| With New York State's rent laws due to expire in six months, Republicans in Albany are preparing to unleash an arsenal of proposals to weaken tenant protections. "The people are not being benefited under the current law. We have to change it," says Bob Farley, counsel to the State Senate Housing Committee. He argues that eliminating rent regula-tions would actually bring lower rents and says "it would be irresponsible" for the state not to consider letting them expire. Rent regulations--both rent control and rent stabilization--affecting over 2 million New Yorkers, expire June 15. If they are not renewed, rent-controlled tenants--about 100,000 households, mainly elderly--could either be arbitrari-ly evicted or face monster rent increases at the end of that month. Tenants in the city's million rent-stabilized apartments would face the same fate at the end of their leases. But renewal must be passed by both houses of the state Legislature, includ-ing the Republican-dominated State Senate, and signed by Governor George Pataki. The Rent Stabilization |
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Associa-tion, city landlords' main lobbying
group, has given thousands of dollars to key
politicians. On Dec. 5, State Senate Majority
Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer), a prime
recipient of RSA largesse, promised landlords
assembled for the group's annual meeting that he
would "liberate the city" and abolish rent
controls.
Tenant activists are focusing on the Legislature, where Assembly Housing Committee chair Vito Lopez (D-Brook-lyn) says the battle will be "the financial strength of landlord interests versus the political mobilization of tenants." "The more tenants are organized, the better it is," says Ben Powell, housing issues staffer for State Sen. Catherine Abate (D-Manhattan). Despite Pataki's past opposition to rent regulations, some observers say the political consequences of completely eliminating them would be too much for him. "It's not politically possible," says Powell. "It would be too cruel, impracti-cal." The specter of 82-year-old widows being tossed out in the snow when their rent gets jacked up from $250 to $1,100 |
might spook the governor's chances of getting
re-elected in 1998.
But even if the Republicans in Al-bany accede to renewing the rent laws, there are a host of changes they could push through to eviscerate them. These include vacancy decontrol, in which apartments become deregulated when the tenant moves out; decontrolling buildings with 20 or fewer apartments; lowering the threshold for high-rent decontrol from $2,000 a month to $1,000; eliminating rent controls on apartments occupied by tenants above a certain income; eliminating rent controls for all except the elderly; and requiring rent-striking tenants to deposit their rent with the courts. Farley, counsel to the Senate com-mittee chaired by Putnam County Re-publican Vincent Leibell, says repealing the laws completely wouldn't be a bad idea. Deregulation lowered prices in the airline industry, he says. If rent controls were eliminated, he contends, it would spark a building boom and the in-creased housing supply would bring lower rents. How this would work in the real world is hard to understand. Land prices, mortgage rates, and construction costs--the biggest expenses in building new housing-- |
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wouldn't go down if rent
regulations were eliminated. "How do you know
they wouldn't?" Farley re-sponds. And new
housing in New York City is already exempt from
rent con-trols unless the owner takes a tax
break. He answers that developers are scared off
by the possibility that their buildings might
come under regulation someday.
Farley adds that he would "absolute-ly" endorse a means test for upper- middle-class and rich tenants. "We shouldn't have subsidized housing for millionaires," he says, adding that there are thousands of rich tenants paying ar-tificially low rents. He disputes the most recent federal figures, a 1993 survey that found that of the more than 200,000 under-$400 rent-stabilized apartments in the city, only about 200--less than one-tenth of 1 percent--were rented by people making over $100,000 a year. "I don't want to get into a statis-tical war with you," he says. He also rejects as "pejorative" the idea that vacancy decontrol and the like constitute "weakening" tenant protec-tions: "The purpose of our committee is to ensure affordable quality housing stock." |
Assemblymember Vito Lopez says the loss of
rent regulations would be "a catastrophe"--and
that pressuring the New York City Council to
renew the local rent laws intact before they
expire March 31 is a critical first step for
ten-ants.
"If the City Council waters down rent protections, it will be very hard for us in Albany," says the Housing Committee chair. "If we go to Albany with rent regulation as it is, it's a powerful mandate. The Governor has no cover if the City Council renews rent controls." In the political jockeying over the issue, the five Republican State Sena-tors from New York City could tip the balance. One, Roy Goodman of Man-hattan, considers preserving rent regula-tions intact "a priority," says staffer Rebecca Russell. The other four, Guy Velella of the Bronx, John Marchi of Staten Island, and Frank Padavan and Serphin Maltese of Queens, all come from conservative neighborhoods with fewer renters than the rest of the city and were all re-elected without Demo-cratic opposition.
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Another possibility, says Ben Powell, is
that the Assembly will pass a "one- house bill"
making major-capital- im-provement rent
increases temporary and strengthening
anti-harassment laws, then use it as a
negotiating tool. Rent regula-tions might also
be part of the horse-trading likely when the
Republicans try to cut welfare and fund building
more prisons upstate, he says.
Unfortunately for tenants, the fate of rent regulations may come down to last- minute, closed-door negotiations among Governor Pataki, Majority Leader Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Silver told the New York Times in November that he was willing to be flexible on the issue--a word many ten-ants could interpret as code for "sell-out." "I'm not knee-jerk on anything," the Speaker said. Neither Bruno nor Silver returned phone calls from this reporter. |
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