ENDORSEMENTS
VALLONE EARNS TENANT SUPPORTMet Council Endorses Vallone, Schumer, Gentile
City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, who is running for governor against George Pataki, earned the endorsement of Met Council by declaring his support for preserving rent and eviction regulations, enhancing code enforcement, and continuing laws protecting children from lead poisoning. New York City tenants, still reeling from the terrible damage inflicted in June 1997 by Gov. Pataki and his Republican allies in Albany, face the expiration of the rent and evictions laws in the city in 2000 and in the state in 2003.
While some casual observers think tenants should be grateful for having narrowly avoided the disaster of complete expiration of the rent laws last year, readers of these pages are aware that the 1997 Rent Regulation Reform Act imposed steep rent increases on every vacant apartment, speeded up the deregulation of entire neighborhoods where market rents reach the $2,000/month level, further undermined enforcement of rent laws by the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal, and, perhaps worst of all, exposed tens of thousands of families annually to homelessness by unconstitutionally depriving Housing Court judges of their power to halt evictions when tenants cannot immediately come up with the entire amount of back rent claimed by their landlord. Combined with the Clinton-Pataki-Giuliani assault on welfare and public assistance, the “rent deposit” law could double the number of families evicted every year, already averaging 25,000 each year. (Fortunately, this law remains in a state of limbo while its constitutional defects are challenged in court—see related article on page 5.)
Despite the huge gains for landlords, it would be foolish to forget that the real-estate industry is insatiable in its desire to end rent and eviction protections entirely, which is precisely why it was so important that Peter Vallone clarify his position in support of renewing the laws with no further concessions before Met Council would even consider endorsing him.
Peter Vallone’s commitment to preserve the laws protecting children from the horror of lead-paint poisoning is also significant. Vallone had never publicly made this commitment, which affects the health of thousands of 30,000 New York City children who suffer learning disabilities, personality, and in many cases permanent brain damage after exposure to lead dust or eating even a single chip of lead paint. The city’s Local Law 1 requires that owners safely remove exposed lead paint from apartments with children, and a state Supreme Court justice has threatened to jail members of the Giuliani administration for continued contempt of his orders to enforce this law. Private landlords are obliged to perform expensive lead-abatement work, so both the real-estate industry and the Giuliani administration are trying to kill the cure and not the disease by repealing Local Law 1. Peter Vallone’s willingness to resist this is most welcome.
At press time, Vallone seems very far behind George Pataki, but that is not a reason to sit this race out. Vallone has taken major steps towards recognizing the justice and the political wisdom of supporting affordable housing and tenants’ rights, while Pataki has demonstrated that his 1995 call for the end of rent and eviction protections was not an empty threat.
Nevertheless, our board’s endorsement of Vallone was not unanimous. Until last year, he was almost always allied with real-estate interests on City Council votes. His chair of the Council’s Housing and Buildings Committee, Archie Spigner, is not friendly to tenants’ concerns, and his former chief of staff, Joe Strasburg, went on to become president of the landlords’ lobby, the Rent Stabilization Association. (Strasburg is supporting Pataki.) And earlier this year, Vallone sided with developers seeking to destroy the Clinton neighborhood in midtown Manhattan by allowing Broadway theatres to sell air rights to developers seeking to building huge luxury buildings. If Peter Vallone wants to reap the full benefit of his conversion to pro-tenant positions, he must learn how to say no to such projects.
Despite these considerations, Met Council enthusiastically urges its members and friends to work to elect Peter Vallone by voting for him on the Working Families Party line on November 3. The Working Families Party is a new party, organized by progressive trade unionists and community groups, seeking to get permanent ballot status in New York State by garnering 50,000 votes in November.
Chuck Schumer for U.S. Senator
It appears that this year New York voters may finally get a chance to retire Senator Alfonse D’Amato, who has been a disgrace to the office. From his corrupt personal finances to his turning the Department of Housing and Urban Development into an exclusive club for contributors and relatives, from his sponsoring legislation to deny federal housing aid to any locality with rent regulations to his shameless attack on the teachers’ union this year, Al D’Amato has been a right-wing ideologue. Democrat Chuck Schumer offers a clear alternative, defending social programs and the positive role government can and must play in meeting needs the market never will. Met Council endorses Chuck Schumer for U.S. Senator.
Vincent Gentile for State Senate
Last year’s rent war taught us the value of having friends in Albany. Although the Republican majority in the State Senate was a major factor in weakening the rent laws, they might not have been renewed at all if that majority were not so slim.
Two years ago, Democrat Vincent Gentile upset an incumbent Republican state senator who was a friend of the real-estate industry. Now they are running Chris Mega, who once held this Bay Ridge-Bensonhurst seat, and he is getting plenty of RSA money, trying to take it back. Met Council urges tenants in this Brooklyn district to do all they can to re-elect Vincent Gentile.