets tomorrow for their preliminary mtg of the yr

I disagree: Some people rent out of convenience.

...but I agree that most people who are currently LEGALLY in rent controlled and stabilized apartments would be unable to buy a place if they lost their apartment.

It is unknowable, but I'd be interested in knowing where the current beneficiaries of rent regulations spend the difference in $ between market vs and their rate.

The report in the OP argues that the population is poor, and that they are not "enjoying a great standard of life" at the expense of their landlords and fellow co-op owners ....it argues that such regulations are merely allowing the recipients to "get by and continue to live in the city".

Ah, entitlements.

Regardless of whether we have a way to pay for them, we always love receiving them and passing them out to others

At the moment, this may be the only entitlement that is not growing.

The rule that states "once rent is $2000 a month, the unit is deregulated" has had the impact of reducing the number of units.

At the current rate of deregulation, this entitlement/benefit could be largely a thing of the past in another 5-10 years.

I don't see the defenders of the policies as being able to stop the trend.

(Note: The creation of affordable housing is separate discussion, and seems to have widespread support ....largely because the programs are geared toward a specific income group, as opposed to "merely" who has lived in their apartment forever.

State Lawmakers Argue Over Rent Laws as Deadline Looms

By THOMAS KAPLAN 6/14/11 NYT

ALBANY — Rent regulations that limit how much landlords can charge for more than one million apartments in New York City and its suburbs are set to expire at the end of Wednesday, and lawmakers on Tuesday were still debating whether to simply renew them or to make changes sought by tenant advocates.

State Senators John L. Sampson, left, and Adriano Espaillat say rent regulations must be strengthened, not just extended.

Democrats in the Legislature, along with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the tenant advocates, are pushing to extend and strengthen the regulations in an effort to slow the pace at which rent-stabilized apartments are converted into market-rate homes. But Republicans, who hold a slim majority in the State Senate, have shown no interest in bolstering rent regulations, which landlords and developers often criticize as being unfair to property owners.

Among lawmakers, there was little doubt that a continuation of the regulations would be approved by the scheduled end of the legislative session on Monday. But recent days have brought frenetic lobbying on both sides, as the details of the extension hang in the balance.

“I just want to put it succinctly: an extension is not enough,” the Senate Democratic leader, John L. Sampson of Brooklyn, said Tuesday while standing amid a throng of tenant advocates. “We cannot vote for anything that does not strengthen the rent regulation laws, and we need everyone to understand that.”

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat and former federal housing secretary, held a strategy session with lawmakers on Tuesday in which he promised to pressure Senate Republicans to agree to something more than a simple extension of the current rent laws. But it appeared as if rent regulations would be among the final issues to be dealt with before lawmakers left Albany.

“I think it has been a lot of posturing,” said Michael McKee, the treasurer of the Tenants Political Action Committee, an advocacy group. He added: “I brought nine days’ worth of socks and underwear. We’re going to be here until the end.”

Competing bills in the Senate and the Assembly, which is controlled by the Democrats, reflect serious partisan differences over how to extend the rent laws.

The Assembly proposal, approved in April, would eliminate vacancy decontrol, which allows landlords to deregulate apartments when they become vacant and their rent passes $2,000. It would also tighten the criteria for so-called luxury decontrol, which allows landlords to deregulate apartments when tenants’ income exceeds $175,000 for two consecutive years and the rent is at least $2,000. The Assembly bill would change the luxury decontrol limits to $300,000 in income and $3,000 in rent.

Some representatives of the real-estate industry have expressed openness to raising the dollar limits for deregulating apartments, though not by nearly as much as the Assembly is seeking, according to people involved in the negotiations. But landlords have refused to consider ending vacancy decontrol altogether, these people said.

The debate has intensified this week. Tenant advocates demonstrated at the Capitol on Monday, and two Democrats — Senator Bill Perkins of Manhattan and Assemblyman José Rivera of the Bronx — were among a group arrested for civil disobedience for sitting in front of the entrance to Mr. Cuomo’s office.

On Tuesday, though, tenant advocates tried to allay concern about the impending expiration of the rent laws. They said renters would not be harmed if the laws were to expire for a few days, as was the case during similar negotiations in 1997, because residents would still be protected for the duration of their leases. Tenants whose leases expire in the next few days should already have been offered renewals under the current rent regulations.

Senate Republicans have proposed a temporary extension of the current laws through Friday. The last time rent laws were set to expire, in 2003, the Senate approved legislation to extend but weaken the laws and then immediately adjourned for the year. Assembly Democrats had little choice but to approve the same legislation, lest they lose rent protections altogether.

Lawmakers accused Republicans of trying the same move this year. “This is an end-around to try to skip town,” said Senator Adriano Espaillat of Manhattan, the senior Democrat on the Senate housing committee. “We’ve seen it before. We’re not going to be fooled by it. We know what it is. It’s a cheap trick.”

Senate Republicans denied stalling as a form of gamesmanship but said they did not wish to vote on rent regulations until the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, agreed to hold a vote on capping local property taxes.

“If the speaker refuses to act on a consensus bill, he could jeopardize affordable housing for more than a million people, including some of his own constituents,” said Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Long Island Republican.

A possible compromise could tie a rent-stabilization bill to other real-estate legislation being sought by developers and landlords, including the extension of a tax break for certain new residential buildings, known as the 421-a program. In addition, the real estate industry is seeking a so-called legislative solution to resolve a 2009 court ruling that said the owners of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complexes in Manhattan had improperly deregulated thousands of apartments while taking special tax benefits from the city.

Democratic lawmakers said they were open to extending the tax credit for developers as part of an agreement on rent regulations, but not to approving legislation relating to the Stuyvesant/Cooper court ruling. “For me and for many others, that is something that would be completely unacceptable,” said Assemblyman Brian P. Kavanagh, a Manhattan Democrat.

We now return to critiques of the current system. This one is from the right...

source: http://www.city-journal.org/2011/eon0621hh.html

Howard Husock

Three Bedrooms, One Tenant

New York confronts underoccupancy in subsidized housing.

21 June 2011

It’s a familiar scenario for those whose children have grown up and left home: a house or apartment, once the right size for a family of four or five, becomes more than a middle-aged parent or parents need. The cost, whether it’s in property taxes or rent, doesn’t seem worth it any more. And so a household makes the hard decision to downsize, perhaps moving to another neighborhood or even another part of the country to save money. This process doesn’t just help families adapt to changing life circumstances; it keeps cities dynamic, as the aging make way for ambitious newcomers.

Things are dramatically different, however, in public housing, especially in New York. In Gotham’s projects, either tenants pay a percentage of their income in rent, or else their apartments have fixed rent ceilings. Property taxes and utility bills may rise for others, but not for them. So it is that one person may inhabit a three-bedroom apartment with no incentive to leave. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) estimates that 40,000 units in its 180,000-unit system (the nation’s largest) are “underoccupied,” with one or more empty bedrooms. Meanwhile, 144,000 families, mostly single parents with young kids, languish on the waiting list for an apartment.

NYCHA recently announced that it will start taking steps toward moving some of the overhoused out of their apartments. “It’s a constrained resource,” says NYCHA chair John Rhea. “Resources should be scaled to the need.” It’s Rhea’s hope to make more of these apartments available to those who truly need them, such as “the hard-working immigrant with a family of four, struggling to make ends meet.” Rhea deserves applause for confronting the issue, but NYCHA has instead been attacked in some quarters. TAKE THAT, GRANDMA: CITY HOUSING AUTHORITY TARGETING TENANTS WITH MORE SPACE THAN THEY NEED, declared the Daily News.

It will be a major management challenge to “create mobility for people,” as Rhea delicately puts it. Rhea, who brings a sterling business-management background to his post, must deal with the fact that NYCHA has limited leverage over those thousands who prefer to stay put. It’s understandable why some don’t wish to leave; after all, they won’t save any money in rent by moving to a smaller place. So NYCHA is forced to consider either building more one-bedroom units for overhoused residents—a difficult prospect for an agency already facing a steep structural budget deficit—or dangling a housing voucher to allow them to move to one of the city’s 100,000-plus voucher-paid units (for which there is also a long waiting list).

Rhea concedes that NYCHA will ultimately need to wield some sort of “stick” to force tenants to move, which is bound to set off a public backlash. He promises “to be very transparent, to provide appropriate notice,” and other steps designed to soften the blow. But coming up with a way to do it won’t be easy. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rules currently prohibit the most obvious solution: paying tenants to relocate. “We are not going to put money in their pocket,” says Rhea, and he has no cash to spare even if the rules permitted it. If HUD could be convinced to allow NYCHA to make such relocation payments, however, one way to raise the needed funds would be to start selling off some of the many high-value properties that NYCHA owns in lower Manhattan and on the Brooklyn waterfront. Such sales would net hundreds of millions, which could be used for both relocation expenses and the huge maintenance backlog that plagues the aging public-housing system. Adopting a time limit on new tenancies, similar to the five-year limit on public cash assistance, is another approach that could work.

The city’s addiction to “affordable housing” extends beyond its projects. New York’s 1 million–plus rent-stabilized apartments are also plagued by underoccupancy, and for the same reason: tenants have no incentive to make normal life-cycle transitions. Generations of public officials cannot seem to accept this truth. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, for instance, has found that 64 percent of the city’s 2.1 million rental apartments enjoy protection from market forces—but like so many before him, he sees this as a good thing. He concludes that “rent regulations keep the price tag of living in New York within reach for millions of working men and women. That’s good for the city and the city’s economy.”

DiNapoli has things exactly backward. So-called affordable housing leads to inefficient use, to shortages, and to waiting lists. Building more and more subsidized units is not the answer. It is far better to free tenants from the false benefits of a dependency that shelters them from choice and change. For any city that hopes to remain vigorous, housing must be free to change hands. Only that way can we make room for those, rich and poor, who will build the city anew.

Howard Husock, a contributing editor of City Journal, is the Manhattan Institute’s vice president for policy research and the author of America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake.

It is that time of year again. Rent stabilization hearings 2013!

http://therealdeal.com/blog/2013/05/01/citys-rent-stabilized-tenants-will-see-greater-spike-than-last-year/

Both sides are complaining, so it must be a good ruling.

The 2013 results are in!

Mayoral candidate grandstanding: check

Compromise between opposing forces, resulting in something neither extreme likes: check

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/06/21/board_sets_annual_rent_increases_higher_than_last_years.php#more

See you next year, everyone!