Editorial: What We Won, What We Lost

The battle to renew New York’s rent and eviction protections is over. However, the struggle to defend tenants’ rights and preserve decent, affordable housing in New York faces greater challenges than ever before.

Tenants should be proud of much of what they accomplished this past year, most notably the rejuvenation of a vibrant, militant, multicultural and diverse tenants’ rights movement in New York, achieving the respect and recognition of those who have traditionally not taken seriously our importance as a political force in the metropolitan area, and sending a loud and clear message to politicians across the spectrum that if you stand against us we will evict you from office. Nonetheless, the "Rent Regulation Reform Act of 1997," authored by Governor George Elmer Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and signed into law by Pataki on June 20, is rife with attacks on tenants’ rights, middle-income and poor tenants and overall is a weakening of the rent regulatory system in New York.

At a time of ever-rising conservatism, with New York’s landlords having purchased three of the most powerful men in the state, Pataki, Bruno and Senator Alfonse D’Amato, New York’s tenants succeeded in saving their right to lease renewals, evictions only for cause, and a basic structure of rent regulations. This is significant and should be extolled. However, these positive elements are severely diminished by numerous incredibly deleterious sections of the new law, most significantly:

• The denial of the federal and state constitutional guarantees of due process of law, by requiring that tenants pay for the right to have a trial in Housing Court, commonly referred to as mandatory rent deposits;

• Violating the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of the government and the judiciary by prohibiting judges from stopping evictions, even temporarily, regardless of the merit of the tenants’ claims, unless the tenant has already paid the judgment to the landlord or the court;

• Attacking affordable housing for all by granting landlords vacancy allowances of 20 percent and sometimes more for a two-year lease;

• Launching an onslaught on the ability of New York’s poorest residents to find affordable housing, by letting landlords charge an extra $100 per month on all vacant apartments formerly renting for less than $300;

• Blatantly enriching the wealthiest real-estate developers, such us the outlaw Harry Macklowe, by including a sweetheart provision in the new law weakening the anti-demolition protections for rent-regulated tenants; and

• Unjustly enriching landlords and causing the further loss of apartments from the rent and eviction-protection system by overturning our City Council victory this year, which had closed loopholes in the high-rent-decontrol provisions of the rent laws.

These provisions of the new law are attacks on the foundation of the rent-regulation ystem in New York. Together, they will result in many more affordable units disappearing from the housing market at a time when our economy is being driven by low-wage jobs without basic benefits. The new over-the-top vacancy-allowance scheme will result in landlords painting a bulls-eye on the backs of tenants in an effort to rent-gouge all the way to the bank.

The unconstitutional attack on the ability of all tenants--poor, middle-income and rich--to effectively withhold rent from landlords in order to seek repairs pursuant to the warranty of habitability will result in a further deterioration of the housing stock and, even more frighteningly, in unjust, unnecessary, unwarrant-ed, and illegal evictions. And this all comes at a time when we have a Mayor and city administration that wants nothing more than to be out of the business of enforcing sound housing standards.

When the deals are cut in Albany, it is always the rights of the poor and lower economic groups that are pitted against and traded off for those of richer, more influential interests. Many middle-class New Yorkers have been lied to and told that the results in Albany are a tremendous victory for tenants.

While the preservation of the rent-regulation system is significant, the attack on its core and guts does not well serve the poor or the middle class of our region. As rents skyrocket under this new vacancy-bonus scheme, housing for all but the rich will become scarcer and scarcer. As the right to a fair trial and hearing in an already vile Housing Court is diminished even more, one can only have fear for the thousands more, especially children, who will end up homeless and in the shelters and streets.

Measured against former New York Governor and President Roosevelt’s words, the Rent Regulation Reform Act of 1997 fails the test of progress. Only the continued growth, strength and vigilance of the tenants’ rights movement reborn in 1997 will ever bring our society close to getting a passing grade. Met Council on Housing is committed to continue helping all of you lead that fight.