Posted by Yet another free market tenant on August 16, 2000 at 00:47:13:
In Reply to: Housing isn't soap posted by A Tenant on August 15, 2000 at 23:48:15:
No one owes you an apartment. YOU are free to live - or not live - wherever you choose. But luxury in the middle of Manhattan does not come for free. If your going to play politics to get something for less than its worth, at least admit that the cumulative effect of this is that there are less apartments available overall.
It is interesting to note that the moron who posted the message below is apparently involved in a down and out Chelsea building. Does he seek to purchase the building (or another distressed property) and repair it, making a nicer building for himself and others ? No, the loser just wants to complain and hopes to "force" someone else to fix it up. While he pays no rent, of course. Why on earth has he been living there all these years if the place is such a dump ? Although his drivel is hardly worth repeating, I'm responding to some of his specific statements below (becuase they're the same things we've been hearing from idiots like him for 50 years of rent regulation).
:
: Well, I wish we all could get a 20 or 30 or 50 percent raise at work, like the rent increases that owners of unregulated apartments are getting these days!
-->Actually, if you had a brain and worked in a field like computer programming, you would be.
: Housing isn't a commodity, like rice or soap or computers, with true price competition. It's a contract for a vital service, in which the landlord has a considerable advantage. And it's all vastly more complicated that those supply-and-demand diagrams from Economics 101.
-->Basic foodstuffs and soap are at least of much as a "vital service" as housing is, and they're not regulated. And why does the landlord have a considerable advantage, given that he owns a building in a fixed place, whereas a tenant is free to live anywhere ?
: Regulated apartments aren't "taken" from the market any more than unregulated ones.
-->If its not on the market, it IS "taken" ... just try to get a rent controlled apartment yourself.
:More than anything, it's simple geography; land is extremely scarce, and there's high demand for commercial space as well.
-->True. And no one forced you to live in Manhattan where land it at its scarcest per inhabitant. Why not move to someplace like Idaho ?
:But if a developer can build, the sky's the limit for rents, and the dwindling number of regulated apartments is no barrier at all.
-->If a developer can build (actually, NYC is a difficult city to build in, due to corruption and a convuluted permit process, but that's another message)the sky may be the limit for building height, but not for the rent he charges. Tenants actually set the rent by what they are willing to pay. Too high and people will just stay in Jersey.
: Passing on apartments to relatives, illegal sublets, holding onto apartments for a pied-a-terre -- these don't cause the shortage of affordable housing. They're a symptom of it.
--> So you think keeping an apartment for years so that no one else can have it doesn't cause a shortage, its just a "symptom". With your irrational talk sounds like you have a few "symptoms" of brain damage.
:If there were a sensible system of rent regulation that applied to ALL apartments, tenants wouldn't feel the need to hold on so fiercely to the regulated apartments that remain.
-->Thank god there is no regulation of ALL apartments -- no one would ever be able to move !
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