We hear a lot about "compromise" in the debate on renewing the rent-control laws. The Legislature is supposed to be some august deliberative body impartially weighing the best interests of competing classes of New Yorkers, and we’re supposed to consent to vacancy decontrol or rent-deposit laws like well-behaved children accepting equal-sized pieces of birthday cake.

That line of reasoning is absurd. What is actually going on is class war. A small group of wealthy and connected landlords has been able to buy enough politicians to threaten the homes of 2.7 million New Yorkers so that they can make themselves even richer.

New Yorkers already pay too much rent. Most of the city’s rent-regulated tenants make less than $30,000 a year. They already pay an average of almost one-third of their income for rent. People who make $15,000, $25,000, or $35,000 a year simply cannot afford to pay $750, $1,100, or $1,500 a month. We need lower rents, not more loopholes for landlords to charge more!

Governor Pataki and Senator Alfonse D’Amato hint that they are perhaps more reasonable than Joseph Bruno. They say they don’t necessarily have to kill rent regulations instantly. They make vague promises about protecting the elderly, the poor, and the disabled. They are lying. The "compromises" they suggest would merely allow tenant protections to bleed to death slowly.

• "Luxury decontrol." Supporters of lowering the "luxury decontrol" threshold argue that people who can afford to pay $1,200 or $1,500 a month are too rich to need or deserve protections. Anyone priced a two-bedroom apartment in a middle-class neighborhood lately? The tenants in a $1,200 apartment could be two people making $20,000 each and spending 36 percent of their income on rent. And why should middle-class tenants pay more so that the rich can get even richer?

• Vacancy decontrol. Vacancy decontrol supporters claim that it would not hurt tenants who are already in place. In the first place, it would make it impossible for anyone who couldn’t pay luxury rates to move—be they a 19-year-old moving out of their parents’ house for the first time, a couple breaking up or getting together, or a battered woman trying to escape her husband. In the second place, it would give landlords a powerful incentive to harass tenants. We are dealing with the kind of people—like Rent Stabilization Association vice-chair Richard Kalikow—who put crackhouses in buildings with rent-controlled elderly and families with small children.

Vacancy decontrol was a disaster when multimillionaire Nelson Rockefeller imposed it on New York in 1971. Rents rose by 50 percent in the decontrolled apartments, and hundreds of buildings were abandoned, decimating the city’s supply of affordable housing.

• Rent deposits. One of the landlord lobby’s main goals is a law that would prevent tenants sued for alleged nonpayment from contesting their eviction unless they deposit with the court the amount the owner claims is due. This is a good idea—if you want to double the number of evictions to 50,000 a year, and constrict what little impact Housing Court already has on protecting tenants’ rights, such as forcing landlords to make repairs.

Most of the 25,000 families evicted each year owe less than three months’ rent. Easing evictions will drive tens of thousands more out of their homes, with no affordable replacement housing available, and give landlords huge windfall profits on the vacancies. (Would they plow those profits back into campaign contributions?)

Rent regulation’s opponents want to avoid going through the democratic process. If only State Senators from the areas affected by the rent laws could vote, they would be renewed overwhelmingly. If every State Senator who took money from the real-estate lobby was barred from voting because of a conflict of interest, the laws would be renewed unanimously—but the State Senate probably couldn’t muster a quorum.

The agenda they call "moderate" and "reasonable" is to force anyone with a job to pay luxury rents and have no protections from being arbitrarily evicted when their leases expire. Once protections for middle and working-class tenants are eliminated, the elderly, poor and disabled will be on thin ice. $174,000 Bruno will do everything in his power to avoid debate on the merits of rent control, to block a vote on renewing the laws unchanged. They want a "compromise" brokered behind closed doors that they can force on us as "the best we can get."

As any parent knows, when one child wants it all and the other wants half, you don’t give the one who wants it all 75% and call it a fair compromise. You give them half each and tell the one who wants it all not to be so selfish.

New York landlords already have far more than their fair share.

No compromise.