Council Sets Feb. 25 Hearing on Renewing Rent Laws
by Kenny Schaeffer

New York City Council hearings on the renewal of rent and eviction protections for one million households will begin at 10 a.m. on Friday, February 25 at City Hall. Public testimony is expected to be militant and prolonged, demanding that the Council attack the housing crisis on many fronts at the same time.

Renewal of rent-stabilization and rent-control laws, with no further weakening amendments, will only preserve a badly wounded system of rent regulations—which at best is an incomplete response to New York City’s acute housing crisis. Rent regulation only slows down the loss of affordable housing, and the system has been so weakened already that the crisis will continue to deepen even if the laws are renewed “as is.” The laws have been hamstrung by steady legislative dilution and administrative under-enforcement.

Council Speaker Peter Vallone is sponsoring a measure, Intro. 669, which will renew the existing laws. It would also close one important loophole, by requiring owners seeking to take advantage of the $2,000 vacancy decontrol created by Vallone in 1994 to inform the next tenant how the rent lawfully reached the $2,000 figure. Intro. 669 is expected to create some deterrent to the practice of reaching $2,000 through unlawful increases, including fraudulent claims of “improvements.” [See story page 2.]

However, it only addresses one of many gaping wounds in the housing crisis, and many tenant advocates in the Council declined to co-sponsor the Vallone bill when asked, including Margarita Lopez of the Lower East Side/Loisaida. “This bill does not go far enough to address the housing crisis in a meaningful way, so I refused to endorse it,” she explained.

Tenants are supporting a number of other measures which merit immediate action, but so far, Council leadership has not agreed to allow any of them on the floor in time for formal consideration at the Feb. 25 hearing. Met Council announced a broad program late last year [see sidebar] to attack the housing crisis in several critical areas simultaneously. Councilmember Steve DiBrienza (D-Brooklyn) has agreed to sponsor a number of measures as a “companion bill” to Speaker Vallone’s renewal bill. They are expected to draw wide support.

Two weeks before the Feb. 25 hearing, the legislative language of this bill was still being drafted. It appeared that the Speaker’s office had purposefully acted to delay its introduction so it could not come up for formal consideration in time for the hearing.

One of the issues holding it up was a division among Council “experts” on whether the Council had the power to alter the formula for the increases paid by New York’s approximately 60,000 rent-controlled tenants, who are mostly elderly and very low income and have been hit with annual 7-1/2% increases for almost 30 years. Speaker Vallone has been supportive in an ongoing legal battle to recalculate the formula for rent-control increases, which is based on two different ways to determine a building’s “assessed value.” A lawsuit to decide this issue is pending in court.

The Speaker’s staff have not raised any objection to repeal of the city Rent Guidelines Board’s “poor tax,” which, unlike rent-control increases, is not specifically authorized by law. According to testimony presented by the Legal Aid Society at the RGB last year, that “low-rent surcharge” contributed to the loss of one-third of all apartments renting for under $500 between 1993 and 1996, the last year for which figures are available under the triennial Housing and Vacancy Survey. The 1999 survey will be released before the Council vote next month.

The Council must act to renew the rent-stabilization law before it expires on March 31, but there is no similar time constraint for any other, affirmative provisions. Nevertheless, it is important that tenant testimony on Feb. 25 show an overwhelming consensus that simply renewing the laws “as is” would be irresponsible, as it would allow the depletion of the remaining affordable housing stock to continue to accelerate. Without closing some of the gaping loopholes that are causing the affordable-housing supply to shrink; without eviction-prevention programs, such as emergency rent grants and increased legal services, to keep more families in their homes and avoid steep vacancy increases; without meaningful code enforcement and responsible management of city-owned stock, renewing the laws “as is” is little more than “locking the barn door after the horse is stolen,” declares Jenny Laurie, Met Council’s executive director. Tenants can sign up at the door to testify at the February 25th hearing of the City Council Housing and Buildings Committee. “It is important that every member of the City Council, and every candidate running for office in 2000, 2001, and 2002, hear the unified voice of the tenant movement, and all who support affordable housing, on February 25th and beyond,” states Laurie.

Tenants should also call Met Council at (212) 693-0553 if you need more information, if you want materials to hand out in your neighborhood, or if you want to attend a meeting with your Councilmember.

Another hearing will be held on March 6, before the full Council vote later in March. To confirm dates and times, call the Council at (212) 788-7210.