Rent-Law Renewal Campaign Switches Into High Gear
by Kenny SchaefferRent and eviction protections—vital to the economic survival of 1,000,000 families in New York, the middle class as well as the poor—expire on March 31, 2000 and must be renewed by the City Council.
Met Council’s political-action committee has drafted our political agenda for the coming year, as the Council begins deliberations leading to the crucial vote this March.
In 1994, the Council struck a deadly blow at rent regulation by deregulating vacant apartments when they reach $2,000 a month rent, which has caused dislocation and rent inflation in neighborhoods all across the city. In 1997, on the other hand, it renewed the laws without further weakening them, and actually sharply limited the $2,000 vacancy decontrol—a gain that was given away that June by the state legislature, when it devastated rent controls and tenant protections with the Rent Regulation Reform Act.
It is impossible to predict whether Council Speaker Peter Vallone will favor renewing or even strengthening the rent laws, or will try to force further concessions to landlords. But the real-estate industry, led by the Real Estate Board of New York, is raising huge sums of cash for Vallone’s expected mayoral run in 2001, and he has already rewarded them by ramming the “Lead Poisoning Act of 1999” through the Council. It would be very foolish to ignore the likelihood that he will try to reward them further by slashing away at rent regulations.
Met Council’s Program
In addition to renewing the rent-control and rent-stabilization laws with no weakening amendments, Met Council calls for the Council to enact the following:
1. Home Rule: Call for the repeal of the undemocratic Urstadt Law. This law is a relic of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s 1971-1974 vacancy decontrol, which deregulated 400,000 affordable units in three years and set off the housing and homeless crisis we have seen ever since. While general vacancy decontrol was rescinded in 1974, the Urstadt Law remains in effect.
Urstadt is named after Charles Urstadt, a major real-estate player who was Rockefeller’s housing commissioner and is Gov. Pataki’s close advisor. The law says the New York City government cannot impose more “stringent” rent regulations on housing that is already covered by regulations without the state housing commissioner’s approval, and cannot extend regulations to housing that is not already covered.
Other areas of the state have “home rule” to respond to local issues and emergencies as local government sees fit. New York City must have access to the one weapon effective against its housing-affordability crisis: rent regulations. The Council must throw off the presumption that the city is a colony of Albany, and demand that the state legislature repeal the Urstadt Law.
2. End vacancy increases and rescind $2,000 vacancy decontrol. Vacancy increases needlessly inflate rents and give owners incentives to displace existing tenants. And under both rent control and rent stabilization, owners are already more than compensated for all costs, including the brief interruption in income and minor maintenance between tenancies. In 1998 and 1999, both years when landlords’ costs rose by 0.1% or less, the city Rent Guidelines Board gave owners 2% increases for one-year renewals on rent-stabilized apartments, and 4% for two-year renewals.
On top of this, Mayor Giuliani’s RGB has repeatedly imposed a “poor tax,” or low-rent supplement, which is now an extra $15 a month for apartments renting below $500. Under the federal standard that paying more than 30% of income for rent constitutes hardship, only families earning at least $20,000 a year can afford to pay even $500, and some 400,000 families in rent-stabilized apartments make less than that. Yet the supply of apartments below $500 a month has been reduced from 400,000 in 1993 to under 200,000 now.
Housing at all levels is becoming ever scarcer, and even the New York Times reported last year that the middle class cannot find housing in New York City.
If the Council did enact legislation eliminating vacancy increases, it would probably be considered a “more stringent” regulation of housing under the Urstadt Law, and would require the approval of the state housing commissioner. If approval is withheld, that will add fuel to the movement to repeal the Urstadt Law.
For similar reasons, the Council should end vacancy deregulation of apartments renting for $2,000 a month. This is touted as something that only affects the rich, but under the federal 30% guideline, apartments renting for $1,500-$2,000 are affordable to families with incomes between $60,000 and $80,000. It makes no sense to destroy the supply of apartments affordable to this group.
Additionally, “luxury decontrol” (including high-income decontrol) is part of a divide-and-conquer strategy to break the natural alliance between the poor and the middle class in support of rent regulations. Even if middle-class people could afford the extortionate rents of “the market,” deregulating high-rent apartments hurts everyone by causing increased pressures on cheaper apartments, and by removing the political motivation for the middle class to fight to preserve rent regulations.
Like abolishing vacancy increases, eliminating high-rent deregulation would also be restricted by the Urstadt Law.
3. Increase code enforcement to preserve existing housing and remedy hazardous conditions that endanger thousands of families. New York City’s enforcement of its housing-maintenance code remains a cruel joke under the Giuliani “law and order” administration. There are 3 million violations on record with the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, for conditions such as no heat or hot water, rat infestation, chronic ceiling leaks and collapses, lead paint and defective windows. The city has no plan to collect the hundreds of millions of dollars in fines that could be assessed against the owners of these buildings, or to force them to correct these hazardous conditions.
The number of housing inspectors in the field, once over 700, is now barely one-third of that. And HPD’s litigation bureau is woefully understaffed and does not pursue delinquent owners to the full extent of the law. The Council must double the number of inspectors, enforcement attorneys, and support staff to enforce compliance with the law and collect the fines that have accrued.
4. Take buildings away from delinquent owners. The city must step up implementation of its new “early warning system” to identify distressed buildings (based on tax arrears, housing and building-code violations, and emergency-repair liens), take title to these buildings and—if unwilling to run them properly itself—transfer them to nonprofit and community-based organizations with full tenant participation and guarantees of continued affordability.
5. Get the city off the “10 worst landlords” list. It should be universally unacceptable for the city to continue to run the buildings it has taken title to in such a deplorable manner. While buildings are in the city’s hands, the city must make sufficient investment to restore essential services. Instead, it neglects the buildings until it’s ready to transfer them, often to a speculator, after renovating them at public expense.
6. Increase the city’s contribution to developing affordable housing through renovation and new construction.