LIZ ON NEW YORK'S RENT REGS

Message from Liz . . .

New York City has a housing crisis.  It has become nearly impossible for low- and moderate-income people in our City to find decent housing that they can afford.  But, while there is a desperate need to build new affordable housing units, the current fiscal predicaments of our State make this nearly impossible in the immediate future.  Thus, it is more important than ever to preserve the existing stock of affordable housing, an option which is also much cheaper than building new housing units.   

While not perfect, New York State's rent regulation system is by far our largest and most important affordable housing program.  It enables more than 2.5 million people, the vast majority of whom are moderate- or low-income families, to live in safe and affordable housing.  However, the laws governing the more than one-million rent stabilized and rent controlled apartments in New York are set to expire on June 15, 2011. 

These laws are an essential factor in our efforts to keep hardworking residents in New York and to ensure the maintenance of healthy and stable communities.  Rent regulation helps to counteract the destabilizing effects of the acute housing shortages and abnormal market conditions in New York City, where the vacancy rate for rental housing is less than three percent, and the surrounding suburbs, where the vacancy rate remains below five percent.  If we truly want to maintain the economic vitality and diversity of our State, we must do all we can to ensure an effective rent protection system. 

While we must renew the rent laws before they expire on June 15th, 2011, simply extending the laws in their current form is inadequate.  The laws have been severely weakened over the past two decades, making it easier for landlords to remove housing from rent regulation and increase rents.  As a result of the loopholes created in the rent regulation system, at least 300,000 rent regulated apartments have been lost between 1994 and 2010.  These loopholes, particularly vacancy decontrol, provide significant economic incentives for landlords to pay highly-speculative prices for rent regulated properties, harass tenants, and fraudulently increase rents.  Unless the regulations governing rent and eviction protections are strengthened this year, hundreds of thousands of additional affordable units are likely to be lost during the next decade.

Last month legislation passed the Assembly (A.2674/S.2783), which offers a roadmap for improving our rent regulation system.  The provisions of this legislation are as follows:

·        Extending Rent Regulation to June 15, 2016;

·        Repealing the Urstadt law and restoring local control over rent regulation to localities, including New York City;

·        Repealing Vacancy Decontrol;

·        Increasing the income and rent thresholds for "luxury decontrol" to $300,000 and $3,000 (indexed for inflation) respectively.

·        Making Major Capital Improvement (MCI) increases temporary;

·        Tightening the rules for personal-use evictions by landlords;

·        Reducing the vacancy bonus from 20% to 10% and establishes a limit of one vacancy increase per calendar year;

·        Permitting localities to bring former section 8 buildings and former Mitchell Lama buildings under rent stabilization;

·        Reforming the Individual Apartment Improvements (AIA) program;

·        Prohibiting the ending of a preferential rent until the unit becomes vacant;

·        Prohibiting hardship appeals for greater rent increases until an owner has owned a property for six years.

The fight now turns to the Senate, and Governor Cuomo's support will be critical in building pressure on the Republican Majority to bring the bill to the floor and pass it.  I was heartened by Governor Cuomo's extremely strong statement last month, indicating that he will be pushing for substantial strengthening of the rent laws. 

I have been working closely with advocates to build pressure for passage sooner rather than later.  I had argued that rent law renewal should have been included in the budget, but since that did not happen all of us who care about affordable housing in New York City have to redouble our efforts to move this legislation forward.  While Governor Cuomo has indicated that he supports improving the rent regulation system, it is still critical to make sure he hears loud and clear how important the strengthening of the rent regulations laws is to New York State. 

The Governor can be reached online at:

http://www.governor.ny.gov/contact/GovernorContactForm.php ,

or you can send a letter to Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, Executive Chamber, State Capitol, Albany, NY 12224.

I have written to the Governor and had numerous conversations with him stressing how critical this fight is, and have been heartened by his response.  I will continue to work with advocates to keep the pressure on all parties to pass stronger rent laws.