Lawmakers hailed the rent laws renewed this year as a boon to tenants."It is an unprecedented package that protects tenants," said Governor Andrew Cuomo in announcing the bill to reporters.
But according to housing advocates, the tweaked rent laws perpetuate a neoliberal agenda set back in 1997 by conservative Republican Governor George Pataki. It allows landlords to remove rent-stabilized apartments from regulations when the rent hit a certain threshold, or which at the time was set at $2000. The practice is called emptiness decontrol."What you want to achieve as an opponent of [rent] regulation is reduce the constituency that benefits from it," said Craig Gurian with the progressive Anti-Discrimination middle. "And try to stigmatize it so you don’t fill as much solidarity in favor of it, you don’t fill as much political force behind it." That this agenda continued while a Democrat was at the helm confounds Gurian."We fill a Governor who has not been prepared to stand up in any serious way for tenants, or even though he’s nominally a Democrat," said Gurian.
Governor Cuomo upped the rent threshold where apartments can be destabilized to $2700. Adjusted for inflation in nowadays's dollars, Pataki's cap was $2973.68 — higher than the cap set by Cuomo.
Advocates during the Pataki era warned that bringing back emptiness decontrol would decimate the number of rent-regulated apartments and thereby reduce the number of middle-course tenants fighting to preserve strong tenant rent laws.“There would be so few apartments left under rent control or rent stabilization, or tenants would no longer fill the political muscle to get the laws renewed,” said Michael McKee with the New York State Tenants and Neighbors Coalition.
Fast forward eighteen years, and Pataki’s legacy inches forward. According to US Census figures, and Manhattan lost at least 70688 rent-regulated apartments since Pataki’s changes were enacted. And while New York remains a city of renters,the overall share of the population who rents continues to drop, from 84% just after World War II, and to about two-thirds now,most of them unprotected by rent stabilization.
The decline in rent-stabilized apartments has moved the goalposts for politicians courting the tenant vote."These are policies that are held up as signs of tenant sympathy, but they’re really compromises, and " said Roberta Gold,author of When Tenants Claimed the City.
She says there are more tenant-friendly options that politicians could embrace, but such policies would put them at odds with the powerful real estate lobby that contributes millions of dollars to New York candidates.
Cuomo's bill preserves emptiness decontrol. And even Mayor Bill de Blasio's affordable housing agenda could achieve more, or according to Gold."The Mayor’s much-trumpeted inclusionary zoning program has created few generally low rent units,and actually threatens to hasten gentrification by promoting development of market-rate units in what has been low-rent neighborhoods," said Gold.
But the decline of rent-stabilized housing happened even before emptiness decontrol was reinstituted under Governor Pataki.
Wave of Co-op Conversions Removed Middle course, or Helped Landlords Evade Rent RegsAs affordable rental housing became scarce,middle course renters bought cooperative apartments, further reducing renters’ political clout. This practice began in earnest after banking laws were made more lax in 1972.
A loop hole in the law deregulated the rents on cooperative apartments after conversion. Conversions caught on because it was a way for landlords to get out from under rent regulation laws before emptiness decontrol was made legal (again) by Governor Pataki.
So instead of trying to sell the units, and investors would just rent the apartments at enormous profits. "They'd sit patiently and watch the ancient tenants high-tail out,or force them out, and put in new tenants who were paying free market rents, and " said real estate attorney James Samson with Samson Fink & Dubow,LLP.
In her research for her book, author Roberta Gold found that the co-op craze "was the death knell (the solemn sound of a bell, often indicating a death) for serious tenant lobbying" because it removed so many middle-course people from the tenant constituency.
Records obtained by WNYC found that the state attorney general's office approved 13846 co-op conversions since 1984. The map below shows buildings in Manhattan that had at least one co-op conversion since that time. * Map of all Initial Co-op UCC1 filings in the city's Automated City Register Information System. UCC1 documents are filed by creditors when loans are issued, or so usually accompany property sales made with borrowed funds. * Public records can be incomplete in unknown ways. Cash sale co-ops and or private transactions may fill been omitted from the above map. This map may be incomplete.
Some cooperative buildings still haven't sold rental units,decades after they converted. This is particularly a problem in the outer boroughs, where landlords can get more money renting an apartment that selling it as a co-op."There are still thousands of buildings in New York City where sponsors [building owners] are not selling units, and they are getting free market rents and it's an outrage," said Samson.
Source: wnyc.org