DEFEND YOUR RIGHT TO LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY!!

[June 2006] The Rent Guidelines Board is a nine-member committee that is appointed entirely by the mayor and which includes two tenant representatives, two landlord representatives, and five "public" members who serve essentially at the discretion of the mayor. An ominous sign this year [2006] was that the only public member who had been sympathetic to tenant issues in recent years, Martin Zelnick, was dismissed by Mayor Bloomberg in April. This raises tenant fears that the board will approve a rent increase considerably higher than the 5.5% hike it approved last year, and why the last public hearing on May 8 was particularly raucous, with angry tenants disrupting the meeting for long periods of time.

The reason tenants are so angry and end up disrupting Rent Guidelines Board hearings is that every time that damned board meets and goes through the motions of deliberating, they always ratchet up apartment rents--this time, a possible 8.5% increase is on the table--and a certain number of moderate income tenants are driven out of the city.

Because there is a $2,000 per month rent threshold, beyond which a tenant is no longer protected by rent regulations which control the amount of rent that can be charged by a landlord, an 8.5% increase would push tenants whose rents are approximately $1,850 per month over $2,000 per month and out of regulation protection. Those tenants would then get a letter saying that their rent is now $2,500, or $3,000 per month, or whatever the landlord wants to charge them. If they cannot pay the new rent, they are out of luck.

This loophole was introduced by the New York State legislature in the 1980s when $2,000 a month was considered a hefty rent. Although the $2,000 per month threshold is referred to as "luxury decontrol," rents of $1,500 per month or higher nowadays are not for luxury apartments, but are more commonly charged for ordinary units down to the level of studios. Luxury decontrol is on the upper-income end of the scale. On the lower-income end, there are people who just won't be able to pay another 8.5%, or whatever the increase turns out to be, even if their rents are below $1,000 per month, and they will get evicted. This happens to thousands of renters every year. 

Luxury decontrol is another of the mechanisms that the legislature has put into effect to sabotage the rent regulation system, which is controlled at the state level, even though New York City's Rent Guidelines Board has a say over the size of permissible rent hikes. The laws are phrased as if they are only temporary, and every certain number of years, they have to be renewed by both houses of the state legislature.

There is also a provision called the Urstadt law, stating that New York City cannot enact municipal rent regulations that are more restrictive on property owners than those coming from Albany. In 1997, the Republican majority in the upper house of the New York State legislature made an effort to
allow rent regulations to expire, and blackmailed the cowardly Democrats into accepting a drastic weakening of the laws, including allowing landlords to raise the legal rent by 20% every time an apartment becomes vacant. Not only did this "vacancy allowance" practically nullify rent regulation for the next generation of New Yorkers, but it works together with luxury decontrol to undermine rent regulations, because each time an apartment changes hands, the rent ratchets up 20% closer to the $2,000 threshold, after which there are no more rent regulations and the landlord can demand whatever he wants.

The New York State Legislature voted in 2003 to extend rent laws until 2011. Because of luxury decontrol, vacancy allowances and evictions, by 2011, there will be far fewer tenants protected by rent regulations than there were in 2003. As a result, the political pressure to preserve the remaining rent protections will be much less. This convenient self-destruct system was rigged by the oligopoly of Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate interests (read "FIRE" -- think of arson), who tell the state and city governments what to do. With the deck so stacked against us, we regular people who live in NYC can only raise our voices and push back.

Come to the latest Rent Guidelines Board "Public Session" meeting, where the next pre-decided rent increase will be deliberated without any comments from the public. Even If people make noise and draw attention to the issue, the new rent increase may be a done deal, but at least we won't go along quietly.

--A. Kronstadt

When: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 – 9:30pm
Where: The Great Hall at Cooper Union, 7 East Seventh Street (corner of Third Ave.)

[Read the outcome of the June 26, 2007 Rent Guidelines Board meeting by clicking this link]