City Hall Rally Targets Giuliani
by Steven Wishnia

With the Rent Guidelines Board suggesting that it might let landlords raise rents by up to 12% this year, tenants kicked off the campaign to stop it at City Hall on May 4.

About 100 tenants, advocates and elected officials braved the festive-fascist atmosphere outside Rudy Giuliani’s citadel (everyone had to pass through metal detectors inside white circus tents for the rally, called only a few days before. The mayor had indicated that he’d probably tell the RGB to give landlords slightly less than the 12% increase floated by board chair Ed Hochman, but still the largest rent hike stabilized tenants have had in several years.

“We’re here today because New Yorkers cannot afford higher rents,” Met Council’s Kenny Schaeffer declared in opening the rally. In fact, added Councilmember Bill Perkins (D-Manhattan), “We’re looking for a way to roll the rents back.”

In short, quick speeches, speaker after speaker blamed the Mayor.

“Whatever we’ve heard from the Rent Guidelines Board is from his mouth,” said Councilmember Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan). She accused Giuliani of pulling a “bait-and-switch” scam. Brooklyn Democrat Stephen DiBrienza said the Mayor is “perpetrating a fraud.”

Brooklyn Councilmember Mike Nelson, a target of tenant ire after his vote on the 1999 lead-paint law, also showed up. “The Mayor is a big fan of double zeroes for increases for unions,” he told the crowd. “He should be a big fan of double zeroes for rent increases.”

Michael McKee of Tenants and Neighbors noted that Giuliani had finally overtly acknowledged that he dictates the size of increases to the RGB, long an ill-kept and often-denied secret.

Others spoke of deeper issues. Liz Krueger of the Community Food Resource Center said the city’s housing crisis won’t be solved until everyone has a living wage. Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless noted the 23,000 people sleeping on the city’s streets. And Alex Staber of Brooklyn, a Shakespeare-quoting senior-citizen activist, quipped that “there are five million millionaires in America, and a lot of them are New York City landlords.”

With the city witnessing “the gradual destruction of affordable housing,” concluded Manhattan Democrat Stanley Michels, “there’s no excuse for huge increases.”

Organizers were pleased with the turnout, noting that the rally was put together in less than five days. And if the RGB were to pass large preliminary increases, vowed Kenny Schaeffer, “We’ll be back tenfold.”