Harlem elected officials have failed residents for decades. A great example of this is former Assembly Member Keith Wright who served as the Housing chair held a public hearing in regards to the lack of transparency @ HPD. To date no report was ever written, nothing happened with the testimony and same old same old issue. Calls to Inez Dickens the new Assembly Member to address housing issues or even host a discussion on why there is so much tenant abuse, mismanagement of building in her district have been ignored.
Calls made to Public Advocates office are not responded to at all. How will Tish James seek hire office when her current staff fail to answer housing concerns?
I am sorry, what perversion of laws give anyone all the benefits of ownership with none of the obligations, liabilities and expenses? What gives one group of individuals virtual monopoly rights over 20% of the available rental housing in New York City? I came to New York in 1983 and never got to enjoy these rents. Had to pay full fare all the way through. I currently pay $2300.00 for a two bedroom apartment in the Bronx and don't have half the "rights" these tenants do who pay half as much. Do I sound resentful? I am! The housing crisis is not going to be solved by clinging to the past. We need to *build* more! And we are not going to build more if governments dictate how much builders and owners can charge for their product.
1
It seems many market-rate tenants think that if someone else's rent goes up, theirs will go down. The world they are living in is not the same one landlords live in.
These stories are so sad and unfortunate, the way in which greed motivates. But if anything, the system of rent control and rent stabilization creates an incentive for it. By what right should a woman be able to live in an apartment for 50 years as though it is hers in absolute ownership? If anything, the system enabled her to spend 50 years not thinking or knowing about the greater world around her. It enabled her to live small and become vulnerable as a result. Not being able to speak English after all these years? Not thinking about the possibility of living elsewhere? Believing there are no Latinos in Pennsylvania?
2
How best to allocate a scarce & valuable commodity in one of the prime commercial centers of the world? Who & what gives someone the right to stay price-controlled rental residence? What about newcomers to the city? Why shouldn't they have the same rights to low cost housing as someone has been staying in a rent controlled apartment for decades or even generations?
As others pointed out, why would developers want to build more housing to meet demand if they can't charge enough to cover costs and make a profit? Why can't we let market prices fluctuate based on supply and demand? If there is enough supply then prices can stabilize and even come down. Why aren't the city and state governments incentivizing more supply to be built?
Why isn't the NY Times investigating the co-op system for apartments? 80% of Manhattan apartments are co-ops. Did you know that many co-ops rules do not allow "owners" to rent out their own apartments beyond one year leases or have other rules to make it virtually impossible to provide supply to meet demand?
What about investigating the fact that co-ops are actually vehicles for legalized housing discrimination? Co-op boards are not legally required to tell buyers why they were rejected, even if you have met all financial requirements. This has resulted in co-ops being at a discount to comparable condominiums, which allow owners much more freedom to rent out their properties over multiple years without prohibitive fees and rules.
2
My dad retired and left because he could no longer afford to live here. We have left for the suburbs. We will also leave when we retire. I fail to understand why others do not move if they cannot afford to live here.
3
Scuzzy people but then that's the way housing in New York has always been although the landlords used to be local people who usually lived in the building at least in Brooklyn.
I am going to criticize Ms. Carranza. How do you live in a country almost your entire life and at 87 you can't speak English? She made herself a prisoner, unable to go elsewhere.
3
NY Times - now that you've given over so much print to the tenants' experience and perceptions, how about presenting the landlords' side of the story - after all, there is always at least one other side. No doubt everything written in this story has happened to some extent, so have a lot of tenants figured out how to work the system to their own advantage depriving landlords of their livelihoods. A zero percent rent increase together with a 24% increase in NYC property taxes leaves the landlords without funds to pay for maintenance, repairs and basics. When a single person earning $60,000 is occupying a 3 bedroom apartment that she inherited from her mother - paying $650 a month rent - that is denying housing to people who need it. When a tenant refuses to pay rent claiming peeling pain in the bathroom and then for months and months while she lives rent-free refuses to let the building management repair and repaint - that is abuse. The tenant lives free, the landlord loses the income, the paint may not even need repair but no one knows for sure except the tenant who has figured out how to game the system. The city should, by all means, crack down on the bad guys - but there are bad guys on both sides here. Get your reporters talking to some landlords for a change - some good landlords. They'll tell you how difficult it is to provide decent housing with current taxes and water bills. If you don't believe it, look at what's happened to NYCHA - even the city can't do it.
5
Reading these articles are truly heartbreaking. Especially elderly tenants being pushed out so that the landlords can charge market rate rents .
If you think about though , just like everything in life has a cost so to guaranteeing renters a "stable rent rate for life" and insulation from future market price fluctuations , also has a cost .
This cost must be borne by someone . Either the tenant , all of us tax payers in the form of subsidies , or the landlord .
Currently we have chosen to impose this cost on landlords .
We do not allow landlords to charge market rates for an asset that they invest in and own .
The only time this would possibly be justified is if the cap is in effect BEFORE the investors built the structure so the investors can fairly assess the risk versus reward .
Otherwise its plain thievery of private property . Heads I win tails you lose .
Imagine you invest and risk your capital to explore for oil or a new medicine and after you dodged loses and brought a valuable commodity to market society suddenly says no no you cannot charge the market price you counted on .
I am very supportive of tenants but we should start thinking about all of us supporting the tenants versus forcibly imposing the cost onto investors who
take risks for all of us that we may not want take ourselves .
7
$300 a month for a 2 bedroom in Manhattan?! Speaks only Spanish after over 60 years in the US? I agree that rent control is too important to the middle class living in Manhattan, but it seems unreal that the rent would be that low in 2018. Does rent control mean it can never increase, even over decades?! That's a problem.
11
It's astonishing that so many people can read a piece like this and respod with a snide remark about free market capitalism, declaring that people who can't pay top dollar have no business living in an expensive city.
Here's a thought: if investment companies can't afford to let tenants pay less than open market value, they have no business buying buildings full of rent-stabilized apartments. At what point does the onus fall on the people sinking their money into property that's legally protected from this kind of "flipping?" At what point can we criticize ultra-wealthy companies for suing innocent people with "holdover" evictions – putting them on the "tenant blacklist" for a fabricated lease violation, thereby making it impossible for them to ever rent again?
That's not capitalism. It's crime.
3
Corporate sociopaths like Mr. Orbach have more money than they could ever need or even use (except to make more money). So couldn't NYC at least raise property taxes on corporate-owned residential buildings to compensate for the human cost of their abusive rents? In European cities like Paris the government partly subsidizes rents so that working people who live on their earned wages can still afford to live there. The sanitized upscale shopping mall that is Manhattan will not become an interesting place again unless the non-investing class is permitted to live there.
1
Where did this idea that "anyone should be able to live in any neighborhood they want regardless of whether or not they can afford to live there" come from? I would really like a place in Malibu, but I can't afford it, so I don't live there.
8
I live in a mismanaged building owned by Harlem Congregation - http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/judge-easy-ceo-stole-204g-harlem-n... How this organization still exists is amazing to all tenants of HCCI housing? Not a peep from Mayors office on ruling or any of the elected officials how HCCI mismanages their buildings. Oh, we don't want to piss of the clergy do we?
1
We should have an issue when our local chamber of commerce partner with Air bnb - https://www.airbnb.com/meetups/j8d3jwxbe-airbnb-brooklyn-chamber-of-comm... and https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2018/03/30/nyc-african-american... When Chamber of Commerce have no interest in the housing issues of the residents that live in their area, and won't tell you why they accept the hostage money for their chamber's, it's a problem. When someone ask the long time Harlem Chamber of Commerce president why he accepted donation/membership money from airbnb he refused to answer the question.
1
>
"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
Adam Smith
2
I really don't understand why New York, New York
takes such pride in itself.
These people are being treated as non-citizens.
Shame on you - New York,
Shame on You !
3
What I find amazing is that Ms. Carranza has lived in the United States since 1956 and still only speaks Spanish. The part about landlords making false claims to evict tenants is old news. When those people bought the buildings they knew there were people with rent control living in them. It is just the business model.
3
You know who you will never find at housing court? A tenant who pays the rent on time, is quiet and polite, and keeps his or her apartment clean.
And in two-family houses where the owner lives in one unit, that tenant is often the beneficiary of rents that can be far below the market because the owner cherishes that person, and "imprisons" him or her with that cheap rent.
8
Nice investigative article; my question, however is what are the so-called liberal elected officials, like De Blasio and others doing about this? Where are they? If one looks at Ms Carranza's apartment it is obvious it needs lots of work to be done by the landlord (like removal of mold), where are the city inspectors, housing advocates. If the court system tolerated this for this long, then all of them are as corrupt and ought to be criminally held liable. Sickening to read this.
2
Rent control here in LA is for buildings that were built before 1979. In exchange for having (some) tenants that pay low rents (it's capped at 3% increase a year), the landlords get to have incredibly low property taxes. There's an apartment building next to ours with two dozen units that pays a measly $7k/year in property taxes. Yep, you read that right. Meanwhile, the market rate apartments in that building go for $3k/month. So please, no more sob stories for the poor landlords. They're biting at the bit to get their hands on the rent-controlled units, most of which they've completely neglected for years, if not decades. They're making plenty of money. It's just never enough...
This is what happens when capitalism meets Wallstreet. Only the 1percent can afford to live there. Capitalism does not work. We need a new system that is fair to everyone. Give me government intervention any day to force prices low .
2
Remember how expensive and how hard it was to get a taxicab when it rained and when you wanted to go to Brooklyn or if you were black, in the very, very well regulated taxi medallion system?
Now, you hit a button on your phone and your ride arrives, and they treat you like a VIP, because they want that 5-star rating. It is called Uber. It is called free market.
Same exact situation. The hugely regulated rental market in New York will forever underserve tenants, until it's freed up of regulation.
Turn over all the inventory over to AirBnB or Uber or Google or Amazon, let them charge market rates with tenants and landlords offering/bidding for apartments in the open market. Problem instantly solved.
No landlord wants to evict a tenant that is paying market rate rents on time.
All the shenanigans are there because the regulations make no sense.
6
Thanks for this confirmation of what I experienced in my minuscule, rent stabilized East Village apartment for 29 years, from when I moved into the barely 250-sq. ft. dark studio until last year after accepting a buyout that wasn't enough but that I had to take or I'd likely live in this brutal temporary tomb until my perm one. But your article is too little too late, NY Times. Where were you for the last three decades? More than 10 years ago, I was hauled into Manhattan Housing Court along with a ton of others back then on a bogus holdover charge. In my case, the complaint was that I didn't actually live in my little hovel, an absurdity. I was lucky that the legal "charity" firm MFY stood with me and helped me hang onto my little piece of earth. Without them, I would have had to borrow thousands of dollars to pay legal fees to defend against the false charges. My case, like so many other meritless cases that just stopped happening, as you point out, was discontinued when my greedy landlord and his management company realized they coudn't disprove the truth of my residency. Perhaps you are prompted to cover this story now because many of your young readers can hardly afford even an apt. share in the city on the crummy wages they are paid. Or maybe even your own reporters' conditions have kind of cajoled you into looking at the fait accompli of the end of livable, reasonably priced NYC housing. Whatever the reason, your reporting is now more about cinders than fire.
3
What is truly obnoxious about landlords trying to evict tenants who pay less than fair market value rent is that the landlords knew what they were getting into when the bought the buildings, and they paid a lower price for these building because of this situation. They can't have it both ways.
What I would do to the landlords who engage in these tactics is confiscate the buildings and award them to the municipality should they unjustifiably harass a tenant.
2
It's heartbreaking. The heart and soul of NYC has always been it's creative community and boundless diversity...of ethnicity, age, income..Billionaire Bankers and far-flung Sheiks dined and danced with actors, dancers, writers and models in tiny amazing hotspots..supported their work in galleries, theaters and music venues in the Village, Soho, Tribeca, then Brooklyn.They had families and built lives, enriched by boundless multicultural flavor. When that'is replaced by globe hopping superrich,buying up $5-10 million dollar condos they spend a month or two in, you destroy the vibrancy of this city and are left with a cold, boring heartless concrete jungle undistinguishable from any other city...full of homeless people who have built this city and are now told there's no place for them anymore. You cannibalize the essence of this place, and destroy thousands of lives when they are most vulnerable.
8
I keep hoping that, with the national spotlight on Trump and Kushner, those investigations will spill over in general to an expose of all NYC real estate families and entities, and what's really happening in this city with land ownership.
3
Evictions are a necessary remedy to churn the engine of capitalism.
4
I have no problem helping people. That's what public housing is for. I also detest ruthless landlords. Create an efficient court system to deal with them.
But, like some of my fellow New Yorkers have mentioned, rent control/stabilization is a terrible system rife with unfairness. It places draconian rules on random private properties. It also creates a near permanent class of "lottery winners" that others are forced to subsidize. Remember the income limit for these apartments is $200,000 per year.
I don't know Neri Carranza. But, I know a number of people with rent stabilized apartments. All have comfortable six-figure incomes and make more money than I do. Some have saved enough to buy apartments, where they live, and sublet their rent stabilized ones. Some own vacation homes out of state.
You bet I'm resentful. I've struggled for years to save money to try to buy a home. Recently, I concluded that I will probably never be able to afford one here. I'm wondering what my life would be like if someone was subsidizing my housing the last 10 - 15 years and I could have saved an extra $150,000 - $200,0000 for a down payment. What if I got really lucky and "won the lottery" in a prime Manhattan neighborhood. In addition to saving a ton of money, I could have enjoyed an extra 2 hours a day with my family and friends instead of standing on the subway. Bill De Blasio says he wants to make NYC the "fairest city." Where's the fairness in all this?
16
Have you ever wondered why so many of us have left? My parents took us out in 1964 for the same reasons you've stated. But you have to compromise somewhere. My mother's family had lived there since 1627 and it was considered home but faced with crummy housing, fighting with the latest Italian import landlord and his falsified rent receipts and being unable to find a place to live for 10 people we left. I went back when I was 19. I was there 6 months before I was drafted. When I returned 4 years later I couldn't stay. I was too used to a quiet home and neighborhood, good schools and respectful neighbors. Moving out was only good for me. I own three homes all paid for one a beach front. I'm the landlord and I collect the rent and only the market tells me what I can charge.
NYC is fun and exciting but many of us gladly give it up for the reasons listed.
The $200,000 "income limit" only applies to apartments renting over $2500/mo.
If the rent is less, say $500/mo, you can make a million bucks a year and keep it.
The rent laws are absolutely insane because vote pandering Democrats wrote them.
2
I refer to NY city as an population exploding mega city that has lost its charm. Don't get me wrong, I love NY city but just for a brief visit. I don't ever see myself as residing in NY city for extended periods of time. I pity the renters in NY with the demand for affordable housing in NY at an all time high for low income families and individuals and the supply being inadequate. It is time NewYorkers who have opportunities and willingness to migrate out of the mega cities into the vast land in between the mega cities where jobs are plentiful at this time. It was okay that when people first immigrated and settled in NY city for convenience and availability of a jobs but now that NY id a place that millionaires and billionaires thrive, if you are one of those, if not it is time to think of greener pastures with breath of fresh air, less traffic, less taxes, across our great country
4
@Girish Kotwal: About 8 million of us like it here just fine, thanks! Say hello to the "greener pastures" for us, please.
6
@L from NYC. To each their own. You may be in a comfortable situation with your own home or a landlord who is not trying to evict you. Good for you but for those who are unsheltered and among those hit hard by the eviction machine churning through NY city it is not a decent stress free life for those renters affected adversely in NY. If you read this article that either things change or those affected consider other options. I know renters who lived in and loved NY have moved out of NY and are thriving in the Midwest and elsewhere and have never looked back. I am afraid the situation is going to get worse for renters in NY. I remember the African American gentleman running for office with a big moustache who few years ago kept repeating the sentence "the rent is too high" The plight of a significant number of renters in NY is bad and this great article is not fake news but drawing attention to the misery of our fellow Americans in NY.
1
I'll say hello to my greener bank account too.
I worked 48 yrs. in corporate as an adm. asst. in NYC, Atlanta, San Francisco, London. I retired 10 yrs. ago next week with no 401K or pension. I live solely on my SS check. I am lucky to have a nice one bedroom apt. in West Harlem. I am the only European-American caucasion in the entire bldg. Men/women who have lived in the US 50, 60, 70 yrs. speak no English. Only Spanish. They end up in trouble because they can't navigate legal issues related to their apts. It isn't always the landlord's fault. Like the lady in this story, they see the notices under the door or in their post office box and ignore them. Why? They can't read English and throw them away. Let's have another story from the landlord's perspective and from people like me who shoulder the burden of holding up the bldg. because tenants don't care.
21
Apparently you don't read English that well either. There is no suggestion in the article that Ms. Carranza ever ignored court papers. You are making up facts to fit your desired narrative.
5
NY Times should look into how HPD decides on their developers, property managers and how they manage their buildings. What is the vetting process they use to decide on who manages their buildings? What is the screening process and metrics of how they decide who gets to be a property manager for HPD?
1
But some housing laws in NYC are a little crazy. Squatters' rights? Manage to stay in someone's apartment for 30 days and you can stay there forever. I get that they want to prevent homelessness but how about NOT offering a place in the system for everyone who ventures into New York? That would help.
9
that is not true, 30 days entitles you to due process, but not to stay in any dwelling if that were the case, Ms. Caranza would still be in her apartment wouldn't she?
Why not simply give deserving poor people rent vouchers from the government directly instead of imposing a hidden tax on landlords which creates this distorted mess of a system?
5
Once again, the battle between those who have money, power, lawyers and who use the legal system in ways that destroy those who lack the above three. Working class people who have lived for years in their rent controlled homes are being punished for being working class, their homes given, once taken and remodeled, given to those who can afford the new rents. The original tenants' lives are destroyed and for what? Money. This is the land that Trump is from and that follows the view that the working classes of NYC need to move out and make way for the more privilege class until they too are run out 50 years from now by the same corporate machine.
4
A good companion topic to read would be about the 421 tax abatements to luxury developers.
Study Details Cost of Tax Break for Luxury Manhattan Condo
One57 developer got $66 million in 421-a tax abatements in return for $5.9 million in affordable housing.
Trump tower got one a tax break too!
8
An excellent place to start reforms would be in getting rid of all such programs and clawing back what you can from greedy developers. There is no reason to subsidize luxury housing WHATSOEVER.
1
For all you who support getting rid of rent stabilization I hope you'll be happy with your streets lined with homeless people. Because that's what will happen.
Just walk on Broadway on the Upper West Side and see the scores of them. I'ts horrifying, but you can retreat to your 5G month condos and pray NYPD can protect you. Is that the kind of society you want?
8
That is just wrong economics. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that we just went ahead and simply gave every rent controlled / stabilized tenant full ownership rights to their apartment in perpetuity. The population of NYC is increasing at a clip of about 60,000 a year. What do you suppose we do with them? Is it right that we treat new arrivals to the city today worse than new arrivals to the city of yesteryear? We need to stop trying so hard at picking winners and losers and let the natural law of supply and demand take hold. When prices increase beyond where the market clears supply will increase or demand will decrease to bring prices back down.
8
'First come, first served' is not an outrageously unfair rule.
3
@Bocheball: most of those people would leave and many would NEVER move to New York City, if they KNEW In advance that they would not get subsidized housing or were not guaranteed shelter by the City. The city is exacerbating the problems by letting new arrivals (literally just off the bus) get into city-subsidized housing for the "homeless" (mostly hotels and motels, at very high daily costs to the taxpayers).
2
There's some good reporting here, but withholding until very late in the article that the victim paid just $300 per month for an apartment in Manhattan is pretty manipulative. Had that fact been placed higher in the story, I suspect readers would think more critically about this issue.
Should a decent society help provide people with housing? Yes. Should that responsibility to subsidize housing for one individual be assigned to another non-related individual? It's problematic, as this investigation proves.
Let's face it, $300 per month doesn't cover taxes and basic expenses for running a building in a place like New York. You can see the failure of this thinking and how mom and pop property owners are throwing in the towel and selling out to Landlord, Inc. Who can blame them?
20
You may not be aware that while one rent-stabilized apartment may be low, the studio across the hall may be $ 3,500.00 with $ 5,000.00 one bedrooms.
At the time the neighborhood was so marginal that is what the price was. These people contributed to the neighborhood being transitioned to the more desirable high rents they now command.
3
@limn: Oh, plenty of us can blame people for selling out to creepy developers and slimy new landlords!
It's certainly not the case that EVERYONE who's rent-stabilized has a $300/month apartment. I have a friend who's 80 years old; her rent-stabilized apartment (1 bedroom, 1 bath, no doorman or any other luxury) is now costing her nearly $2,300/month. That eats up her entire pension AND part of her social security payment - but where should she move to? Her friends and her doctors are HERE ... and believe me, when you get older, friends & doctors are central to your life. You can't just round up a new bunch of people who've known you for 30 years and who'll give you a hand if you're sick or recovering from surgery. (BTW, what price would you put on the value of all these people who help each other out for free, when the alternative would be for many of them to be in a nursing home paid for by MEDICAID? Do you even know what a nursing home in NYC costs per month? Look it up, you'll be amazed!)
3
@L: I sympathize but that 80 year old likely was in this circumstance 20, 30 years ago. The handwriting was on the wall. And nobody is guaranteed to get affordable housing "where their friends live". I have friends who live in San Francisco, but I can't afford to live there even if it would be nice to be near them! neither do you get to live "near your doctors". There are doctors all over the place. $2,300 sounds like a lot but it isn't much in NYC -- not if your friend lives in a place that normally costs $5000 a month. And spending 90% of your SS income is a folly -- your friend is making a very poor decision just to be "near friends & doctors". Life doesn't work that way, and "enabling" people to live in a fantasy world is not a kindness in the long run.
1
With rent controls, only people willing to act badly are willing to buy these properties. Rent controls create a cage match between landlords and tenants that doesn't exist in it's absence, where tenants can leave and find other affordable market rate housing. In those markets landlords are incentivized to keep tenants, turnover is expensive.
In the US markets suffering a shortage of affordable housing, the crisis is created by NIMBY zoning and artificially high construction costs. Here in Jersey City the prevalent zoning is only 2 units on a 25x100 lot, which dictates large expensive homes, vs more smaller homes and more stories on the expensive land. Many similar NYC lots with older buildings have 8 to 10 units on such a lot. But the same people complaining about high costs also fight any increase in their neighborhood's density. You can't have it both ways.
8
why should a private landlord subsidize a private tenant?
13
Why should a slumlord get rich off the backs of others?
6
The problem is too many people, i.e. too much demand. Expel all the illegal immigrants and significantly reduce the number of legal immigrants and the housing shortage will improve.
9
Rent control should be abolished not tweaked. Your examples are, as usual, non-representative of the typical rent controlled apartment tenant. Funny, I've just started re-reading Bonfire of the Vanities in memory of TW. His characters better fit the bill. There is no reason a select few should get a plumb deal while others pay full freight. If you want to reign in housing cost a bit you should be supporting capping the property tax deduction, and the mortgage interest deduction, heck, cap/eliminate the capital gains tax exemption for sale of the home.
7
@Daphne: You are clueless, and you don't live in NYC so you really don't get it! Who are you to say the examples are "non-representative"?? You know nothing of this situation yourself, just admit it!
5
@L: I live nowhere near NYC, but I've been reading about this for eons. I remember that Mayor Ed Koch -- a rich man! -- and Rep. Charles Rangel -- another rich man! -- had rent CONTROLLED apartments for decades, living high on the hog but paying miniscule rents (which let them live even HIGHER on the hog). If I know these stories, then there must be a lot of truth here. Are you defending YOUR OWN rent controlled bargain giveaway here? Surely there are some statistics that are free from bias. I have read that one million apartment units in all of NYC are under rent control or stabilization -- roughly 1/4 of all units. Surely that can be verified.
1
"Because few lawyers are ever sanctioned, the system creates an incentive to file as many cases as possible, regardless of merit." HERE is the fundamental problem -- LAWYERS are never sued for using illegal, abusive tactics!! REGULATE and ENFORCE those regulations of the legal profession and --- POOOFFFF!!! -- much of these problems will disappear!!
5
I firmly believe that a country as wealthy as ours can afford to provide housing for everyone. But our original sin--that led to rent control and to the mess it is now--is that, rather than taxing ourselves enough to afford housing for all, we decided to make unlucky individuals--landlords--bear the cost themselves by keeping rents low. I understand that some landlords are just greedy, but that still doesn't justify our, essentially, putting the whole cost for affordable housing on them.
Society as a whole needs to support our poor members--through section 8 vouchers, through city housing--through anything that is paid for out of common taxes. Rich landlords would pay higher taxes, but so would wealthy corporate CEO's. rich asset managers, etc. I think that's the only fair, sustainable way to have enough decent housing.
3
New York City is so vast and so overcrowded with 8 million people -- and Manhattan an ISLAND -- that it is literally impossible to provide cheap subsidized housing for every person who would ever wish to live there.
2
"Society as a whole needs to support our poor members--through section 8 vouchers, through city housing--through anything that is paid for out of common taxes. Rich landlords would pay higher taxes, but so would wealthy corporate CEO's. rich asset managers, etc. I think that's the only fair, sustainable way to have enough decent housing."
Yes! Taking money from people who earned it and giving it away to others is so fair.
What a mess! Rent control doesn't seem to fix anything. The problem is lack of housing supply. But nobody wants to just let builders build - like they did when NYC was younger.
Same problem on the West Coast. Zoning.
9
Same problem on the West Coast. Too many people.
7
They are building here, ruined my hood, but then they raised my taxes, too. And now they want me to give my home away. Density is always dumped on minorities. Just give me a fair price to leave, then you can build a highrise on my property.
Ray Tirado, the video of a man living in a rent controlled apartment for 50 years, His rent is $110 a month, somethings wrong. This isn't fair top the community , an imbalance to say the least
10
It’s a lovely world that we’ve created for ourselves, no doubt about that. Who you want me to blame? Sharks are sharks, flounders are flounders. Ask the oceans to explain how they let that happen.
Everyone here boo hooing about poor landlords that can't charge whatever they want because of evil poor people should know these landlords knew these buildings had rent regulated tenants when they bought them, they bought them with the business plan to evict and harass vulnerable people to make themselves, the already rich, even richer. Apparently that is perfectly ok to many people commenting here.
8
The presidents son in law is a good case in point .We think how can they
do that ? answere because they can .
7
@maria: Yep, ask Jared Kushner how he had the millions to buy up a large number of small buildings that HE KNEW were filled with rent-stabilized tenants - tenants that he arranged to have harassed out of their homes. He could have invested that money in so many ways, but he deliberately bought buildings full of people he felt he had some "right" to evict, despite what the law says.
And Kushner is just one among many slick landlords/developers we have here.
3
absolutely L and JLANEYRIE one of the many horrors of the trump administration is that we now have NY slumlords in the white house and negotiating our international affairs, these are the very worst people in the world and I mean that.
As the expression goes, history will judge us by how we treat the least amongst us.
8
The Housing market in New York City does not, and never has operated like the market in other cities. It is always better to own than to rent, but byzantine laws lull people into foolish decisions causing them to miss their chance and stick with renting when they would have been much better off buying when the market was low and they were living locally. My former Congressman Chuch Rangel did a lot to foster the ignorance and was a shining example with his three, yes three, rent controlled penthouse apartments which he had in a building owned by a wealthy developer who contributed to his reelection campaigns. This sort of corruption was not unique to him, it was reported but ignored by the same people yelling against gentrification now, yet they followed this man and kept Upper Manhattan in this peonage becaus ehe happened to be black. The rent hikes come after the political corruption, not before. Communities need to stop voting in simplistic identity politic patterns and support new leadership with new ideas. It isn't enough to try to preserve the fragile status quo. We need new ideas from new minds. Men and women who aren't chasing real estate industry donors like Rangel and Cuomo. We need honesty in government again, or there's no fair shake on the horizon.
9
Thank you to the NYT for this article, a sort of monograph of NYC's housing crisis in the context of the larger crisis that is playing out across the nation and in cities across the world. Capital is shifting more and more to unproductive investment like housing. I keep thinking of the enclosure movement...
1
1 - My friend whose 2 bedroom "coop" - Seward Park - for which he paid $1,200 years ago reverted to private ownership after a ruling passed in Albany. A million dollar gift to my friend.
2 - My friend's 92 year-old mother-in-law living alone in her - according to him, gorgeous - 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, "huge living room overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge, pays $,1200/month rent.
I've seen 141. It's totally disgusting, unbelievable, as all our courts are. The courts and the subway system, structures that should be a source of civic pride in the wealthiest city in the world, are close to third world entities. And remember, we are a city of Democrats.
10
"And remember, we are a city of Democrats."
Well! There's your problem!
I came to the city when I got my first job out of grad school in the late 70s. I discovered I had come too late for rent control. No newcomers need apply. So, I ended up in a tiny apartment in what was then a marginal neighborhood and paid almost half my income in rent. My rent was outrageous for what I got because I was subsidizing those people who could get rent controlled (or stabilized) apartments. Pardon me if I shed no tears for people who got a cheap ride for years and find the ride is over. Welcome to the free market in which the rest of us live. This is a prime example of one-sided reporting. Not sure if the Times hate landlords on principle or just can't resist a good tear jerker but this story does not cover the whole picture.
15
Except it is not a "free market." It is a market controlled by tax breaks and incentives for big developers and an array of corporate hack arounds and subsidies for those with the deepest pockets. The idea that the Times hates landlords is debunked by any of the dozens of hagiographic articles about real estate developers and their shiny new high rises that punctuate the newspaper's pages year in and out.
9
What are you talking about? I got a rent-stablized apartment in Brooklyn in 2007 in a not-yet-gentrified neighbourhood for $1050 a month. Eleven years later I'm paying $1250 a month and the neighbourhood is borderline gentrified. Do your research!
4
You weren't subsidizing anyone.
Now, IF you were being charged what you were BECAUSE everyone else wasn't charged what some landlord COULD have gotten, then you might be, but face it, had everyone been in your boat, you ALL would have been paying 1/2 or even more of your income for next to nothing.
Manhattan has already become a private gated community. We've got the moat and the portcullis. Maybe it's time to add the snakes and crocodiles.
5
The intersection of capitalism, greed, crazy regulation, and unlimited population growth in a finite space. This experiment is being run with essentially the same result in every desirable community in America. Does anyone really think it can go any other way?
3
I have been to Brooklyn Housing Court many times as a landlord. My apartments aren't stabilized or controlled. The only reason I went was non-payment. I discovered that there was free legal help for the tenants but not for me. Judges would regular favor the tenants both giving them legal advice, allow them to lie and extort a settlement from me. My plea that I had bills I could not pay was met with it was not the Court's problem. The whole process was a travesty.
17
I've been a very small time landlord. I'd rather chew my arm off at the shoulder than deal with that again.
11
In case you wonder what kind of person would work for law firms who specialize in illegally and unethically harrassing poor renters for a living, here is some of their lawyers, from their websites.
Meet our attorneys!
Gutman, Mintz, Baker & Sonnenfeldt
http://www.gmbspc.com/GMBS_InnSite.nsf/pages/OurLawyers
Horing, Welikson & Rosen
http://hwrpc.net/meet-our-attorneys/
Green & Cohen
http://www.greenandcohenlaw.com/attorney-profiles.html
6
This is heartbreaking. I or other members of my WI family visit NY, on a NY-related family matter, about once a year.
The changes in the last 20 years -- certainly the last 17 -- are so evident, and not for the better. I know and seen friends -- real working people -- being thrown out of housing that gave them a steady base to live and work in & around the city.
This is so Donald Trump's NY life / business / mindset ... just laid bare across the city. So, so very discouraging.
And praytell, when all of the 'lessers' have been evicted, dispatched, etc. -- who will tend to and provide all the services that these wanna-be blue-bloods (they wish!) need?
May 'eternal housing' karma catch up with these heartless -- and lawless -- landlords and their many accomplices and enablers. May they ultimately reside in the appropriate accommodations they deserve -- forever and ever more. (Hint: no central air!)
~ 9/11 family member
8
Trump was never in politics prior to 2016 and held no offices in NYC or elsewhere -- how could he have formulated these failed policies? NYC is a 100% blue liberal Democrat-run city and has been for many decades. This is a problem created BY liberals who own this completely -- and yet I've not heard one credible suggestion for solving this, or making it right.
2
Every Harlem elected official has failed the community when it comes to tenant abuse. For starters a couple of years ago there was a public hearing led by then head of the NY State Assembly housing chair, Keith Wright on the lack of oversight by HPD. Nothing happened after the hearing. To date, Inez Dickens has done nothing and Senator Brian Benjamin's office has failed the residents when it comes to how HPD allows their buildings to be mismanaged.
3
This situation is by no means unique to NYC; it goes on in every American city. See the book "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in an American City", by Matthew Desmond. (2017). The basic problem is that tenants who are being evicted have only limited access to lawyers; when they do have such access, the lawyers are severely overworked.
6
I'm a landlady, and I have always felt sorry when having to evict anyone for nonpayment of rent, usually waiting way too long to start procedure, believing the tenant will get right. I have one now who is a squatter left over from another tenant who moved, and the squatter feeds the squirrels and birds and has a pet hamster, and it's breaking my heart to have to evict him. I'm not good at this. I'll never be rich, that's for sure.
11
Twenty years ago I rented a small studio for $1,200 a month on the UWS. The guy with the mirror image apartment was rent stabilized-- he paid $400 a month. He made more money than I did. He had a house in Fire Island.
I buy into the idea of subsidizing the poor or elderly or public servants like firemen and teachers. But this was a bit much, and not all that unusual. I know many people who live in rent-stabilized apartments and have a second home elsewhere. I'd love to see a story on how rent control impacts market- rate tenants. But I suspect I never will.
28
@Sparky - I agree with you. I lived in a building in Washington Heights from '09-'13 that was half stabilized and half market rate. Many of the stabilized tenants had second homes elsewhere. I realize this is permitted under rent stabilization laws as long as your primary residence is your stabilized apartment. But I got tired of subsidizing the stabilized tenants' second home with my market rate rent (along with the other market rate tenants). Many of these stabilized tenants made more $$$ and had far more assets than I.
Now I live in a small 8 unit complex in the center of Sacramento paying $955/mo, which is a good deal for my particular area even by Sacramento standards. Sac is not NYC (doesn't pretend to be) but I really like it here and things are much more egalitarian. My landlord screens her tenants and cares about the building. It's a non smoking building and there's no drama. All this to say my living situation is peaceful and fair. I lived in NYC for 14 years and finding a good housing situation was always a challenge. Eventually, I left and am happier for it, although there are still aspects I miss about NYC.
6
I hear you - I get to subsidize the rich who send their kids to Pre-K; care for my mother cost three times what the Pre-K cost. I get to pay these taxes 'til I die, meanwhile we have homeless people living on the street. My generation grew up without Pre-K, but not without a home. Am I the only person who thinks giving a home to the poor is more important than subsidizing Pre-K for the rich?
2
I'm happy you like your new place, but why would you say that you were subsidizing rent stabilized tenants with your market rent, you were not, you were subsidizing your landlord's rich lifestyle and investment portfolio.
Why do the people give all of their power away...laws that are set up to help the people are constantly being manipulated to serve the wealthy and powerful and the people stand by as though they have no recourse. Vote the people out of office who have stood by and watched you become trampled by a system they set up for themselves but which was initially supposed to serve you.
2
I voted Dem for decades, all they did was ruin my 'hood and raise my taxes. They smell a lot like the GOP to me. For both parties, it's all about money. I met one person who benefitted from Obamacare - the rest of us just got huge pay cuts - and I met others who couldn't even afford Obamacare. Just sayin'...
1
Since the City created the situation they should solve it. Tenants who are not paying market value should be provided city built studio apartments at their protected low rents for the remainder of their lives. The regulated rent law needs to be changed or abolished. Landlords and other tenants should not be subsidizing tenants who pay way under market value. People who are removed from buildings should be aided by city government to ensure they are not left homeless.
4
And rather than placing the cost on the backs of taxpayers (which is what would happen) the expense should lie squarely on the backs of the ruthless, greedy, soulless venture capitalists who are causing this problem.
But this is America, where money is God. So that won't happen.
4
Terrils -- the problem of high rents has nothing to do with "ruthless, greedy, soulless venture capitalists." It's the result of increasing demand from successful people who want to live in places like Manhattan and San Francisco, limited land and substantial zoning and other regulatory limits on development. Add to that the effects of rent control, which tends to keep people in apartments that are larger than they would otherwise choose.
6
Yes, but the sleazy capitalists PAY NO TAXES, so when the poor are driven out onto the street, the middle class taxpayers pay their homeless shelter costs. And the churches are basically parasites on our backs, doing their repairs and central air at taxpayer expense.
1
it's all about greed.
3
Bloomberg absolutely ruined this city, he gave the landlords everything they wanted, deBlasio is imperfect but he is making some efforts but how do you undo a system already so imbalanced.
3
Here is a solution, put all rent stabilized tenets on section 8 vouchers to supplement the rent they pay. This shifts the burden off landlords and onto the taxpayers where it belongs. Make to much to qualify for section 8, you pay more just like all the poor people who were not lucky enough to get rent stabilisation. This is how the rest of the country subsidizes the elderly and infirmed why not NYC.
7
Why should the burden be on taxpayers instead of on the gouging rich landlords who are the cause of the problem?
4
I grew up in a rent controlled apartment in metro-NYC and have been a landlord myself since 1987. I sold my 2 family house in Massachusetts nearly 10 years ago because I couldn't deal with tenants any longer. By no means does this mean that I criticize rent control, since I clearly remember my parents having trouble scraping together the rent. But I am aware of the difficulty of paying the bills AND coping with tenants.
5
These massive venture capital corporations are not ordinary guys who bought one apartment building for some supplemental income. They are ruthless, soulless profit machines who will happily see thousands homeless so they can magnify their millions. Two entirely different creatures.
7
If your parents could not afford the rent in NYC...they needed to move on out to the outer boroughs or New Jersey or further until they found a place they could afford. NOBODY is entitled to live in NYC -- or San Francisco -- or Paris or London either.
4
We didn't live in NYC.
So what is the moral of the story? That America no longer has a true middle class and that working people can't even afford to live comfortably and eat in this country? That wall street and bank are extorting people and raising rent faster than wages are rising? That at one time someone without at 200,000 dollar education could actually make a decent living but now they can't even avoid homelessness?
That our government no longer changes laws based on equality and democratic values but rather to cater to special interest and make the rich even richer?
7
Yes.
Note that for decades opponents of rent regulation in NYC argued that if rent regulation were eliminated rents would naturally "stabilize" because there would be so many "free market" units becoming available and governed by what the market would bear.
Well guess what? Rent regulation has been substantially eliminated in the last 15-20 years in prime areas of Manhattan. Has the desired effect occurred? No.Why? AIr BnB type rentals. Is no longer long-term tenants looking for places to live permanently, or at least semi-permanently, but groups of tourists looking for someplace cheaper than 2 or 3 4 star hotel rooms. Landlords have discovered that instead of renting a 1BR at a "market" rate of $3,500-$4,000 to 1 or 2 people it can instead rent that 1 BR as a "30-day furnished rental" at $6-$8000 a month to a group of 5 or 6 tourists from, say, Germany, all perfectly legal, even if the Germans only want to stay for a week or two (is still cheaper than getting 2 or 3 rooms in a good hotel), as they signed a 30-day lease.
1
So the solution is to subsidize extortionate rates by the NYC hotel industry? The Airbnb boom is partly the consequence of the hotel industry having monopolized the hospitality business. Make hotels lower the rates and the problem will go away.
Also, there is clearly a lot of room for improvement in terms of rent stabilization/control. Tenant advocates should meet the landlords half-way, or perhaps third-way, to eliminate abuses of the system (including apartment hand-me-downs).
4
You're quite right. The two major political parties in our government only want to serve the affluent, nothing else. You cannot have a society that skews incomes to the very top of the social mobility ladder while leaving millions of other behind, both economically and politically. Housing is a basic human right, not some disposable luxury good that can be parade on HGTV or DIY Network. You don't buy or get housing as a personal investment. You get housing as a public ROI within the realms of the urban community.
As an aside, how can someone live in a country for 50 or 60 or more years and not speak the language? That amazes me. Maybe if Ms. Carranza's native language was Chinese, or another language which is radically different from English, I could understand that. But English draws so much on Latin languages that it seems like *not* learning English would be a lot of work.
14
The question is who pays? Is it the landlord in the form of substantial limitations on its potential to make money? Is it the taxpayers in the form of subsidies? Or is it tenants in the form of higher rents even if this leads to dislocation and homelessness.
Ultimately, the Section 8 model might work best for poor, working class and middle income people. Tenants have to pay 30% of their income in exchange for which the government subsidizes the difference between the rent and the 30% that the tenant pays. In exchange, the government would ensure that landlords make a reasonable profit. This would cost billions of dollars each year but if this is what the citizenry wants it's not unfair for the citizens to pay for it.
The corporations in question make plenty of money. Millions upon millions. They could rein it in and provide for some percentage of reasonably priced housing. But we live in a country that doesn't care about poor or working class people. We don't have laws requiring that these people have roofs over their heads. All our laws are designed to allow the rich to rape the poor and the working class of every penny - and they're very effective at that.
5
Locally, here, developers have been allowed to break affordable housing laws and to give "payment in lieu of taxes."
A city that caters to the extremes of the economic scale won't survive. You need a mixture of income, a diverse population and culture for a city to thrive. Gentrification to only satisfy those with money at the expense of the working-class and poor is a recipe for disaster in the long run. What happens in 20 years or so, when the trend changes and there is a second "flight" to the suburbs? Who will be left in the city? Certainly not the working class and the definitely not the poor. The City needs to do a better job in urban planning and to offer incentives to developers to create sustainable and affordable housing for everyone, regardless of economic status.
6
HPD (the city's housing department) has to be one of the worst-run such agencies in the city — and that's saying something. When I realized my next-door landlords were warehousing apartments for AirBnBs, I called 311 twice, and twice inspectors came, didn't get entrance, and that was that. I attended community board meetings, called city councilmember, etc. Nothing. Then the head of my block association set up a meeting with my assemblywoman's ombudsman. The next day, an inspector came, and HPD threatened the landlord with $20,000 in fines. No more AirBnB.
3
Eliminate or greatly reduce rent controls and most of this goes away. If the city wants government supported housing it will have to build or buy it and then manage it properly. Almost no government organizations can properly manage rentals, but there is always an exception.
5
>"Almost no government organizations can properly manage rentals..."
Your credible, verifiable data?
Good grief. The knee-jerk, all-things-government-are-bad screech is as tiresome as it is false.
5
I'm on the board of a cooperative apartment and since our resident owners are technically both shareholders and tenants any effort to obtain a remedy against a resident who does not pay maintenance (ie., rent) winds up in housing court. I agree that housing court does not work, but from a different perspective than the authors -- there is something profoundly wrong with a system that lets a defaulting resident draw out the process for a year or two (or more) before we can recover possession of the apartment. One result of this reality is that a shareholder who has financial difficulties will stop paying maintenance so that he or she can keep current with other creditors, who can often withhold services for non-payment.
11
Part of the problem is that of supply and demand, we have such mass migration into the US, both legal and illegal, which adds pressure on existing housing stock. The construction of new housing does not keep up with the increase in our population. This only brings rents up.
Liberals cannot have it both ways - you cannot advocate for mass migration and then at the same time complain that the housing market prices-out tenants in formerly rent controlled or rent stabilized units.
Another blind spot- liberals cannot complain about global warming and CO2 emissions if you advocate for mass migration to such a high CO2 emitting country like the US, or any western country for that matter.
The liberals should look themselves in the mirror sometimes.
11
It's hard to pinpoint who the "bad guy" is here. Especially how the article slants it. Immediately we are presented with an 87 year old woman facing an eviction vs a corporation. Obviously this is supposed to invoke deep sympathy for her, as it does in most of us, simply because she's 87 and assumably frail and helpless, with no where to go. The article describes many others in the same situation. What if it was a single 42 year old professional man facing the same situation? No one would care about the eviction likely.
And we can argue about how the corporation is doing this via means that evade the rent-stablization laws, which makes it illegal technically. But do any us question the unwritten aspect that the 87 year old woman has been living there for 51 years, and is probably still paying $100/mo rent for an apartment worth fare more than that, which maintanence costs far more than that. The rent stablization system, while once a decent idea perhaps, is long past its prime. When that 87 year old woman paying $100/mo passes, I can gaurentee a grand child steps in and assumes the rent. Not because they need it or can't afford more, but because its a steal.
There are many sides to these stories, despite NYT favoring one or another.
17
She may have been paying a low rent but the landlord was likely also receiving SCRIE subsidy, he knew that this was the law going in and he still bought the buildings with rent regulated apartments with the explicit goal to illegally deregulate them. I'm shocked, though I shouldn't be, at you making excuses for the deplorable way the landlord treated this woman and I would say the same thing no matter her age.
4
You're so right. It's so much wiser to evict an old lady so rich people can get richer. Much better. In fact, let's just shoot everyone except the rich - the rest of us are just a drain on their wealth anyway.
8
She must be more like 94 and 1956 when she moved in, was 62 years ago (not 51) -- I'm bad at math too LOL! -- yes, she has had a sweetheart deal for well over half a century. She had ample opportunity to save up a bundle and perhaps has. Also, her landlord had to pay her $100,000! more than enough to get a small condo or move into a nice senior 55+ apartment in Pennsylvania NEAR HER FAMILY for the rest of her life.
4
The other aspect of the consolidation of power of the landlord class is that big banks and hedge funds, and other mega-owners like Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin have hastened the financialization of real estate so the holdings are just part of large portfolios and tenants are merely disposable commodities necessary for rising cash flow. Their armies of lawyers and thuggish paper servers are used to lobby, sue, and harass, as documented in this article. It is a very sad state of affairs on the local, state, and national level, especially when you realize that our president and his father were masters of these practices for decades.
8
The attitude behind this activity is pervasive in our culture and, in truth, it is killing the entire country. GREED. Anything to make more money, no matter how much you already have. Too bad if human beings are effectively treated like trash. Too bad if individuals have no place to go and no recourse to fight back. And enormously too bad that landlords in this town have lots and lots of clout and very little pushback from anyone. Look at Trump!!
When a society or a city allows the weakest to be stepped on by those who want only one thing, more money, the entire community, in every aspect and layer, suffers. The diversity goes away, the neighborhoods become uniform, and the spaces available go to the big chain stores. The landlord can write off any losses while the residents walk past, for 5 years or more, empty storefronts and must go further and further to buy groceries, hardware or clothing.
SHAME on everyone who is on the side of the people who already have so much power based on money. SHAME on the people who look at the buildings as "opportunities for investment" even at the cost of human suffering. SHAME on the courts who favor the landlords (and you have to wonder why that would be the case unless the judges have a hand out...)
It's fine to be wealthy and prosperous but real estate that involves people is a different thing all together. This one situation, if no other, deserves to be treated differently. Hey, Mr. De Blasio, wake up!
7
Shame on the people who, despite living in below-market affordable housing for decades, refuse to give up their rent regulated apartments to needier people. I can understand the need for affordable housing. But people should not be allowed to remain in the system forever, especially when they have advanced financially to the point where they no longer need subsidized housing. Rather than moving out and buying their own homes, they cling onto their rent regulated apartments, which are then passed down through their family like a treasured heirloom that they never paid for. And what about all of those people who maintain their rent regulated apartments in the city despite having weekend homes in the Hamptons or upstate? This is a system that, rather than benefiting the most needy cases, benefits those who just happened to luck into the system through family or other inside connections.
13
It is quite common for long-time rent regulated tenants in Manhattan to be paying $2,000 -$3,000 a month for a 1 BR and not to own a country home ANYWHERE. There were substantial rent increases during Bloomberg administration and crackdown on people whose primary residences were elsewhere.
2
I Totally agree .I've lived in NYC and went to college there back in the late 70's.
When I visit friends now , due to so much gentrification , those many neighborhoods have lost it's character .The very reasons that made them
special in the first place .Sad really .
It's happened here in St.Petersburg FL .After the 08 crash many
landlords were hurting for tennants in the storefronts and offered low rents.
The outcome was a great variety of small gallery spaces and food .Well,
that ended and now due to sky rocketing rents ,noone could afford to
continue what had become a great area to visit .
1
Calling Mayor de Blasio, where are you? Not a peep from N.Y.'s "progressive mayor. That's a laugh, he's a progressive. More like NYC "progressing"from a middle class into a rich person's habitat. The new meaning of progressive; a politician's bank account "progressing from a 6 figure balance to a 7 or 8 figure balance with a little help from his real estate friends.
5
it's not true, unlike bloomberg he appointed tenant advocates to the RGB that resulted in a rent freeze two years in a row and a low increase this year, if you live in rent stabilized housing you have deBlasio to thank for the past several years. Homelessness quietly skyrocketed under Bloomberg who appointed people to the RGB who always got the biggest increase possible, people were priced out of their homes, but the press loved little bloomberg so. deBlasio has not cured homelessness and neither could anyone else, but he is much better than Bloomberg.
All politics is local, real estate zoning and rent control the most localized of all. Real estate investors want untrammeled rights to develop their properties to the fullest extent — highest-&-best use, top-dollar rents — regardless of its cost to the community. So they pack the courts and regulatory bodies with the dregs, ideological robots, sycophants and shills, judges who abuse the law’s meaning and their discretion to do their bidding without giving it a second thought. That their machinations explode the size of a homeless population that already numbers in the tens of thousands is no concern of theirs; “devil take the hindmost”.
You might think that a liberal Democratic mayor, a liberal Democratic governor and their administrations would rush to defend tenants if only to advance a greater public interest — reduce our homeless population. But because all politics is local both know which side of the bread their butter’s on, so you would be wrong.
3
When will humanity wake up to the reality of cities?
They promote a false sense of security, are dependent on the rest of the planet for everything they consume, hide their waste or ship it to somewhere else, pretend to make gross over-population not the disaster that it truly is and are unfriendly to living things.
You are living on Trantor.
7
This comment is simplistic in the extreme. People have been living in cities since the dawn of civilization, and cities are responsible for all of the improvements of mankind. Your pleasant life in Hawaii would be a whole lot less pleasant if not for the many ways in which we city folk underly the way you live.
7
They also aggregate financial, cultural and intellectual capital. From this will flow the solutions to the problems you decry.
2
Name these solutions that flow from cities.
4
This is also happening to homeowners that live in brownstones in gentrified areas like Harlem. Use of city agencies to harass individuals into selling. But they think the folks that live in these homes are not wise enough to see it as harassment. All I can hope for is a karmatic event.
Yes, there are landlords who abuse the system - and there are tenants who do the same. The "agoraphobe" on public assistance in my building who walks his dog 5 times a day and was evicted for nonpayment was put back by a judge the same day. The landlord has decided it's better to sell than to deal with this, and no doubt someone like Ohrbach will snap the property up.
6
and yet the biggest donors to Gov. Cuomo and to Mayor de Blasio are real estate interests and despite claims to contrary neither has done anything to help tennents. Mayor de Blasio makes a big show of building affordable housing while the departmeants under his control allow tens of thousands to illegally lose affordable housing. Money talks in NYC and NYC politics and it is not from low income tennents.
I have been in my rent stabilized apt for over 20 years but luckily I have an honest landlord though once there is a legitimate vacancy they manage to get units out of rent stabilization.
4
I feel like NYCers are always in fight or flight zone with their bodies so it wears them out eventually and people end up looking much older than they actually are.
4
Without some sort of regulation, there would be no one left to police the streets, teach your kid, fight your fires, renew your driver's license or make your food. Not unlike the NRA, REBNY keeps politicians close. Republican, Democrat, all they see is green.
1
It's interesting that the Times is publishing this article yet you paper will do articles on "$1 million or $2 million dollar homes for sale in the area". A very schizophrenic approach to journalism. These are the homes these landlords buy out of profits they made kicking out long time poor and middle class tenants. You guys aren't true guardians of the working class. Might as well have the NY Post do this article.
11
The Times has an upscale NYC readership, so it makes sense to have articles like that. I'd rather praise the paper for doing such well-researched exposes as this one.
2
Are you kidding? I've never read a more one sided article.
It doesn't even bother to mention that multifamily landlords in NYC pay 30% of their gross revenue in property taxes alone. That's before income taxes!
Why should a lucky minority get cheap rent when everybody else pays their shares? Remember, there's no income test for rent control or rent stabilization. It's just a scam so Democrats can get votes from the 1 million plus lottery winners.
4
I wonder what it's like to be an attorney who sues 80-year old people on false pretenses in order to evict them. My god, that's low. But the bedrock of NYC is unfairness and inequality and $300 rents are obviously ridiculous.
Would that some socially conscious billionaire set aside money to tie up these lawsuits long enough to make them unprofitable. We are becoming a country of people with nothing left to lose and I have every expectation that some of these desperate poeple will take action.
6
These are soulless creatures to whom money is god. It doesn't matter that they're already rich. They have a profound sickness - the obsessive need to scrape in as much money as possible, no matter how many actual human beings suffer. These creatures don't care about human suffering, because they are of a different species altogether.
4
I suppose it is in vogue to bash landlords, and there is no doubt that some exploit the system. Will the NY Times next be running a story about how some tenants abuse the system also? I have known small landlords who have lost tens of thousands of dollars waiting to evict tenants for non-payment of rent, and who find their apartments trashed when the tenants are finally forced out. Owning a building is not a charitable endeavor.
26
Indeed it is not a charitable endeavor but when a building owner is knowingly providing long-term housing and/or buys property knowing there are long term tenants in the package. A functioning moral compass should certainly be a requirement.
7
Here's is the deal. It's not about bashing landlords.
It's about those tenants who actually pay the rent, but are still forced out of their apartments either because the landlord thinks they've been there too long, or the building is sold and the new owners want them out -- even if they are sick and elderly.
Owning a building may not a charitable endoeavor, but it's also not a right to be inhuman.
5
The condition age/health of the tenant should not be an issue-unless my bank will also take such issues into account and appropriately reduce my mortgage and the city do the same with my taxes.
I agree that if they bought a regulated building with a tenant in place, then there is nothing they can do, however I do not begrudge them doing everything legally possible to have an apartment removed from any city control.
3
I have a friend who moved to North Carolina ten years ago. She's lived in Raleigh and Charlotte! She says being a renter down there is the same! At the mercy of landlords who have all power with little government regulation! And it's going to get worse all over! It's the age of greed on steroids!!!
8
Rent regulations should not exist. The owners of a building OWN THE BUILDING and should be able to charge whatever they want to rent their property. If renters want to pay, they can live there, otherwise leave. It's called freedom.
19
Exactly. Perhaps NY's housing stock would not be in such deplorable condition if the tenants paid market rate. Is a landlord with a rent controlled/stabilized building exempt from taxes, utility expenses, etc. if not, why not?
14
@DRS- I bet you consider yourself to be a "Christian" too. When all of these people who can't afford the rent are evicted why don't you take them all in? That would be the christian thing to do, or do you belong to the Church of Greed?
2
What on earth makes you think NYC's housing stock is in a "deplorable condition" compared to other large US cities?
1
This eviction in NYC is an all to common variation on the crisis playing out in cities across America. Months ago on the banks of the Santa Ana River in Orange County, California, hundreds of people, previous home owners and renters, left homeless, by a sky-high real estate market, were living there. Now they've been ousted. No where to go. Distressing to see Asian NIMBYs in Irvine, some, themselves, once destitute, and gladly taken in as refugees in O.C. after the Vietnam War, now protesting successfully nixing the temporary plan to lodge the displaced at the long closed El Toro Marine base adjacent to their own comfy homes. Shameful with all they themselves once experienced.
2
Are you sure that they were once destitute? A lot of Asians living in Irvine are relatively recent immigrants who either teach or their children attend UCI (see percentage breakdown of UCI students). Many immigrated here not because they are poor but because of our school system and better living environment. Houses in Irvine are pretty pricey and most are probably not from Vietnam.
1
Meh, nothing will change until Americans band together to stop such things being done to all Americans. Stop turning a blind eye and telling black people to "get over it" when their communities are used as practice runs for atrocities.
The dumping of drugs with resulting addiction, the dumping of guns with resulting gun violence, outsourcing, police brutality, unemployment or wage stagnation due to illegal labor, prison for profit and dirty tactics for gentrification are all practiced on black people before moving to other targets. Stop it in the beginning and so many people won't be caught in the net. That won't happen as long as some Americans continue to believe black people deserve such treatment but they don't.
2
It seems that housing court is the dam that's failing under the pressure of economic and market forces. While harassment is truly reprehensible, I think people had better cotton on to the fact that they have to buy their own property to be able to call the shots and act like it's theirs.
I'm convinced that if rents had floated up (along with market prices, as they should), there wouldn't be private equity firms buying city blocks because there would be no extra value to "unlock". The returns of such activity would be minimal.
7
This has NOTHING to do with capitalism, at least not the kind that we as Americans should be proud of.
They knew these apartments were regulated when they bought them and then used thuggish, unethical, and even illegal tactics to get around them.
It’s not genius. It’s just evil.
11
It is utterly sick and disgusting that we have become a society that anyone who have limited means of income and resources don't deserve a roof over their heads or a decent place to live because housing became nothing more than a luxury commodity. Here's a harden truth for the right wing free market disciples and the left wing urban renewal advocates: by federal law since 1968, it is illegal to deny access to a dwelling or discriminate a protected class of people when it comes to access to fair housing. That view has been upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2015 by which local cities and states are barred from using low income tax credits to perpetuate affordable housing in already impoverish communities since it contributes to segregation patterns. Housing in the USA is always treated under the legal rule of law as a human right, not a commodity. That being said, the NY housing court system is unconstitutional and may violate the US Fair Housing Act. Low income tenants should take their complaints through a HUD legal office and the federal courts rather than the local district housing court system because of civil rights concerns relating on how the city and landlords are failing to protect the rights of tenants. NYC needs a full explanation on why they are allowing vulnerable residents to wind up on the streets because of onerous, discriminatory housing ordinances that are benefiting shady landlords who are committing acts of fraud and criminal activity on taxpayers dime.
6
Don't these judges ever get tired of being lied to? Shouldn't they be outraged by the contempt for the law shown by deliberate and, as documented here, routinized lying on sworn documents presented to the court by landlords and their attorneys?
4
They're well off. They don't care.
In New York getting to be a judge is like winning the lottery. It's like lifetime guaranteed employment with a big pension to boot. Is the same in many other states. Whether elected or appointed, once in you are practically guaranteed in for life, and there are no corporate "cutbacks."
Yup. And this is one more reason why the city is dying. Detroit almost went under for lack of money; New York is dying because of too much.
5
Uh, the reason why this problem exists is because NYC has a booming economy.
1
It feels like villains from a Charles Dickens's novel have taken over this country. If they remade "It's a Wonder Life" for today then George Bailey would have committed suicide and the entire town of Bedford Falls would have become filled with gambling houses and the banker, Henry Potter would have had his way.
5
Rent regulations caused this problem. Enabling renters underpaying for housing is the issue here. Perhaps if there was no regulation renters would seek to earn or save enough to have their own place.
Or, go from renter to landlord and collect rent instead of paying it! Nothing is preventing anyone from doing so!
11
It seems you forgot to read the story that many of these people loosing their rent controlled apartments have limited means in resources. These people have rights under the US Fair Housing Laws. The city of NYC is evil for even allowing vulnerable populations to go fending themselves on the streets without a home.
Give Ms. Carranza back her apartment for the remainder of her life, rent free. It is the appropriate thing to do.
2
SG go ahead and buy the building and let her have the apartment.
2
If you took Economics, tell me what increasing the supply by 25% would do to the price of said asset? You effectively have 20% of the available rentals off the market for substantially lower rates which causes two distortions.
1. Lower Supply with equal demand so the people bid each other up
2. Landlords who need to make up what they're losing on the rent control on the other apartments, therefor also driving rents up
As far as unforeseen consequences that I haven't seen mentioned here, what about the Mom & Pop who would be interested in owning a building but are scared off by the way tenants courts invariably favor tenants, under all circumstances, in NYC.
The only people who can afford to buy investment RE in NYC are big Corporations and REITs. For every sob story the Times wants to highlight there are 10x as many tenants taking advantage of city policies.
Why would I own a building in NYC and pay all those taxes and be told what I can charge? That I can't evict someone for not paying?
So you push people like me out, I don't have attorneys on retainer, I can't afford a tenant to decide that they won't pay rent for 2 years. Once all the individuals are out all that's left are these corporations.
NYC laws make it impossible for regular people to own buildings outright. I live in NYC and bought property in Tennessee and Charlotte for these very reasons.
You want more humane landlords? Then treat them like humans too.
5
So go into a business you can afford to be in.
You're not owed here. If you're making a profit off a taxpayer-funded infrastructure, you have to play by rules. Otherwise, don't play.
Good grief.
1
Excuse me, but low income residents do have legal rights under our existing federal civil rights statuses. You don't have the legal right by law to discriminate low income apartment residents by denying them an accessible dwelling, failure to take their section 8 vouchers and their housing eligibility forms, jacking up their rents against their consent while railroading them in a corrupt housing court system which is not complacent to the US Fair Housing laws, and giving them a criminal record to which many actually don't deserve on state judicial record in the first place. And yes, I am being very blunt and standing up to these folks that the NY Times have profiled in their front page story about the eviction scam by the city's housing court system.
The whole landlords, real estate industry across the country is being driven by crooks, frauds, criminals, thugs, and shady developers buying off local and state leaders just to stonewall civil rights pending litigation and social policies. And for someone from the Midwest that is seeing the same problems unfolding in our own backyard like out on the east coast, I don't trust you and your clouded judgement in the landlord business. Any real estate developer, landlord, corrupt city leader, housing inspector or cop, or banking lender who engages in harmful practices against a protected class of citizens should get harsher penalties in our legal system, possibly jail-time in the appropriate use. This harassment has got to stop.
Shocking, unacceptable. This is not 1918. This is 2018.
2
My 'grandmother-in-law' & her sister came to this country in 1910 from a tiny Greek village to marry Greek men they didn't know in Los Angeles. They'd never been outside their village but came here on a boat then took a train cross-country to Los Angeles. The 2 sisters spoke no English. When they arrived, the man my grandmother-in-law was supposed to marry had married another woman - & sent her a letter on its way to Greece. A Greek man he knew helped her find a place to live - & eventually married her. YIa Yia lived to be 94. Her 4 children attended Los Angeles public schools & then college, primarily UCLA. All became successful - one became a doctor. Her grandchildren also attended U C, some for medical & grad school. Now in their 60s, all are successful, 2 are physicians. One founded a Long Beach clinic for poor women 30 years ago that still serves that community today. Her great grandchildren in their 30s are successful college graduates with young children in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Washington D.C.,
In her 90s Yia Yia no longer remembered English & reverted to speaking the Greek of her youth. She came here with nothing, needing help to get on her feet. Good people here helped her. This is the story of America. Over 110 years later, her many descendants remember & honor her courage.
Why are there people who don't understand the United States of America is built on such stories? Is it because there's a heartless monster in the White House?
3
'Affordable housing' has just about become an oxymoron in our country.
3
I worked at 141 for the first two years of my legal career, for a landlord's firm. Based on the article, nothing has changed...there are still "professional tenants" and dishonest landlords...and 141 is still an abomination. Did you know most Courthouses are grand monuments to the public ideal ? Not this place.
I was a baby attorney....for a landlord's firm. Two firm clients ask me the same thing...one before lunch, one after. They say "The tenant went to the bathroom. Go into the Court and take a default, and tell the tenant you adjourned the case and to go home". I refuse. Each becomes visibly angry and threatens to tell the Senior Partner. I later tell the Senior, who laughs, says "we don't do that-don't ever do anything like that" and " I'll straighten them out ". The kicker to the story is both are Religious Corporations, one wears the minister's collar to Court, and the other is a Rabbi. Yes, the men of God were telling me to lie to the Court, lie to the Tenant, and help them to scam-evict someone. It's been over 20 years but clearly nothing has changed. Gentrification and the increase of the Hasidic community were primary drivers of holdover evictions when I was there......
69
As a fellow lawyer, I have this to say: Law and Justice, which rarely intersect.
3
In NJ everyone is up in arms over towns like Lakewood NJ or Toms River being taken over by Hasidic using thug tactics. There was a series of articles in The Star Ledger. It also covered how they were committing massive welfare fraud to get their funding. That's because they were doing this to middle class white communities. Yet no one cared when they did the same to black or poor communities. A lot of Baptist churches have been in on the scam too. This should have been stopped years ago .
14
@ Hellen - Your comment states that "no one cared when they did the same to black or poor communities," but the NYT actually did write recently about Hasidic communities living in Jersey City (with a sizable black population) doing just that:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/nyregion/ultra-orthodox-jews-hasidim-...
2
As a lawyer who has practiced in New York Housing Court, representing landlords and tenant, I can add a couple things. The premise behind these companies that do this is horrible. As the article theyre goal is to no longer make the apartment rent-stabilized. First, they try and offer money and then they harass the tenants, bottom line, to get them out. It's horrible. The good news is that for the most part judges, especially housing court judges, are very "debtor" friendly, i use the term debtor loosely. So there is a little bright spot. I will say also, that Ms. Carranza did go through hell but she did recover $100,000.00, which is not too shabby.
2
I don't understand how anyone thinks these rent-regulated apartments are fair. Why should the landlord and the rest of the renters have to make up for the shortfall in the amount of money it takes to run the building. However, since it is the law that they exist the owners should be fined and imprisoned for harassment and what would seem to be illegal tactics. Allowing the apartments to fall into such disrepair that the health department should be involved should bring legal action against the owners. Why is the court allowing this to go on? Last week, we read of buildings owned by Sean Hannity in Georgia using the similar tactics to remove people from the buildings. If you don't want to treat people like human beings the courts should not aid and abet your mistreating them.
6
This is occurring everywhere, is it not? Including my town of Sacramento.
People from the Bay Area come here and see a charming 2 bd 1 ba for $500k, and say WOW! What a bargain! Anyway we are experiencing severe upward pressure on prices. Formerly bad areas are trending now, so I assume poorer renters must be getting kicked out to make way.
Where does it stop? I have no idea. It won't affect me, but my heart goes out to young families trying to get a foothold.
7
Ray's situation is typical of what is happening in old neighborhoods in big cities. As an expat, I left the city when my store rent became unmanageable and my rent -stabilized apt White Plains was more than my monthly income. I only lucked out living in Newton MA in senior affordable apartment 1/4 the size of the one in White Plains. This area has gotten unaffordable as is rent in Boston. Even in progressive Boston and Newton, the mayors promised more affordable housing, which has become a campaign slogan. Back in the 50's NYC built housing projects and Mitchell- Lama coops that were affordable for anyone with a job. The coops are being converted to market rates, rent control is being eaten away by real estate investors and the working classes will just have to hold on for dear life. Is that the American way? Politicians are no longer the protectors of the working class unless you work on Wall Street.
11
Whoa! As pertains to Mitchell-Lama, tenants who moved understood that when when the tax abatement ran out, the units would be priced at market value. Very different situation from rent-stabilized units.
The NYT is finally getting around to highlighting a problem that started over almost 60 years ago. I lived in Yorkville and brought up with my brother by my widowed mother. Starting the in the late 1950s the older apartments were being bought up on a daily basis. Within 10 years it was converted into the Upper Eastside, no longer a close community of European immigrants, primarily German, Hungarians, Italians, Eastern European, and Holocaust survivors, and a substantial Irish population. Everybody knew each other and a kid, and there were lots of them, could not do something wrong without their parents knowing about it by the end of the day. We lived in a spotless and well kept up one bedroom apartment. I moved out when I got older but could no longer find a place in Yorkville. All the tenants were told to leave since there was a new landlord and he wanted to renovate. Nobody refused since they quite frankly didn't know they could. Ten years, that is all it took and we all lost all childhood friends, close neighbors, and small shop owners. I keep on thinking about the old folks who moved to neighborhoods where they didn't know anybody and did not have the community support or friends they had previously. Now everybody worries about gentrification now but it was happening a long time ago and it will not change ($$$ talks). Thank you NYC public schools and CCNY for a great education. Moved to California but still miss old Yorkville and still have not found anyplace like it.
10
About 20 years ago my sister lived in a 2bdrm rent control off the park on e. 97th street for $380.00 per month. She married and moved away. That apartment is probably 3000 p month now.
1
Actually, more like $7,500/month.
2
Judging from the photos of the walls it is Ms. Carranza who should have sued.
But money always wins. It wins out over laws that are ignored or reinterpreted to agree with money. And when the laws are too inconvenience money will change the laws since it is those who are in moneyed positions who write the laws or pay to have the laws written for them as mentioned int he piece tenant protections have "been steadily eroded by landlord-friendly laws".
Money is its own reason. It's own justification. Just look at the comments that justify anything for money. The right of someone else to make money at your expense shall not be infringed. It's the source of Trump's wealth. Still many Americans equate wealth with worth, intelligence, virtue, integrity, where wealth is to be admired, respected, and obeyed above all. Wealth can do no wrong. It must be allowed to seek more wealth.
4
Let the market decide. Otherwise you're playing favorites.
9
None of us like to see someone like Ms Carranza forced out. And we all hate the greedy corporations that file/take legal or especially bogus actions to force out people.
But the examples told in this article aren't the whole story, just part of it. The whole system is the wrong approach to housing, unless you want the gov to take over housing for everybody.
According to NYC Housing Surveys, about 5 1/2 million people rent, and about 1 million are rent stabilized (a handful are still rent controlled). So rent regulatation in some form produces less than 20% lucky winners among all renters.
It reduces the supply of available housing, inhibiting housing production and investment. And once someone gets a rent stabilized apartment, many aren't going to give it up. It's often off the market for years or decades.
So a reduced supply has the effect of effectively raising everyone else's rent. Unless you win the housing lottery, how is this fair or right.
If you want rent control then vote for politicians that will raise taxes so we all pay for gov financed & subsidized housing, that is offered to everyone at lower than free market rates. Otherwise, a few benefit and most don't.
17
There are thousands of new units being built, such as at Hudson Yards and other developments - new luxury rentals, not affordable housing.
At the same time, other apartments are unavailable - units used by non-New Yorkers as pied a terre; units used for Airbnb; and units held vacant by landlords or speculators for future building sale.
Rent regulation is not the problem.
5
I'm sorry yes there are some trifling landlords but the notion that a woman can rent the same apartment her great-grandmother rented in 1920 at a discount is obscene. Rent regulations are needed in terms of preventing unlawful evictions but aren't needed to freeze rents into perpetuity.
The state legislature should end rent stabilization and control.
27
What is obscene is that that it is literally the same apartment her great grandmother rented in to 1920 with 100 years of decay in the walls and fixtures.
4
So not only are you telling them they have to lose money on the property monthly but now they should have to dump more money into the place?
Let them get paid what people are willing to pay and they will take care of the property, or lose the tenant.
The system is ripe with terrible incentives. Why fix it? They're already effectively paying $3,000/ month for someone to live in their building. And the tenant isn't going anywhere because they are basically stealing this apartment.
Let people be free to make their own choices and things will clean up
1
No, "losing $3000 a month" is not the same as "paying $3000 a month". You can only lose what is spent over cost.
This is Trump/developer think.
1
I gather the Atlas Shrugged crowd -- the folks who ridiculously claim that (a) rent control itself is the reason for the dearth of affordable housing; and (b) all these poor and old tenants should just surrender to the Wisdom of the Market and move onto Invisibility -- is well represented in these comments.
The campaign contributions made by developers have been a wise investment on their part, as can be seen in the indifference of politicians to the current war on the poor. Given the costs of land and of construction in NYC it's difficult to imagine profit-making organizations buidling new, truoy affordable housing; and the government has washed its hands of this business. So the only lifeline for low- and middle- income tenants are the existing apartments landlords are successfully repurposing
15
In many of these cases there is a gap between what a tenant can reasonably afford to pay and what a willing renter would be able to pay for a deregulated apartment (the ones that become vacant and then achieve a rent over $2,700). Landlords try to exploit this gap and will continue to do so for as long as the law - the high rent vacancy law - allows it to do so. The high income vacancy has to be repealed and all units become subject to regulation to avoid this incentive.
That said, the reality is that there are buildings where tenants pay low rents and the landlords have a difficult time making a profit. There are, however, also many more buildings now where landlords make unreasonable amounts of money.
The ideal solution would be to regulate rents in such a way that landlords are guaranteed a reasonable profit (5% per year?) and tenants are protected by not having to pay more than 30% of their income below a certain income level ($100,000. per year?) like in Section 8 subsidized buildings. Any difference would be made up for with city subsidies. The problem with this approach - aside from the billions that the subsidies would cost - is that it would require hiring a huge bureaucracy to determine the landlords' costs of running a building like it has to do under Rent Control. But if we want to provide a social good - affordable housing - we do have some obligation to step forward and pay for it.
7
Why do you get to decide someone gets to make on their asset? Not sure what you do for a living but how about someone comes to you and tells you that you make an unreasonable amount and controls what you make?
What's funny Chris is that someone else decides what we get to make on our assets everyday.
Public clients dictate what they will pay for costs and profits from their consultants doing projects for them.
RE: " how about someone comes to you and tells you that you make an unreasonable amount and controls what you make?"
For many. without the remark on making too much, that is what happens each year with their boss who controls what you make.
My boss decides what he will pay for my only assets, knowledge and time. Yes, you can say I am "free" to reject that offer and go elsewhere, and lots do, but many are in circumstances that make that difficult. And it is almost always is working from their pay scales rather than them having to work from our offer.
The answer is because housing is a life's necessity, much like food and healthcare, and any decent society makes sure that all of its citizens are reasonably housed. I agree with you that if the government is going to place limitations on landlords' income it should also protect them from the downside of losing money. That is why the Section 8 model probably works best but it is, admittedly, very, very expensive to the taxpayer.
2
I'm so glad to see The New York Times is finally covering one of the most important stories in New York City. Thank you! But what took you so long? The pattern of evictions and landlord harassment that The Times describes has been going on since the 1970s. I lived in a building where it happened and had friends living in buildings where it happened. If there had been greater public consciousness of this phenomenon back in the '70s and '80s, we would have far more housing stock still in the Rent Stabilized domain than we do today. Clearly the harassment and evictions continue today. Every New Yorker and potential New Yorker needs to understand what's happening. Please keep following this story. Don't let it fade from public attention.
12
Thank you for shining a bright light on this pervasive problem. I have watched it happen around me in my neighborhood, and the tactics I've seen them use should be (and often ARE) illegal - but no one in NYC government seems to care.
De Blasio is 100% in the pocket of these developers, and all his pronouncements about "affordable housing" evaporate in the face of the REALITY of how much existing affordable housing has been destroyed, how many legitimate tenants have been driven out, and how many neighborhoods have been destabilized.
PS: Thanks also for publishing the names AND photographs of these developers, as they like to hide behind their corporations & LLC's. Please keep shining a bright floodlight on them; they are doing such horrendous things to so many average New Yorkers.
12
Capitalism at its finest. It works with the cooperation of local and state government.
Some good films on urban redevelopment and housing:
Made in Brooklyn: Urban Manufacturing & the Future of Cities. Isabel Hill Sargent, New Day Films, 1993.
The City and the World: 1945-2000. The American Experience: New York, Ric Burns, PBS, 2003. (Jane Jacobs & Robert Moses)
Brooklyn Matters: Urban Neighborhoods on the Brink of Change, Isabel Hill, New Day Films, 2007.
My Brooklyn: Demystifying Gentrification, Kelly Anderson & Allison Lirish Dean, Kanopy, SF, 2015.
1
It's not only NYC that is guilty of running people out of their homes. Since the techies have taken over San Francisco, people who have lived there all their lives are fleeing. The large apartment we used to rent was $600 and is now $4,700 a month. My son grew up in SF and can no longer live there. He recently turned down a $90,000 a year job because there is no way he can support his wife and daughter in the Bay Area unless they live in a dump and have to put up with bad schools. Many family-owned businesses have closed down because of exorbitant rents. They had to pass a.law that teachers couldn't be evicted during the school year, but as soon as the school year is over they are getting their walking papers. They are now looking for jobs in other parts of the country, but teaching jobs are hard to find these days. A former friend of mine rented in Brooklyn for years and always complained about her lousy landlord. When she retired she bought a house here in Mississippi a few blocks from me with an in-law apartment she rents out. I guess being a bad landlord must be contagious, because she treats her tenants like garbage. Let's face it. The rich own the country and the rest of us can drop dead.
12
"Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."
-Jesus Christ
Matthew 25:40
12
Charity elevates all involved while force diminishes all. Giving freely is very different from being forced to give. Being forced to give is theft.
My landlords' son said, "We don't waste time with the court system, instead an unruly tenant might have an "accident' like over near the elevator shaft." then he smiled. Meanwhile the landlords have taken my neighbors to court for such silly things as an umbrella stand in the hallway or they even tried to claim that one of the rooms in an apartment was actually 'not part of the apartment' etc.
Tenant's have have lived here for over 30 years. We pay around $3,000 a month each unit, so we are "not taking advantage of a the system" as the commenter from Texas claimed, it's just that the Land Lords think they could rent these units place for double what we pay, and it's killing them.
12
Yet the capitalists attacked Iraq to influence oil markets, and continue to clamor for taxpayer-funded subsidies for the billionaire class, as their de facto head of state lambastes the Post Office to set shipping prices for Amazon.
"Free market!" screech the capitalists.
The abject hypocrisy writes itself.
9
Wow. Some of these comments here are really appalling. Good luck with being evicted if you're elderly, or on a low-to-moderate fixed income, or pushed out of your job because of your age. I wonder if the most callous among the posters has any idea of what it is like for an elderly person who has lived most of his or her entire life in one place to be evicted?
Apparently, the lack of compassion for fellow New Yorkers who aren't among the 1% is spreading like an escalating cancer. The naysayers remind me of the vile example set every day by the occupier in the White House, and underscores again the fact that the only thing that matters in America today is money, and the only people who matter today in America are those who have obscene amounts of it, and are never satisfied with that. People are commodities, to be tossed out and discarded when they can't ante up enough to satisfy a tiny group of powerful, incredibly greedy people who do not know the meaning of the word enough. This most unfortunate truth will be our undoing. It's already so.
What a cruel, mean, unkind city New York has become. And so predictable and boring having pushed out all of the little mom and pop businesses and shops and cafes. It's all for the super rich now, and it couldn't be less interesting or creative or worthwhile. This city is no longer the center of the country for art and culture and it is partially because of things like this.
37
Well-said, MAW.
1
Well Jared Kushner is part of this problem
2
I would have given you 1million thumbs up .You go girl .Some of us are with you.
This is an extraordinarily well written and moving article, encapsulating the desperation of someone like Neri Carranza, old and poor, and on the verge of being evicted from her hogar where she has lived for generations. Simply hope that she could qualify for NEW YORK's NEEDIEST CASES and get some financial help from your readers. Dog is cute and seems in his own doggy way to appreciate its owner's plight.ONE CAN'T HELP EVERYONE, but am sure that many readers commiserate with her and her buddy and would be willing to send 10, 20 bucks or so to help to alleviate her plight somewhat. DEBLASIO, who, in my view, you at Times Newspaper are too easy on,is, "pour la forme," at one with the tenants, but has ulterior motives of running for president one day and is counting on the support of the real estate industry which is making so hard for the poor and helpless for generous campaign contributions.12 victims of that firetrap in the BR0NX in January might have survived If DEBLASIO had been taking care of business, leading an effort to repair sub standard and perilous housing. Conflagration and those deaths might perhaps have been avoided!But hats off to the authors and photographer, MR. Franco for the photograph of Ms. Carranza and her pet who seemed to understand!
4
The slow creep towards feudalism continues.
10
Outstanding in-depth reporting. And nauseating new information. There was a time when the NYTimes paid too little attention to metro issues- for example if there was a union strike somewhere in the city or a crumbling public school the Post or the News would cover it every time, the Times had its own editorial logic. Kudos for a fundamental reset, when it is desperately needed. The Times is finally throwing it's resources and creativity to significant life-changing issues that affect working people - subways, rents, public transportation systems, extinction through gentrification, persistent racism. The heft and credibility of the paper may create changes in minds attitudes and wealth-generation, or at least create sufficient public embarrassment to result in effective political change.I hope so, and thanks for trying.
16
There's a story (very possibly apocryphal) that a Times editor at a dinner party, when asked why there was a bureau in Nairobi but not the Bronx, replied, "We have readers in Nairobi."
1
It's all greed............
There is no reason why anyone with an income above $200K/year should ever evict a person who has less.......... When is one's profit ever "enough to support my ideals of providing housing for those who have less"? Why have investment property other than to provide housing for those who need it? I admit, enough profit to maintain high quality housing is a good thing, but does the landlord otherwise need thousands or millions more for his/her own pocket? Shame on those who trample on the poor!
Yes, I've been a landlord since 1972. When we interview our applicants, we know their backgrounds and circumstances. If we choose to rent to them, we accept our tenants as they are. I have even gone so far as to recommend help from Catholic Charities, local HUD agency for a voucher, and lowered the rent for desirable tenants, as well as changing payment dates to coincide with Soc Sec Disability payment cycles.
No landlord should ever use rent in order to support his/her lifestyle. Profit happens, if one is a good landlord who can accommodate his/her tenants for the long term.
Avarice is one of the seven deadly sins against God and humanity. Avarice: to me from you, because I can..............
13
Its great that you choose to lower rents. That is your choice.
That may not be everyone else's choice and you have no right to push that on people.
You can purchase a building for a number of reasons. Yours is apparently altruistic and you have a big heart.
Some people do it for money. And there's nothing wrong with that.
2
New York gave us Trump, so not surprised his fellow New York housing czars are crooks too. California is laughing at you.
3
Really? California is laughing at you? Gentrification is here. Have you seen the rents in SF and the older neighborhoods in LA that are being gentrified. Hope you own your home. The same crooks are here too.
9
@Kinske
First of all, New York City did NOT give you Donald Trump, because we overwhelmingly didn't vote for him here.
And just for the record. New York also happens to be a solid Blue state.
So, keep on laughing because the joke's on you.
4
Having lived in - and received the benefits of - a rent-stabilized apartment for over 25 years, I am aware of many sides to this machine -
At its best, rent-stabilization supplies a safety net for people who could not afford market-rate rents - including many hard-working people with full-time jobs.
At its worst - it becomes a cesspool of greed on both sides of the lease - meaning tenants as well as landlords --
In contrast to the horror stories of harassment and illegal evictions - are stories of people who rent a 2-bedroom, rent-stabilized apartment for $$650 a month - and have a "roommate" who unwittingly (and gladly) pays $1,200 a month for the second bedroom --
Or - The tenant who's been living in a 1-bedroom for 20 years - paying $750 a month - but really lives with her boyfriend in his apartment - while subletting HER apartment (as if she owns it) to a couple of wealthy college grads for $2,500 a month --
It's this type of tenant fraud and deception which puts a stain on a system ideally designed to help hard-working New Yorkers maintain a decent place to live...
33
The type of fraud you point out is immediate grounds for losing your lease, so that tenant is treading on thin ice.
I go to Europe for months at a time but only charge the legal amount for my rent stabilized apt. 10% over the actual rent, for furniture, plus the bills.
It wouldn't be right to make money on a landlord's investment. I'm still
happy I can cover my rent this way.
To Howard G--
Why haven't you told your landlord about this woman who pays $750 but sublet for $2250? She's not allowed to have a rent-stabilized apartment if it's not her primary residence. Obviously, she can't sublet it, and especially not at a profit. Do you know, you can be evicted just for charging a roommate more than half the rent? So, tell the landlord: HE'LL LOVE YOU. Unless, maybe, the lass is hypothetical?
One crucial way to cope with New York being such a tough city is the ability, at the end of the day, to retire to a haven, called home. That feeling of safety is what is being threatened here.
As for those of us who own our homes, as I fortunately do, a major reason we have invested exorbitant sums to live here was/is the city's diversity, artistry and excitement. Those are the very qualities being threatened by these greedy, often illegal behaviors. Thus, it is not just for the sake of human decency, but also in our collective self-interest to help these tenants fight back politically, legally and otherwise.
10
Wasn't there an article either about Trump's or Kushner's companies evicting tenants from their apartment building holdings?
8
Yes.
https://apnews.com/amp/002703e70347481cb993027d04f543cc
Yes, right here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/magazine/jared-kushners-other-real-es....
I used to work for the Housing Department in LA before home prices and rents skyrocketed. Similar dynamic, now manifesting as a homelessness epidemic. I used to think the NYT commenters were more reasonable, articulate and better informed than LAT readers, but sadly, the commenters here have disabused me of that notion.
2
In my 30 years on a Board of Directors for a Manhattan Cooperative, the courts have traditionally sided with the tenants.....even when rents weren't being paid. I'm surprised to see such a 1-sided piece on housing.
Fact is high property taxes are affecting all residents in the City - renters and owners. Why don't the authors make mention of the high taxes and the bind it places many landlords in?
I understand that there are many unsavory landlords out there.....and with that said same can be said for tenants.
19
Right. The reality is that there are all types of situations. Landlords operating at a loss with tenants paying a pittance relative to their income. And, of course, there are many landlords making obscene amounts of money. How does a regulatory system account for all of the varied circumstances so as to treat everyone fairly?
NYC property taxes are actually quite low in the region, which is why Douglaston is often preferred over Great Neck. BUT: Yes, the city gouges Manhattan co-ops.
Whenever we talk about the problems of affordable housing, people always say "there's no appetite at the federal level for building new housing projects." It is said as if it is the law of the land, as if all the housing projects built in the '50's and '60's were, in retrospect, a terrible idea. NYCHA is invoked in the same breath as mold or vermin. But why does it have to be that way? Housing projects gave us sonia sotomayer. They provided a stable living environment for generations. There are so many empty lots in the city owned by the government. Why can't we build more cheaply? Is it because of the unions? I am genuinely curious why nobody is asking these questions.
3
I could be Ms. Carranza. Both renters in 1950s New York City. Each of us sun bathing on "tar beach"--the roof. End of similarity: I had privilege to leave renter life, become a homeowner twenty years later. Renters, also American citizens deserve same privilege. Wherever they live.
5
Agree the issue with affordable housing is serious. But is not just old run down buildings being emptied of regulated tenants to renovate. Many big landlords are finding ot more profitable to take already renovated market rate apts. and rent as AIr BnB "30 day rentals." I live in one of the thousands of Brodsky Org apts in Manhattan and they seem to find it easier/more profitable to take a "market rate" $3500 1BR and rent it as $6000 or $7000 "furnished 30 day rental" to Air BnB type people who may or may not stay 30 days, but are still saving a ton over hotels. Rental market has softened and many "long term renters" don't stay more than 6 mos or a year anyway, so this seems to be a big trend. Also many new condo buildings with absentee (e.g., CHinese)owners can't find long term renters and rent short term to Air BnB types. I
The "affordable housing" the mayor is touting is mostly poor people housing,, and soon NYC will be made up of poor people and rich people, often living in same building. Nothing for middle income people, no help for older middle class seniors who want to get out of $2,000 - $3,000 "rent stabilized" apts and into something -- say $1000 a mont -- more affordable on fixed incomes.
20
politicians in New York have been running for years on the promise that you can live in someone else's house for free. To paraphrase Margaret Thacher, the problem is that sooner or later you run out of other people's houses.
7
I am the owner of a small building on the West Side. I live in the building with my family, and we have seven tenants - all wonderful people. However, it took us years to rid ourselves of tenants who abused the system that, despite what this article conveys, is weighted heavily in favor of tenants. Non-payment cases can take months - or even years - to resolve while the tenant brings baseless Orders to Show Cause motions one after the other. Some tenants view having a rent stabilized apartment as a right to have a "pied-à-terre" in the City while they live elsewhere.
I am by no means suggesting that the mega-landlords do not abuse the system (not at all), but this article fails to point out that tenants abusing the system cause as much damage as these landlords, for they take up space that would otherwise be occupied by people who truly need it. in short, there is abuse all around.
36
@Romeo Salta - I agree with you. The NYT always portrays the abuse by landlords but it's very rare that the paper presents the landlord's perspective. I am not a landlord, but I have known tenants like the ones you described. You're right. Housing courts in NYC side heavily with tenants (of course there are exceptions). I used to know someone who lives in a desirable Manhattan neighborhood. He's HIV positive and receives a rental subsidy. One day, he decided his bathroom needed repairs and he started withholding rent. To my former acquaintance, they were major repairs but in reality they were minor. Short story is, he didn't pay rent for 4 years. Because he's HIV positive and "disabled", he qualified for a free attorney through legal aid and went to housing court. Eventually he settled with his landlord. He still lives in his apartment and, to my knowledge, he didn't have to pay any back rent. This is just one small example, but it happens a lot. I certainly wouldn't want to be a landlord in NYC unless I had money to burn. For small time landlords, it only takes one tenant to stop paying rent and it can (potentially) put the landlord in financial peril.
6
@M: Can you tell me who forced anyone to BECOME a landlord? People either decide to become landlords & buy property, or they inherit a building already owned by a parent or other relative.
Nobody holds a gun to your head and says "you have to be a landlord". If it proves to be a bad business decision to be a landlord, then sell.
2
it took 4 years to get repairs?
2
One would think the judges would have more respect for themselves, their offices and for the law than to bovinely countenance the routine and obvious lies constantly presented to them in sworn documents by landlords, attorneys and process servers.
5
As an attorney in Housing Court I can assure you that judges do the best that they can to determine who is telling the truth and who is not. The problem is, as noted in the article, there were 232,000 landlord tenant cases filed but only about 50 or so Housing Court judges. The numbers simply do not allow for a thorough investigation of each and every case filed.
2
I always thought that the purpose of the court system is to dispense justice not to represent one side or another.
6
What it is and what it does depends on how assigns the Judge! Read up on some American History - I'd suggest you look into America - 1866 to Present and learn how JUDGES make sure non-Caucasians serve much longer prison sentences than Caucasians for the SAME OFFENSE/CRIME! Justice is a Rich-Man's word!
2
So it seems that we agree. Courts and Judges should be totally impartial. No?
The more I learn about how things work out, the more I see how much wealth is gained from taking advantage from poor people. When things get so big, it's so easy to lose track of where that money is coming from. The new landlords are making money by taking people to court in an unjust manner. They're not just making money. They're destroying lives.
6
And a lot of the ways I learn about this is through reading the NY Times. Thanks for the reporting.
I'm also thinking, wouldn't it be cheaper for New York to offer a lump sum and a bus ticket to somewhere else? One of the ways to fix the housing crisis in New York is to have fewer people living there. Cruel, probably.
I don't know if it's good or bad, but they are also destroying ways of of life. In Manhattan at least, a large percentage of apartments are now short term furnished rentals -- the owner of my building, the Brodsky Org., I believe calls them furnished 30 day rentals. It's not that easy to find long-term market rate renters anymore and is also more profitable to rent as "30 day rentals" (think twice as much as market rate rentals). THere are also many foreign investors -- like the newly rich Chinese-- who bought new condos as investments but can't rent them long-term, so they are doing Air BnB too. You can easily get $6-$7000 a month for a 1 BR as a a 30 day rental.
I really don't think this is going to change; I think it will continue and there is little we can do about it. If I were younger, I would have been out of here a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, I am in my 70s, and am finding it challenging to relocate and resettle in a different part of US at my age. But one way or another will make it happen. It would certainly be easier if someone would offer me a lump sum. Can buy my own plane ticket, but sure wouldn't mind getting enough for a down payment on a condo in a cheaper city. The city is doing plenty for poor people, but nothing for middle class people.
5
So, people haven't been paying anywhere near market rates for decades. And that's OK because landlords are supposed to be charities?
There needs to be balance here.
Funny how the far left never likes to mention how it is generally the landlords being taken advantage of in the rent controlled market.
Funny how if people just paid market rates, there would be no issue -- landlords would be happy to have them.
Can't afford the rent? How about doing what people do in 99% of the US, which is supposedly mostly a free market system. Move to someplace you can afford and/or make other arrangements.
Rent control makes the problem worse in the long run, by discouraging would-be investors from taking a chance on investing in housing, lest government arbitrarily steal part of the value of their investment (which should be illegal).
12
So, you envision a NYC full of ONLY wealthy people that can afford close to $3,000/month rent? A melting pot, indeed.
5
@Don
If you took Economics, tell me what increasing the supply by 25% would do to the price of said asset? You effectively have 20% of the available rentals off the market for substantially lower rates which causes two distortions.
1. Lower Supply with equal demand so the people bid each other up
2. Landlords who need to make up what they're losing on the rent control on the other apartments, therefor also driving rents up
As far as unforeseen consequences that I haven't seen mentioned here, what about the Mom & Pop who would be interested in owning a building but are scared off by the way tenants courts invariably favor tenants, under all circumstances, in NYC.
The only people who can afford to buy investment RE in NYC are big REITs. For every sob story the Times wants to highlights there are 10x as many tenants taking advantage of city policies.
Why would I own a building in NYC and pay all those taxes and be told what I can charge? I can't evict someone for not paying?
So you push people like me out, I don't have attorneys on retainer, I can't afford a tenant to decide that they won't pay rent for 2 years. Once all the individuals are out all that's left are these corporations.
NYC laws make impossible for regular people to own buildings outright. I live in NYC and bought property in Tennessee and Charlotte for these very reasons.
3
Chris, I'll admit that I don't have all of the answers. I do know that with the rise of automation that the need for human workers, and their attendant salaries, is going to decline steeply in the coming years. Perhaps capitalism will reach its end within our lifetimes. Maybe there's a better way. As my previous comment alluded to, having a NYC where the freaks, artists and characters are priced out makes for a very boring NYC.
2
I am a landlord who used to rent (nothing big - I am in an owner occupied three family brownstone) and can sympathize with both sides here. Some of the tactics that are used to get people out, are despicable. At the same time, it would be silly to expect a landlord to not try and get rid of a tenant, especially one that is in a rent controlled apartment (as opposed to stabilized).
This entire series was very well done, but fails to address the 'why' in all of this. And the answer is rent controls do not work and end up driving up prices for everyone else while deferring maintenance on units who's rents barely cover the necessities. Rent controls in this city go with the apartment not the tenant, so you can have very well off individuals living in a stabilized or even controlled apartment for decades. Rights of succession are another crazy aspect of this. In what world is it normal to pass down something that doesn't actually belong to you?
Want to make things affordable? Get rid of rent controls and create a need based subsidy directly to tenants. Or maybe landlords can opt in to some programs. I don't know, but I do know that our system is utterly broken. And stories like these are the result.
At the end of the day, I think that everyone should be playing by the rules as they are now but those rules need to change.
22
One of the main reasons that the housing market is broken is rent regulation. It has been a disaster for New York's housing stock. Only in New York is an apartment more valuable vacant than occupied. You can sell a rental building for a much higher price with vacant apartments rather than with occupied ones. Every economist on the right and the left agrees that rent controls cause havoc. While the plight of the little old man or woman being forced to move is heart breaking, where else in the world could they live practically rent free in a private building? Blame the government, don't blame the property owners although I know for some on the Left, the concept of private property is problematic.
10
One doesn't need to search very far before finding an exploitative and greedy landlord in their midst. In my case, it turned out that the landlord to the family that runs the loved daycare that my two children attended was one of those extremely greedy landlords--so much that the SF city attorney Herrera is going after this couple, the Lee's, for $5.5 million in fines.
My point is that I believe we all feel the impact of landlords in this roaring real estate market. We might have lost a valuable daycare if this couple had been successful in unlawfully evicting the daycare-owning family. So it's not just about that nameless poor or old person you don't know (which don't get me wrong, I am not condoning their evictions either, no way) --it's about service-providers to the community.
For the curious:
https://www.sfcityattorney.org/2018/05/01/herrera-pursues-5-5-million-pe...
1
The people in power don’t care. They see ever problem through the lense of their own self interest. They will only act if the solution will serve the interests of their donors. Fixing housing court won’t do that.
It’s sad because it wasn’t always like this. We actually had leaders to whom the needs of the people were important and they knew it was their responsibility to take care of those needs. They also understood that the rich and the powerful could take care of themselves and that that kind of power needed to be balanced by the power of a government committed to protecting the weak from the strong. Our current crop of “leaders” see the rest of us as irrelevant to their success...amassing money, power and privileges for themselves and they are happy to sacrifice the average citizen in order to do it.
7
It's interesting to see how this is playing out in NYC as SF is currently pushing for similar legislation for Prop F. Definitely a cautionary tale for those who claim that housing court will truly benefit renters- there will always be a way to game the system.
2
Therefore the "system" needs to change. Why is all privilege like stability of housing, tax deductions for mortgage, only available to home owners? Indicates that America wants to maintain an us/them division among people, i.e., a class system to control the division of goods.
1
The travesty that is NYC Housing Court and tenant harassment constitutes FRAUD and needs to be investigated the Justice Department! I am fortunate to live in rent-stabilized housing and have a really decent landlord but I know of someone whose, building was "going condo" She was harassed, evicted based on false allegations, and spent years in housing court with incompetent judges.
We are back to the days of the robber barons and De Blasio, all gung ho on affordable housing, has turned a blind eye to all this corruption.
Why are developers/landlords still given tax abatements/incentives for new construction?
Why are landlords, with multiple violations, who force tenants to live in substandard housing despite repeated requests to repair damages (not of the tenants own doing) not stripped of their ownership of the property or even put under house arrest in one of these buildings for an extended period of time.
Many landlords are just plain greedy! How many apartments on Millionaire’s row sit empty? These developers and builders also got tax abatements. Yes, they created jobs but at what cost?
When tenants do not speak English, despite having lived here for many years, they become easy targets for unscrupulous landlords. Some people will judge me harshly however not speaking English dictates what kind of job you can get and how easily one can be taken advantage of. This many not be the majority of people in housing court.
3
The 'outraged' commentators who fume about how 'no one has the right to a lower rent than the maximum market can bear' are also assuming that predatory landlords have 'right' to evict and blackball whatever tenant they please, even if that is found to be discriminatory or illegal under Fair Housing Laws.
The victims of most of these proceedings seem to be the old, sick, and financially disadvantaged. Most of the landlords borrowed money from banks and investors to speculate in the rent regulated housing that they now complain about. Who forced them into this? No one and nothing but their own greed.
There is the abiding irony that the landlords who go into this business in good faith are often the first to get burned, while the most cynical, dishonest and predatory are often rewarded by a cynical and corrupt system.
This is far from a new phenomenon. Housing has been a hotly contested issue since the first private homes in Manhattan resorted to renting rooms and the 'rentier' class was established. Tenants in the 1920s and 30s were a powerful political force and can become so again. It only takes an extended real estate depression, which Trump seems perfectly capable of engineering with his retrograde tax 'overhaul.'
This is the lowest sales quarter in NYC real estate in the past six years, take note. It may only get much, much worse.
10
Yes. Thanks for history, important to remember, consider for action.
Thank you for this very important coverage.
5
Lets be creative.
How about a cap on the number of apartments a landlord may own; 10...25…50…100? This would freeze out the mega-capitalists who are the ones most likely to extort tenants (including Trump's son-in law). It would deflate the real estate market inflationary spiral.
Let's go City Council!
4
Excellent...if only NYC would be the beginning of your notion.
There is absolutely no question that the people who need affordable housing the most in the U.S. stand absolutely no chance against the monied landlords. Read "Evicted." It contains everything you need to know, and it is beautifully written.
6
Brilliant reporting from the NY Times - it is these sorts of in-depth investigating articles that make this The Paper of Record -- well done!
4
"She spends her days inside, mostly alone. "
This is fantastic reporting, kudos top the reporters and the NYT for shining light onto the unprincipled and predatory industry that systematically takes advantage of those who cannot defend themselves. I frankly do not see how the Orbach principals manage to stay out of jail except through a little help from their friends.
8
I'm thinking of the judges who participate as key elements of this system. I expect it would be pathetic to hear their rationalizations for doing so.
Reading the NYTimes year after year, I've concluded that NYC is really a place for the very rich, that most others live a tenuous and difficult existence.
4
Lat week the Controller scapegoated AIRBNB, this week, its evictions. Please note that the rent regulations, zoning, landmarking and historic districting also play a role in the housing issue
2
The implication in this article is that rent control is a social good. Really? Would the NYT be in favor of having the rates it charges to advertisers and subscribers locked into place for decades by the government? Didn't think so.
11
There is too much demand for too little living space, so city housing market prices are out of reach for many of us. So why are we encouraging illegal immigration to NYC by making it a sanctuary city?
8
Do you really think immigrants think, "Oh, I'll here because this is a sanctuary city"???
I've lived in The Dunbar since 2005. As I type this, there is scaffolding around the entire building's perimeter to sandblast the brick from a worn, ashy black to the original, distinguished red. Major construction in the courtyard started a couple months ago. I can see through windows how fancy the renovated apartments look. So I'm not surprised to read this article in today's NY Times. But it's still chilling because if I ever lost my apartment, I'd have to leave New York City. No doubt about it.
8
It might be a good thing. You could either buy an affordable home or rent from a landlord who would welcome you as a paying tenant. If you didn't like the situation, you could find a new rental or buy a new home. If your landlord didn't like the arrangement, she could simply not re-new your lease. The America outside of NYC does this quite well.
4
"You could either buy an affordable home or rent from a landlord who would welcome you as a paying tenant."
Not in New York, I couldn't. Rent-stabilized apartments are the only thing that allow some native New Yorkers or longtime transplants (like me) to live here. Finding another one is notoriously difficult. And when you add in professional and community ties that form a life over decades, it makes leaving that much tougher. People do leave, of course. I would if it came to that. But it wouldn't be my first choice. And if my landlord used dubious tactics like the ones described here to force me out, that'd be unconscionable and inhumane -- not to mention illegal. And yet some tenants still lose to these slumlords. It's maddening.
5
Money, money, money... is that all that matters?? How do people like Meyer Orbach, Sandra Kittle, Harry Tawil sleep at night? Lawyers are supposed to be held to a higher ethical standard, but I wonder if Jason M. Green (of Green & Cohen, who according to the firm's website "owns and manages approximately 400 apartments and commercial units in multifamily buildings and is dedicated to maintaining his properties at peak efficiency") and Renee Digrugilliers actually care that they do?
Sickening.
5
So, doing the math on new/retained housing vs. forced/coerced eviction:
are net gains of DeBlasio's "affordable" housing plan actually zero?
New, affordable housing in NYC get built ONLY with generous tax abatements for developer/owners, shifting the real cost to perennial holders of the bag: taxpayers. The tax abatements are temporary (about 20 years). Neri Carranza still may have been bounced from her apartment in a scenario far more favorable to owners: a time-limited lease.
What these investors are doing is unconscionable. But that's how some businesses operate. And as real estate becomes bigger and bigger business for investors and bankers the trend toward this kind of behavior will continue and certainly worsen. The real breakdown is the legal and institutional forces that allow and abet this bad behavior. Investment in poor neighborhoods is deemed as "good"; landlords have rights too; investors should make money on there investments. And of course there is some truth to each of those axioms but the way that gets twisted and turned into abuse is inexcusable. To use laws that were intended to provide a safety net to less affluent tenants is particularly Machiavellian. I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel on this one anytime soon.
3
The myopic focus on short-term payoffs has done atrocious things for tenants. NYC's attempts to transition leases from "mutually agreeable" to "agreeable to tenant, but not to landlord" has done tenants a disservice.
First and most obviously: If you want more rental housing, you need to create incentives to provide rental housing. Forcing people to rent against their will is a *negative* incentive, not a positive one. When landlords can't easily evict or terminate a tenancy, they have no incentive to create rentals. Who would? (As an analogy: When business can't easily fire employees, as in France, they respond by failing to hire.)
Moreover, there are side effects of bias. If you can evict a tenant with ease, you may be more willing to take a chance on one with a worse job history, lower income, and so on. If you are less able to avoid future risk, then you will respond by taking fewer risks at all: this often translates to "white and rich."
Second, and less obvious: There are always other tenants. An eviction and re-rental is often a zero-sum game, which hurts occupants and helps would-be tenants. Perhaps Mrs. Carranza doesn't have an apartment, but someone else will.
I have occasionally had to evict an affordable housing recipient. They may end up homeless... but some other homeless person gets their now-empty house. The NYT would do its readers a service if it acknowledged that there are two sides to this issue.
8
Your arguments are reasonable. But they don't excuse the lack of enforcement of existing law.
3
These types of things break my heart.
Why is it that people don't see that without protections for the middle-class and working poor to have basic things like housing that is affordable, you cannot sustain the economy?
Additionally, this robo-judgement system of NYC Housing Court smells suspiciously like that same thing that led to the mortgage crisis. And we saw how well that worked out.
If both Mayor De Blasio and NY State, because this is in fact a state issue, were serious about cleaning up the system, they need to start with some serious reforms of the Housing Court Process. Sounds like there's a bit a fraud before the court happening here.
77
the trend is turning into a global wave,
tenants around the world are affected
by this onslaught of insatiability & indifference.
sustain the economy? who for? for how long?
just for the few years each perpetraitor [sic]
still has to live. beyond that - why care?
don't let them get away with it. change laws.
[and possibly some lawmakers beforehand.]
When you can't get cheap housing in MOST states in the US, be sure and get back to us on why your heart is breaking.
NYC had all types of income classes before rent regulations. There are only so many rich people and they all want to live in a handful of places. The middle class and poor would probably do even better without rent regulation.
2
Manipulative article. No one has the "right" to live in one of the most expensive housing areas of the country. Moreover, this article is manipulative: what does it matter that the sympathetic lady "prefers Lancôme perfume to all others" or that she had a "crown" of black hair? If you can't afford something then that's that. Landlords have to pay their bills too: renting an apartment to someone who only pays $300 per month is impossible to meet the landlord's monthly expenses. The more I think about this, the less empathy I have for people who got a freebie where they paid pennies on the dollar for some of the most expensive real estate in the world. If they can't afford it, they can move to a cheaper place.
20
This is an excellent series and a real eye-opener in the myriad ways the state has failed tenants in the Legislature and the courts. One of my motivations in buying a co-op way back in 1990, at the tail end of the last great recession but one, was that I could see what was coming on the horizon for tenants, but it doesn't lessen my sympathy for their plight. While there are certainly cases of people paying absurdly low rents, by and the large the system has worked.
1
i moved into a Manhattan market rate apartment 6 years ago. The tenant right before me was rent stabilized. The LL took tax deductions stating my apartment and over 100 other apartments in the bldg. were rent stabilized but continued charging us market rate rents. We sued years ago and the lawyers are still "working it out". Why aren't these LL's charged criminally? The LL says oops it was a mistake and they get away with it.
13
Right? The system is so efficient at getting tenants out but not at charging these real estate companies... If these companies are breaking the law, they should suffer the consequences.
1
Rent stabilized is different from rent controlled, Julia. Stabilization is designed to reduce the rate of increases, but rents may be set at a market rate.
I have experienced landlord harassment first hand. From no heat and hot water to no water to no electricity. Finally, after years of harassment, it was the remodeling of the vacant apartments in the whole building that persuaded me to leave. Living with 100-year-old lead paint dust and construction was over the top and after several months of this madness, I moved out of NYC never to return.
8
This trend of violent gentrification is an absolute horror. One of my neighbors in Washington Heights, a vulnerable 71-year-old elderly African American woman with health issues, was harassed and ultimately forced out of her home. It was a major effort to keep her out of the city's shelter system and more than a year later she is still languishing in an SRO with no kitchen and a shared bathroom. The landlord who bought her building on West 149th Street harassed her by throwing her mail in the trash, calling the police on her and using other tactics to make her life miserable. Predatory landlords like hers willfully disobey court orders to treat their tenants with dignity and obey city rent regulation rules. As a result, we have an unchecked culture of victimization that is rapidly eroding cultural and socio-economic diversity. This type of legalized brutalization is particularly difficult, painful and traumatic for seniors of modest means. Anyone who thinks this is ethical, or an acceptable standard for any community should think hard about their own capacity for introspection or empathy.
196
If you are fighting eviction - visit one of the free volunteer housing lawyer sessions located around the city. I volunteered for a consumer credit program at 111 centre street, the housing court free lawyers were next door on Thursdays. I see by googling that there is a free Monday night clinic at the bar association in midtown manhattan.
1
Thank you for being an advocate and witness for your vulnerable neighbor. You represent what is best in New Yorkers: compassion, intelligence, action and moral indignation.
1
That's unfortunate but it's crazy that people are renting the same apartment for 100 years and that the rent should be frozen at 1950s level. It's a rip off, scam and forces unscrupulous behavior.
1
One of the big scourges in the rent stabilized apartment issue is Preferential Rent Riders.
These allow the landlord to say "The legal rent is X, but we are going to charge you Y." The "legal rent" could be, let's say $3500, and the landlord can offer $3450 as "preferential rent." And that $3450 can be any percentage over the rent on your previous lease.
As a result, even in a year when rent stabilization guidelines said ZERO percent for a one year lease, a landlord could raise the rent 15% and your choice is pay it or move.
There is no excuse for that being legal, but Gov. Cuomo and our representatives in Albany allowed that ruling to become legal. We need to vote them out.
9
So wait... now we're mad at the landlords because they charge less they are legally allowed to (which is an absurd concept to begin with) then decide that they want to get the amount they are being limited to. And they're still the bad guys?
Maybe they should just buy the building and let you live there for whatever you want to pay?
5
"We" can't vote "them" out because NYCers in Albany don't support these moves but are outvoted by the rest of the states representatives.
I think the other major side to this sad story is the role NYC colleges and universities have played in the gentrification and abusive practices by landlords. NYU and Columbia do not provide sufficient housing and so what we've seen over the past 20 years is college students renting apartments 2+ students in 1 or 2 bedrooms splitting inflated rents and distorting the true market value for anyone who is not a student and not looking to share an apartment....like adults. who work full time. The notion that $3k+ 1 bedroom is fair market for a person making less than $200k a year is completely ridiculous but it's what these landlords can get because students are splitting rent because there is no campus housing...yet NYU and Columbia keep recruiting more and more students than they can provide housing to during the year. We saw this happen in Williamsburg in the late 90's and then it crept into Manhattan from downtown to uptown. NYC should start taxing and fining schools who can't provide proper housing. NYU/Columbia have more money than they know what to do with BUT they don't build dorms they build classrooms. Unacceptable.
35
And if they built dorms you would talk about how they are using the buildings all over the city to bring in out of towners. They aren't catering to New Yorkers who can commute, etc.
Always something to complain about
2
Many students would still prefer to live off-campus. Of at least equal culpability are the city agencies and courts, as described in these articles, which don't enforce code that prohibits dividing up apartments illegally.
1
Yup, this happened in Stuyvesant Town via NYU once new apartments met with deregulation beginning around 2000.
It's the modern model for residential real estate in NYC: give me your transients. But not the transients who peopled long-gone flophouses and SROs. Now we're loving students, young professionals, corporate floaters.
If you have lived here all your life or aspire to, don't bother. Take the warm advice of many market-obsessed commenters and just move somewhere else. Oh, and then we'll need a trillion or so to divert into transportation infrastructure to traffic the rest of us back in to service the gated community that NYC will become.
6
"Because few lawyers are ever sanctioned, the system creates an incentive to file as many cases as possible, regardless of merit."
There's one of the big problems in this whole mess, that lawyers can file questionable or downright bogus lawsuits and not suffer any consequences.
6
Bornholm, a beautiful island in the Baltic Sea, does not let you own property that you don’t live in. You may even need to be a citizen to own it. If NYC and other cities with housing pressure instituted these requirements, we would see fewer fancy developments and more housing stock at affordable prices. Good luck passing those laws, because our politicians are all for sale.
11
One of my favourite features in the NYT is called "The Hunt" where stories are written describing a person's or family's search for a home in New York City and surrounding areas. How about profiling one of these tenants looking for a place? It would be a different story from the others, wouldn't it. I find this article heartbreaking. A similar story of "renovictions" is happening in Vancouver, BC. Pure greed.
13
The folks in "The Hunt" exacerbate the problem -- the people chosen are overwhelmingly wealthy, most white or asian with high level white collar jobs and Ivy League degrees. They are often in their 20s, but can spent umpteen gazillion dollars on a new place with no suffering, restrictions, limited bank account -- and no reporter ever asks "how on EARTH can you afford this as a freelancer, writer, college student, new graduate, junior editor, etc.???" There is total lack of curiosity or reportage! And very often, the featured renter or buyer moves into an apartment -- which is typically 20-70% MORE than their original budget!!!! -- and drops another $50,000 to $200,000 on "renovations" or redecorating. It is a masterpiece of illogic and craziness and bad judgement but treated by the NYT as "normal" and "what everyone must do". No wonder the system is crazy.
4
At some point, you folks are going to realize rent control doesn't work. Free markets will adjust rents appropriately.
11
Until very recently, that might have been true. But not today, when even neighborhoods like Brownsville, East New York, Jamaica and the South Bronx are being rapidly gentrified.
5
So since we now live in a global free market system if say wealthy individuals from the middle east, Russia and China decide they want to buy property and hold onto it as investments in NYC(lets say Houston because that is where you are from) that is the free market. So what happens? All prices go up, along with rents, and before you know it you have half empty buildings, vacant store fronts(because no business can afford the rent) and skyrockets prices. Oh but, there is limited space and local zoning laws what to do. Guess if your poor or middle class you need to find a new place to live. Hope your not one of them.
7
Quality reporting of this type is why I subscribe to the NYT. People need to know that things like this are happening.
15
Another chapter in the how-to-manual in the war against tenants, workers -- basically the 99%.
5
It's the Kushner way of Landlording.
12
What these landlords are doing is unconscionable - and represents totally unmitigated and egregious greed. I live in a rent stabilized building in Brooklyn, and our relatively new landlords succeeded in pushing out an elderly black man who had called our building home for more than 30 years. They took advantage of his fragile mental health, offering him a paltry buyout sum and a flimsy promise from his opportunist daughter that she’d find him a new place. He is now homeless. And I and the rest of the tenants in the building have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on an attorney fighting other attempts to get us out. We are all lucky enough to have jobs that allow us to (barely) afford this, but it makes us sick to think that they could get away with this with people who have even just slightly less financial resources. The whole thing has been incredibly stressful and disheartening for the tenants.
150
It's not up to a private landlord to take less than market rate for their property to help low income people. General tax revenue, that everyone pays into, should be the source of money to help people with legitimate problems. Why single out one class of American Citizen. Should people who can afford a car be taxed to subsidize poor people who have to take the bus? What's the difference? Both are absurd, but housing is somehow OK?
Sounds familiar. It is a story told over and over in New York City. One has to wonder what our political system is good for.
I get it, but $300 a month for a 2 bedroom in Manhattan?!! I'm sorry, but that's indefensible.
There are two sides to every story. I haven't read the article as yet but I'm writing because I've been in a partnership that owns small apartment buildings in NYC for 30 years and we've always played by the rules. I'm sure there are owners who do not but there are also tenants who do not play by the rules and try everything they can to scam us out of what the laws say we are entitled to.
12
Please, read the story and then comment. There are good and bad people on both sides, but in this instance the story that you haven't read speaks directly to the broken system portion of the system that is supposedly designed to bring justice to both sides in a fair manner. Judging from the article, it has not.
4
Thank you, thank you, thank you. We of Northern Manhattan have had -- and continue to have -- a long road ahead.
I understand that we have the largest quantity of rent-protected housing remaining in NYC. Thanks to Northern Manhattan Is Not For Sale, which is part of our strong Uptown Coalition, as well as our neighborhood Met Council on Housing, we neighbors are working together across race and class lines in powerful ways.
Many of us do not feel we're well represented by our City Councilor nor various other NYC agencies and officials. Gale Brewer, Manhattan Borough President, is an exception: she's weighed in against the current rezoning plans and put forth her own, which increase affordability and preserve neighborhood character.
Manipulating and subverting rent-regulations is a gold rush. It's untamed; It's shameless; it's unmitigated greed. And we have a President who is the Patron Saint/Devil of real estate shenanigans and thievery. Jared Kushner lied about his Astoria, Queens apartment buildings: no rent regulated apartments here, declared the paperwork!
We're eating, sleeping, breathing this money-grabbing, this malign transfer of wealth privately and publicly. For us in New York City rent-regulated housing, free-wheeling greed and lawlessness seem like next-door neighbors.
15
In a word, good. The whole spectrum of subsidized housing in the city is an unnecessary burden, creating a lottery mentality for people who cannot afford to live here. If you have a job here and cannot afford an apartment, then learn to commute or cut back on your lifestyle. If you don't want to, oh well - someone else will (or automation will obviate the need for a human laborer).
19
Yes, let them eat construction dust.
Who, by the way, repairs your shoes, cleans your residence, checks you out at the grocery store, serves you your coffee, buses your table after a nice meal? Who is represented in that silent army of low-paid workers from whom you benefit? Where do they, and how do they live?
One clue: do not live in hives, Queen or King Bee.
4
Most of these folks would be vastly better off in a smaller town or a further out, less costly borough....they are set in their ways, but that can be a disaster for elderly or disabled folks. A walk-up apartment? That's a broken hip waiting to happen. Bathrooms that cannot accommodate a wheelchair? My ordinary Rustbelt suburb has a number of "Section 8" facilities, with elevators and handicapped accessible bathrooms -- how is it possible NYC does not have this?
2
"cut back on your lifestyle"? Can you cut back on $800/monthly social security income? Based on your comment, you're one of the lucky ones. I hope your luck doesn't turn on you.
2
Just one more article demonstrating the opinion among those well off that there is a large and growing surplus population. In this case its the landowners. We are in a period of political and social change where it will no longer be left versus right but up versus down, and it is clear that a great many of the NYT readers, liberal as they may be, are wealthy elites who can be cruel as their peers on the right.
4
I arrived in New York City in 1985 and for many years I had the most wonderful landlady imaginable - mutual respect let to me fixing up the apartment on my own dollars and time and she being understanding when the rent might be late a week or two. She lived in the apartment above mine and we had a mutual door between the apartments to which we both had keys. It was trust and a joy to be there. There was a time when my ceiling caved in and my lawyer wanted to sue her for huge amounts of money. I said no, it was not her fault. She could not have known. She appreciated that and said she would want me to own that building one day. Then Chelsea became Chelsea, she fled the City and sold and I was outbid on the building by not much (she had no say in this, as she had donated the building to a living trust and the trust for a ngo just went for the highest bid, even if it was just a fraction higher.
Needless to say, those days are long gone. It's a mean fight for every dollar that can be squeezed out of an overpriced market.
6
That outcome is very odd; your landlady could have sold the building to you BEFORE HER DEATH, at an agreed-upon sum. It only became part of her living trust once she DIED. She could have also put your name on the deed, as a "successor" if she'd wanted. Maybe she was just blowing hot air at you.
Should also be mention of "unavailable" apartments which contribute to housing scarcity:
multitude of apartments rented or owned by non-New Yorkers for pied-a-terre use;
multitude of apartments kept vacant by landlords (for years) in preparation to sell building;
multitude of apartments now used for Airbnb, rather than being available for regular housing.
25
There are many desirable places to live in this country where housing is reasonable, the weather is mild and where people are able to afford a large enough place to live in and have relatives or friends visit and stay a few days. I am looking at trees (that are mine) and I am breathing clean fresh air, the only noise comes from the birds that are upset that my cat is looking at them through the closed window.
17
There are many desirable places in live in this country where there is NO WORK. That's why people move to cities among a multitude of other reason. We have cats, birds and air here, too.
6
Yes, but the problem is you have to live in Georgia.
3
No doubt there are many desirable places to live in this country, but there is only one New York -- and that's what matters most when you're from here.
4
Lower than low interest rates, which hurt millions of savers in other parts of our once great nation enabled these "Big Shots" to scoop up these properties and rent them at exorbitant rates.
The FED lies about inflation to keep this untenable system afloat. Eventually our hot-air economy will crash. Then those same "big-wigs" will go crying for bankruptcy protection.
16
Yes, and we will bail them out once more. How pathetic that tax payers keep getting taken for a ride in this country!
2
D has it exactly right. I'm amazed at how some people get duped into believing platitudes about the so called left!
1
It's not only low-income New Yorkers of modest means being forced out - it is also the middle class. I live in Harlem and right now 1 bedroom apartments are being advertised for around $2,750 per month - what middle class person can afford that rent? This will hurt NYC in the long run, we need a stable middle class.
38
You are looking at it backwards. If you can't afford $2,750 then you are not middle class, at least not in New York.
5
The determination of what constitutes middle class is not based on rental tiers. It's based on income. Which has hardly kept pace with rise in housing costs over the last 3 decades.
And $2,750/month is out of range for all but the upper tiers of most New Yorkers. It's even too high if you isolate higher earning Manhattanites from the pack.
https://streeteasy.com/blog/average-rent-in-nyc-is-unaffordable-with-ave...
1
Just one more article pointing out the opinion among those well off that there is a large and growing surplus population. We are in a period of political and social change where it will no longer be left versus right but up versus down, and the former Obama voters who sided with Trump are just the beginning.
11
In highly populated areas there is no incentive to build housing that average people can afford. The only solution is to keep building high density housing until the supply catches up with demand. Renters will always end up being a diaspora. Home ownership is the best rent control. Condos where the "association" is non-profit and run by the owners.
7
The idea that housing court, is "a system created to protect tenants," is preposterous. When I first became an attorney in the early 1990's I also volunteered as free legal counsel for the elderly. Housing Court was shockingly brutal and positively Dickensian; huge courtrooms packed to the gills with decent, salt of the earth New Yorkers, landlords trying to force them onto the streets. Landlords would stand up in open court and start screaming at elderly widowed women living on Social Security, "I want her out on the street!" Objecting was worthless as judges routinely did nothing. Tenants were pushed onto the street using techniques described here, and far worse. "Sewer Service," was constantly employed, a process in which landlords create baseless notices of eviction and deliberately never served them on tenants, just made it appear that they served them. It meant that countless New Yorkers who paid their rent on time and did everything right were evicted without cause. Stabilization is the only reason that there are any working class people left in the 5 boroughs; it's no golden ticket, that's Rent Control, which is effectively dead. Building owners aren't being robbed by stabilization. Most units become market rate forever once they hit $2700. Regulations are so weak that raising other rent stabilized apartments to current market rates is as easy as pretending to fix anything, and with "tourists" using apartments for short stints, rents go up to market rates constantly.
64
NYT -- what can be done to make Housing Court function better? In our day and age judges ought to be able to look up the history of the plaintiffs -- how many suits they have brought in the last period of time and the outcomes. And have to be penalties for cases where allegations against the tenants were false. What can be done to ease the ratio of judges to cases?
2
Thanks for telling the truth based upon real experience.
The landlords remind me of the mean rent collector Mr. Pancks in Dickens' Little Dorrit.
1
This is heart-wrenching but not news to those of us in the affected communities, where this behavior has been going on for the entire De Blasio administration with no government intervention. Its a mystery to me how the landlords persistently practice "eviction by renovation" and other forms of threats and harassment; the problems are made public and advocates try to get help; and yet nothing happens. I appreciate the Times' deep series and hope it will include a review of campaign contributions at both the City and State levels.
One other point: this is not about rent regulation as such -- its about people breaking the law to make more money. Rent regulation may create conditions where breaking the law is more profitable, but we need to enforce the laws we have.
19
One possible solution, though not perfect, is to end succession rights. That way long time tenants would not be pushed out (assuming that they paid their rent and didn't violate their lease otherwise) but landlords would eventually get their apartments back. Now with succession rights, the artificially low rents would stay artificially low. It might not be a perfect solution but it would help.
28
Doesn't it feel just crazy to type 'landlords would eventually get their apartments back'
1
Consumers are consistently losing in a consumer-driven economy not because they can't win, but because they refuse to band together. $6,700.00 monthly to RENT an apartment is ridiculous anywhere on the planet and I am certain there are not many people who can afford to pay it, hence the multiple roommate situations. Further, there aren't that many jobs available providing that type of income, additionally, even if you are earning it, it's a ridiculous notion to waste it on rent.
The landlords are an example of what happens when people who have been broke all their lives find a mechanism to gain wealth. Instead of rationalizing some income is better than no income they recklessly pursue all they can. Best solution, stop the demand (don't rent) and leave them holding the supply of empty apartments.
P.S. This rental reality is yet another example of what it would look like if the minimum wage was raised. Workers wouldn't have more spending power, they'd have more income for others to attempt to exploit.
4
Interesting how we usually worry about health and education, segregated two-tiered according to one's economic standing...when all along the 'elephant in the room' might be 'housing' discrimination, shelter being part of a pentad of food, water, oxygen and sleep. Have our priorities changed since the digital revolution? How would those that never felt hunger and always enjoyed a safe home know? Those of us fortunate enough to have those basic needs fulfilled may never know what homelessness brings, other than despair and suffering. And the constant fear of being evicted, many times on flimsy excuses, is a disgrace in our midst, however little we care to know about it. But our government, if responsible in seeking justice, better get it's priorities right.
5
The rich don't pay enough taxes, and neither do their corporations. From the comments, it looks like it is the landlords reading the NYT!
23
Property taxes on apartment buildings in NYC are currently 30% of gross income. That means when a landlord gets $100, he or she has to pay 30% to NYC off the top. After expenses and income taxes, NYC landlords keeps maybe $10 for every $100 collected. They should be thanked and praised, not vilified because of a few bad apples.
The transformation by large property corporations of affordable apartments into luxury homes is not just happening down in New York City. Here in Toronto, my building was sold last year to a huge international property company. The new landlord has been 'renovating' (i.e. drastically remodelling) apartments as they become available, knocking down entire walls...and destroying a fine mid-century modern building (in good condition) from the inside out. As we recently discovered, the remodelling has been done without the legal permits. Eviction notices arrive out of the blue for tenants who have actually paid their rent, and always have for decades. On the renovated apartments, they are jacking up the rents. This building is only one of several buildings in this city where they've carried out this practice. It's their business model...
29
Thanks for mentioning how bad it is in Toronto (and Vancouver too!). It is actually MORE expensive than NYC in many respects now. The odd thing is that the Toronto I remember growing up -- I live just across "the pond" in the US and visited it often -- was a drab, slightly scruffy city similar to Buffalo or Cleveland, and not expensive AT ALL. It was fun to visit and very affordable. Today, that's all a distant memory -- everything in Toronto is crazy expensive, from rents to restaurant prices. I am sure the some exploitive landlords are at work in Toronto as well!
1
In the rest of America you can rent or own your residence. Only in New York can a person rent and claim the benefits of ownership. Why should a person be able to pay rent fixed in the 1960s for 50 years? Why should a tenant be able to pass on an apartment to relatives for generations? New York's rent control system is socialism at its worst, and keeping the housing stock in a perpetual state of rot. Why should a landlord invest money in maintaining property that cannot be profitably operated?
148
Mel, that's not how rent stabilization works. First of all, there has been no rent control since the 1970s, and rent stabilization does not mean you get to pass the apartment down to your relatives, it means that as long as you live there that your rent can only increase between 2-5% each year. This is what kept the middle class in NYC stable for so long.
21
Your comments might have had some validity 30-40 years ago. Today, rent control currently affects only 1% of rental units in the city, and only applies if the tenant has been living in the apartment continuously since 1971.
Rent stabilization, which covers about 50% of the rental units, is a very different program. Under rent stabilization, a person signs a 1- or 2-year lease with an option to renew. At the end of the first lease term, if the tenant chooses to renew he/she will be subject to a certain percentage increase in rent. The percentage increase allowed is set each year by the NYC Rent Guidelines Board, which sets a percentage for each of 1- and 2- year renewals. When a tenant leaves the apartment, then a vacancy increase is permitted (which is often significantly higher than the percentage for a renewal lease.
Under rent stabilization, lone way landlords can raise the rents in excess of the Rent Guidelines Board limits is to make a major capital improvement, which costs can be recovered by amortizing the cost over a period of time and apportioning it to the renters by adding an appropriate monthly amount to the rent. The new, higher rent then because the base rent for the unit, and future increases are calculated based on the new, higher rent.
And a renter cannot bequeath an apartment. If a renter dies or leaves, and a family member (traditional or non-traditional) is living with them at the time, that person may have succession rights.
10
Sallie, you are 100% incorrect. Leaseholders of regulated apartments can add other named individuals to the lease (albeit, these other individuals need to meet certain occupancy criteria). These prized regulated apartments can be bequeathed/inherited from generation to generation like a cherished heirloom. Rent stabilization, if anything is a burden on young people who have to deal with the insanity of the open market, which is largely the result of an artificially restricted housing market resulting from rent stabilization.
1
Price controls always create scarcity. Period. Rent control is literally cited in Economics 101 textbooks (along with taxi medallions) as an example of well-intended regulation that harms consumers by discouraging investment in new supply. Better enforcement of a failed system is not the answer. Encouraging more supply is the answer.
The same people who appear to understand the danger of price controls when it comes to Venezuela, fail to recognize the same patterns in their own neighborhoods.
53
If investors don't want to invest in real estate, then let them go elsewhere. Let them invest in the stock market, or in businesses! Nobody is twisting their arms or forcing them to build apartment housing. Even further, let them build condos!
That's the problem. Investors (developers in this case) are going elsewhere because rent control makes building affordable housing in NYC risky. Those who do invest are incentivized to drive out existing tenants.
This kind of thing has now become a plague in America and our homeless population will dramatically increase so rich white men who by law don't have to pay regular income tax BECAUSE THEY ARE PROPERTY OWNERS. That's right folks no newspaper can be bothered to cover that aspect of our vile gov't but we ought to question why landlords are put in the ONLY %3 income tax regardless of how many properties one owns.
13
All the utterly crass comments here, about Capitalism, about people not paying rent. Does anyone read anymore? Did anyone actually read the article? Most of these people have been current on their rent, have done nothing wrong and are being cheated out of their homes that they are LEGALLY occupying.
These landlords are allowed to lie, to cheat, to just do whatever they please to scam people out of their homes. Process servers who never serve papers? False statements on court papers? I bet all the people commenting who don't give a darn about all of THAT, would be screaming "Off with their heads!!!" if any of these tenants were found out to be undocumented immigrants, right? Because "the law is the law", right? That's what I keep hearing from the Right. We must be a nation of LAWS, right? Obviously, the exception to that, is if you have enough money to flout the law, then, well, that's just "Capitalism". It's a sickness, being Conservative. It's SAD.
196
Yes, the landlords described in the article are behaving badly, but they are responding to what economists call "perverse incentives". If there was no rent control (and it was easier to build), greedy developers would have incentive to provide good housing at a competitive price.
With rent control/stabilization in place, they are encouraged to churn through tenants and to harass longtime residents. Whether or not a landlord succumbs to the temptation to harass is based upon their own sense of morality, but why is the city providing this perverse incentive (price controls) in the first place?
13
There is no "person" in the economists' equations. Our society should help people. Everything is not a formula.
4
the article was slanted. Mostly about the "bad" landlords, very little about dishonest, destructive tenants. Probably would not have been hard to find, but then again, the agenda takes precedence over presenting a balanced view.
4
The banks and the housing market should never have been bailed out the way Bush and then also Obama did. All they achieved is re-inflate the housing bubble with all that cheap money going to the very same criminals that had created the bust before.
21
You are confusing home ownership and foreclosure with a discussion on renters and eviction.
8
Get used to it, folks. No one cares. The city is available to the highest bidder. Everyone else, drop dead!
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/playing-blues-b-b-king-times-square-m...
20
Really important article...but long overdue.
Wish that the NY Times had been covering this on a regular basis since the Bloomberg Administration.
A few things to note about media coverage gaps of the issue of "affordable" housing...
Generally, media coverage does not properly clarify the critical differences between rent-stabilized and rent-control, and the historical context. Same with Mitchell-Lama etc.
In reporting on newly created "affordable" units, the media fails to identify the length of the "affordability" - eg is the "affordability" limited to, let's say 25 years parallel to the term of the developer tax break? And the housing goes to market rate? Or is it permanent affordable rent? Affordable housing that ends in 20 or 25 years is misleading - sort of fake affordable housing. These are crucial facts left out of most media coverage, including NY Times coverage unfortunately.
Media reporting also fails to discuss some types of "affordable" units that because of the subsidy type/formula, do not go to needy or longtime NYC residents - but instead end up going to relatively affluent 20-something suburban transplants to NYC who on paper have relatively modest salaries but are actually being helped financially by their affluent parents.
13
If they want to be in this business, landlords should be taking ALL the risks, and be punished, severely, when they cause harm to their tenets, or fail to respond to their requests. This is unconscionable.
8
ChesBay-
You speak as if there are never abusive tenants. Ludicrous.
5
Tenants use the system better than landlords. A tenant who hadn't paid rent in 4 and one half years, finally took the landlords offer of $5,000 to leave, probably to pull the same game on an unsuspecting landlord.
24
Really? And that's your justification for a system built around throwing all those tenants who do pay? ...
No offense, but if anyone is "unsuspecting"... it's you.
14
Only the New York times could write an entire article on rent regulation without noting the obvious: rent control is the primary reason why rents are so high in New York City, because 20% of the units are effectively off the market. Also the article fails to note that most beneficiaries of rent control are not poor.
86
Part of the problem is that the maximum income permitted for a rent regulated apartment lease holder is $200K. People making $200K do not need financial assistance in order to afford to live in NYC. The income threshold should be much, much lower, e.g., below $75K.
20
They aren't poor because they aren't paying $3000 a month for a one-bedroom.
There is a monumental difference between rent control and rent stabilization. Rent control only applies to persons occupying their apartment before 1971.
I live in a rent stabilized apartment in Astoria and pay a preferred rate because the stabilized rate is too high for the neighborhood, as is true in most of Queens. Manhattan is the outlier and even then there are very few apartments where the stabilized rent is limiting with most of the apartments subject to the rent being uptown.
The first article in the series mentions the trend towards corporate landlords. I'd love to see a deeper exploration of LLC laws as they pertain to NYC real estate. Also, how about a follow-up article on political contributions from real estate LLCs to NY State politicians? How many upstate politicians who reliably vote to weaken NYC's rent regulations are being bankrolled by NYC real estate interests hiding behind an LLC?
12
Corporate landlords are the worse. A building next to me was bought by some international real estate fund, banked into the fund, likely never to see light again, or put on the market...it's horrible.
3
Oh, no—a “free market!” We wouldn’t want to have one of those. And imagine—a legal system that can work for parties on both sides of an issue, instead of “protecting” the interests of just one. Sound the alarm, NYT.
19
Rent regulation distorts the market, restricts supply, and drives up prices for everyone else. The city will increasingly become only for the affluent who can afford to rent a $5K a month two bedroom or the lower-middle class locked in their rent regulated units.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/magazine/the-perverse-effects-of-rent...
18
There is really no reason for a working class person, who rents, to stay in New York. Whatever working class job you are doing in NYC, you can do anywhere else in the country, and live much cheaper. If you are working class in NYC, you are not enjoying the benefits of a city like New York, no fancy restaurants, no fancy shows, no fancy neighborhood, just wasting your money on rent. Makes no sense. Never had a desire to live in NYC, I visit from time to time, that's enough.
10
You can do no better in order to understand the behind-the-scenes machinations of this administration & it's shameful pretext of encouraging so-called 'affordable housing' than to read this 2015 investigative report.
The economic disparities have now become more extreme-those with no voice -such as the NYCHA residents-are being subjected to lead in their drinking water...mold in their homes...even as deBlasio gives predatory private developers -with track records of criminal behavior-adjacent infill to develop pricey apartments. The Mayor has beaucoup money for REBNY gifts of tax subsidies...city owned HPD properties to give away to developers at bargain $1 prices (!)...but can't cough up money to protect those in harms way? Our responsibility -ethically and in fact?
https://www.progressqueens.com/news/2015/7/14/a-lack-of-democracy-in-new...
5
It´s happening even in Madrid where the law suposedly protects the renter…vultures are all around: https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2018/05/09/diario_de_espana/1525886...
2
OK, we all feel sorry for 87-year old tenants who have come to rely on their rent regulated apartments when threatened. But anyone who takes an honest step back realizes--this system is madness! Rent regulation has created a system that works--really, really works--for a lucky few, most of whom were already pretty well off. But the complexity of the system paired with other onerous restrictions makes it not work for everyone else. It is not good public policy to make a lucky few win the lottery while creating much higher prices for everyone else.
98
Ted--She, and many, many others, cannot be considered "lucky." Even you can see this.
7
Yea right, more landlord sob stories is what we need in a city that is in the grips of greedy real estate speculators.
7
ChesBay-
She is lucky in the fact that she got to live in that apartment for the price she paid for so long.
5
I have old friends that have lived in a rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn for years. I hope this isn't happening to them!
Another example of the Ruthless Rich working to achieve the Oligarchy they've longed to see return since its heyday in the 19th century.
9
I know of a family member who has a 2 family home, the tenants refused after a time to pay rent. It took him two years to get them out, paid lawyers to do so, and never got his back rent from them. Result? He does not rent out his place anymore, he just holds onto the space. The courts were so biased to the tenants and so inefficient that he feels it is not worth the trouble. There are other sides to this complex issue to consider and not every tenant is the victim of a REIT looking to abuse the system, some are abusive tenants of small landlords who themselves are mom and pop.
49
Rent regulation or no rent regulation. What this scourge happening in New York speaks to is institutional corruption, callousness and criminality. In 2018 we come up very short on morality, or decency as exemplified and normalized by Trump and his vassals. He tested this behavior here in New York City where the common good was abandoned long ago in favor of a malicious, unchecked greed. Unfortunately it is one which the Mayor speaks about in a most disingenuous manner as he has an A rating from big real estate for his grand gestures to demolish much of New York on a bender for the building of luxury towers. Here and there is a low-income apartment which does not begin to replace all the affordable housing which was lost to real estate land grabs. An attitude also fostered by the State in doling out billions in tax abatements to developers called corporate welfare. And we wonder why the transit system is in such a state of epic disrepair? Apparently campaign cash is enough of a prize for a wink and a nod from government leaders. And in the process greed has been institutionalized. With it average New York citizens have been dehumanized and displaced either onto the streets or out of their homes to relatives. This article exposes with courage and honesty a well-known but all but ignored crisis. World class city? I don't think so.
10
The best way to ensure a stable supply of quality housing in the City that will benefit all, and not only winners in the lottery of affordable housing, is to increase the supply of housing stock beyond the demand. Make it easier to build new housing, renovate the old, and move the government away from the system. The City's role should be to supply a quality building code, speedy and forceful inspections, and to guarantee a fair marketplace.
32
It's NY...I don't think housing supply that exceeds demand will ever happen. as to all the new construction...some of those buildings are already starting to fall apart. The infrastructure has not kept pace with all the new construction...for example, all new buildings should have mandatory and required in building parking. Just sayin'.
1
As a small time landlord in a small market this article doesn't make much sense to me. Evictions are something that I avoid like the plague. They are expensive, burdensome, and time consuming and are typically the very last resort. Also, I agree with previous comments that rent control is not an effective solution. Building more high density housing or improving infrastructure to allow commuting from further away thus increasing supply seems like a better system to me. If we as a city, state, or country believe that rent needs to be subsidized then they need to agree to being taxed to do so. Capping the rent reduces the incentives to build and puts the entire burden of subsidy on the landlords. I know that it seems like landlords are evil, but many of them are not. They are trying to fix properties and give people places to stay at market prices. They will have to be part of the solution going forward and the vilification seems odd to me.
30
Maybe eviction doesn't make sense to you because you aren't being forced to rent an apartment that for $300 that you can get $3,500 for?
1
That's true. I am allowed to rent my units out at the market rate. If rent control is creating incentives to evict and reducing the incentive to supply new housing, it seems to me that eliminating or changing rent control would be a good first step.
5
Like many liberal ideas espoused by the NY Times, the basic idea is to fight reality and human nature. These apartments are potentially worth huge amounts of money, and it is inevitable that numerous people will try to get their hands on it. They are tough characters with an intense interest in making money and getting rich. On the other side, we have namby-pamby liberals who want to help the less fortunate, but who have no personal stake in the outcome.
Reality and self-interest will always win in such cases.
25
Reality and self-interest do not necessitate the underhanded, calculated, and pre-mediated ways people are being taken advantage of described in this article. Since when do we consider taking advantage of people as "winning"? If people can't pay their rent and are way behind, that is one thing. What this article is describing is behavior that is not above board. Making money and getting rich is not license to run roughshod over common decency and existing laws.
132
i don't mind being called namby, but pamby goes too far, Mr. Connecticut. Some of us are just plain working people who've been priced out of our city, then our state, then our neighboring state, then our region of the country.
11
So you're saying this article is a liberal idea being espoused.
...
That's nice Jonathan.
Your basic premise here is 'Greed will win'.
Hopefully you're cynical, and not another business man from Trump University Inc.
11
My guess is that most people commenting here have never been to Tenant/Landlord Court, or had to fight for the home they have occupied for years -- hence the extreme lack of empathy.
There's no doubt that the city's population is on the increase, and the supply doesn't always meet the demand, that's because the demand isn't always for the ultra-expensive luxury residences now being built.
In fact, most hard-working New Yorkers spend most of their time just trying to pay the rent, so it's not about subsidized housing or folks just living on the dole.
There's something very wrong with the system when sick and elderly people are being tossed out onto the street for the sake of a buck, and long-time residents are harrassed to the point of exhaustion.
As a native New Yorker I have seen this increasing trend, but I also remember a time when when you didn't have to be a Rockefeller just to live like like a human being in this city.
And it wasn't even that long ago.
259
Your assumption about new housing is incorrect. I live in the South Bronx and it's bursting with subsidized or market-rate middle-class housing. The ultra-luxury market may get all the press, but the units are only a small fraction of total current NYC construction.
Thank you for saying this. It's refreshing to see that some people still have a heart.
This is heartbreaking for those you lost their residence of many years but consider this: an older couple, living in a very desirable neighborhood, suddenly sees their annual property tax go way up. Many elderly on fixed income cannot afford high property taxes. They will have no choice but to sell.
Life is not kind to many. But this is the way it is.
Thank god, the New York Times is writing about the horrors with housing. Ms. Christine Quinn allowed this insanity to go on as did the City Council. Yet these do nothing politicians want your vote. Thank you for exposing these swamp people for the demons that they are. A country who worships the dollar, racism, and guns. This article just makes you sick as do the past articles about this housing issues that just want to suck money out of social workers and everyone who doesn't work on wall street. This should be an election issue and we all need to vote and hold these city council people accountable. Lets get mad and take action enough is enough.
25
This is a NYC problem. It does not exist in my community whatsoever. It is does not exist in most parts of the country. I've been a small time landlord in the Midwest, and I had to struggle for every dime. I could not raise rents, because people simply could not pay higher rents. We have no unfair system here where a lucky few get rent control, and others have to be gouged endlessly. Even very poor people here have access to housing.
The idea that NYC "worships guns" is hilarious. You have the strictest anti-gun legislation in the nation, and virtually ban all guns.
1
@Citizen
Sorry. But if you think this is only a NYC problem that doesn't exist in most parts of the country -- you either don't read, or you don't get out much.
1
N. Smith: I think it is you who does not get out much! rents are not this crazy high in most of the US (I except markets like Boston, San Francisco, LA) and nobody is evicting tenants to remodel ratty old buildings in former slums. We don't have rent control or stabilization and never did.
1
The Public Advocates list of worst landlords is a big publicity stunt that comes out once a year. Meanwhile, you can be on the worst landlord list year after year after year and the city does nothing to advocate for those who lives in buildings that have many code violations. And, Tish James has the audacity to want to be the AG when her office doesn't maintain this list on a monthly or weekly basis. Even worse is the fairly newly created Homes Support Unit an arm of the NYC Mayor's office. Many political appointees in this unit, but code enforcement ignored daily. What they exactly do should be investigated by NY Times?
3
It's past time to dismantle the Statue of Liberty and put it in mothballs until this Gilded Age is over. Its famous quote below rings hollow and hypocritical. America's business model is to lie, swindle, and take full advantage of the poor, tired, and downtrodden.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
7
Oh please: that poem on the Statue of Liberty was written by a society lady and bolted onto the pedestal by a group of her friends and as such it has never been representative of "the people". It does not stand for any official governmental policy, and neither does it have any moral authority. Those lines have no place in a serious discussion of American culture.
8
Wow, just wow..... To vilify the poem at the Statue of Liberty is the epitome of vile and heartless.
4
This would be much easier to digest if not for the NYT constantly running "What $4 Million Buys You" articles in the real estate section.
193
August: Yeah, the NY Times hypocrisy is laughable. The Times spends the majority of its print and web space exalting the rich and their spending on real estate, clothes, artwork and other baubles of financial success. Then, when convenient, for a quick self shot of self-righteous indignation, the Times features a front page story like this one about how evil developers and other avaricious financial players, are kicking middle and working class people out of their apartments. Of course, those developers other avaricious financial players, are doing so to build all those astronomically priced condo buildings shooting up all over the city that are selling units to the Uber wealthy neoliberals whose affluence, ego, and rapaciousness are incessantly celebrated by the NY Times and its neoliberal cronies.
Insert big yawn here. It's like four decades old now -- rich neoliberals getting outraged by the consequences of over-development of the city that has constructed the very housing they want to live and ultimately results in the general maintenance of their own economic status. Yeah, they'll get on top of the problem right quick.
6
The NYT is an implicated in this fawning adulation of real estate, developers, speculators and the very, very rich (0.1%) as ANYONE ON EARTH. They feed the monster about the greed, desire for fancy residences, opulence and bragging about what you paid for real estate as ANY other force in the region. The "What $4 million buy you" and "The Hunt (for an insanely expensive apartment)" are both just despicable. What kind of hypocrite runs those for years and years and then publishes THIS expose?
3
amen August, i just posted a similar comment above.
1
If you can't pay your rent, you deserve to be evicted. Case closed. Using race, age, disabilities, or any other excuse to stiff a landlord is discrimination against the landlord and his/her right to enforce the contractual agreement with the tenant.
29
Perhaps you could suspend your hapless disdain for the non-wealthy by actually reading the article:
“What happened to Ms. Carranza and the others shows how New York City’s housing court system, created in part to shelter tenants from dangerous conditions, has instead become a tool for landlords to push them out and wrest a most precious civic commodity — affordable housing — out of regulation and into the free market.”
10
Some of us don't see "out of regulation and into the free market" as a negative.
If it was your place Valerie, are you ok with accepting 10% of the rent you could get?
4
The notion that a court system is there to "protect" one special class from another special class is anathema to the concept of justice. The law and it should be applied uniformly and without favor.
5
I lived for my first 30 years, and later on a few more in Buenos Aires, where there was a de-facto system to protect tenants. It never worked. It ljust ed to landlords not renting, and a chronic lack-of-housing problem. Government subsidized affordable housing can work if supply and demand are close, but if supply exceeds demand by many folds, it is just another way for the government to pick winners and losers. Unclear rules just help those who can "work" the system.
The solution is simple, free the market so investors can also build cheaper appartments without the fear that they will not get their return, and for retired people, help them find affordable housing outside the city within a community of peers.
17
Nonsense, the market is already free and all developers build are luxury condominiums, because that’s where most of the money seems to be.
4
People move to New York for work. The most important fact in this series is New York City's increasing population as housing stock decreases. The next question is, why are capitalists abandoning upstate and the mid-west forcing residents to seek elsewhere? Tech jobs supposedly can exist anywhere, but instead are concentrating on the coasts. If capitalists want to centralize, why are they not offering cities attractive high-density housing plans? Capitalists have lost imagination and vision.
Not only do capitalists want unicorn employees, they want those employees to live elsewhere, but mostly out of their sight.
14
This article captures the absurdity of the whole ridiculous process of rent control. Isn’t it high time to get rid of this “emergency measure” put in during the Second World War? Virtually every other city in America has, even the loony fringe ones such as Oakland, Santa Monica and Boston have. Why should one group of private citizens (owners of rental properties) subsidize the life style of another group of private citizens (tenants)? Incidentally I am neither.
If we think certain members of our society deserve a subsidy to live in prime buildings in great locations, then let all of us taxpayers ante up. However, as shown many times, in many cases these tenants are far from as needy as Ms. Carranza. Finally, nothing provides a greater disincentive to investors to create new housing than the idea that the government is going to control the price for what you can charge for your property when it is completed
152
Actually, rent control was scrapped in the 80s. And as for your complaint that our city is subsidizing poor people's rent (why can't they just move so we don't have to deal with them at all - yes?), I suggest you take a look at the numbers. In fact, NYers are now spending far more on subsidies to the developers because they have overstocked luxury housing in the city and now want tax payers' help to pay to both bail them out and give them incentive to keep building more (empty) housing. One of the more egregious examples is the "Freedom Tower," which alone has been subsidized at tax payers' expense in the billions since no one (rightly) wanted to rent space in a massive grave site.
It would really help if those who "have" in the city stopped complaining about how the "have nots" are ruining your buzz. The rich in the U.S. pay the lowest in taxes of any industrialized nation in the West. A little gratitude might be appropriate, especially since your low taxes are fueling so much of the poverty and decay in our country. If anyone is being subsidized in this country, it's the rich.
33
Excuse me, but it’s actually developers that are subsidized by taxpayers.
12
@Richard Huber: Whatever valid point you had was erased with the "Loony Fringe" screed. It would be so-very-nice if commenters here would realize the comment thread is not an extension of their Facebook screeches.
8
That's how capitalism works. And it works.
10
Until it doesn't.
Capitalism was on the ropes in the 1930s. It could easily again find itself on the ropes in the 2020s.
Even Adam Smith contended that Capitalism would fail unless people were moral.
Wealth is the least credible indicator of moral development in this society that I know of.
8
True. But it is also true that capitalism contains the seeds of it's own destruction.
4
This is de facto social engineering...facilitated by REBNY and predatory landlords/developers-enabled by Mayor deBlasio and too many City Council Members who never met a campaign contributor they wouldn't go to bat for...ergo the real estate industry's appropriation of NYC.
Look to the Mayor's pontification of so called "affordable housing'...the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing passed in 2016...a barely disguised gift to developer interests masquerading as evening the housing playing field for the underserved...no...it has only exacerbated displacement & gentrification as mega-towers go up stealing our skies and destroying communities.
16
You know....cities have pretty absolute power to control such stuff through zoning. They can limit the size of apartments or even demand that for every 100 units you build of luxury housing, you must build 20 or 30 or more units of low income housing. NYC is rich beyond the dreams of Midas -- where are all the CITY OWNED housing units for the poor or middle class? Why is NYC -- a liberal blue Democratic stronghold -- more absolutely corrupt than ANY city in the Midwest or South?
2
Well one could begin to look at the Dept of City Planning-a wing of REBNY-it is actually the Dept of Rezoning...don't be fooled. The Commissioners are appointed by the Mayor/BPs/PA & do the Mayor's bidding...and you know how he feels about his treasured ...er...'consultants' whp love to parlay nursing homes (Rivington House) into luxury housing...
The incestuous relationship of the Mayor's agencies and real estate interests is shocking...NYT-where's your story on HR&A Advisors? Carl Weisbrod the former Chair of the DCP was a partner of that Lobbyist RE consultancy...Shola Olatoye-the recently shamed & resigned head of NYCHA worked ay HR&A...Maria Torres-Springer-wife of HR&A partner Jamie Torres-Springer is head of HPD-the agency that would rather sell city property to REBNY developers for $1 than implement city funded Community Land Trusts so folks can have ownership stakes & the ability to actually sustain themselves in this melting pot...
Dirty secrets about incestuous relationships that are overdue for investigative reporting.
3
The problem with New York real estate is that there are too many residents competing for too little living space. Supply vs. demand! The problem becomes all but unsolvable for couples with children or planning to have children. Years ago, my wife and I solved that problem in the only way that seems to work. We sought employment elsewhere and moved. It worked beautifully. We ended up not only increasing our income, but able to afford a splendid, scenically located, 3 bedroom house with a full basement, plus a 1/2 acre partially forested lot -- and that only a relaxed 30 minute drive to work along a scenic route. That is easier to accomplish that one might believe until it is tried.
46
I respecfully disagree. The problem is greed. How else do you explain the multitude of luxury residences going up around the city, and long-time rent-controlled/rent-stabilized tenants being tossed out of their apartments?
Not only that, there's the problem of housing discrimination, ever heard of it?
For people of colour, folks on a fixed income and the elderly, it's just not as easy as you make it appear to be.
25
I respectfully disagree with your disagreement. The reason that new development is tilted towards the luxury end of the market is precisely because the government is *out* of that end of the market. What is the incentive of a developer or a landlord to build and maintain lower and middle income housing if they are only going to second guessed to death by the limousine liberals on the city council or albany with no skin in the game. There are many lower and middle income New Yorkers. This is a huge market for any enterprising developer if only the government would get out of the way. Warping the market does not help anybody.
4
Greed is a problem but it's just a side effect of a poorly designed rent regulation system in the city. Nobody is going to enjoy falling on the sword charging $300 a month for an apartment that should be going for $3,500 -- how do you even maintain that thing? Bringing it into the 21st century probably costs the equivalent of years of rent.
The luxury residences going up are also a side effect of the poorly designed housing policy in the city -- making it onerous and expensive to build in the city means developers can only make the investment worthwhile if they can charge tons of rent. What incentive is there to build cheaper constructions that command low rents when it costs an arm and a leg to build in the first place? Who would be so foolish?
12
This is one great series, ... the kind of reporting that the Village Voice specialized in ... a long, long time ago (or so it seems.)
HAS the team of reporters, however, pushed hard enough for a response from "City Hall?" Several times, of course, it is mentioned how the Mayor's TOP PRIORITY is affordable housing.
When that initiative was launched, he got to big target numbers by talking about SAVING (as affordable) a large number of units.
Obviously, places like Stuyvesant Town - affordable? - have a scale where even a big hedge fund or r.e. operator (I think both "gave it a shot") would have trouble playing the kinds of nasty games played here, ... but it's equally obvious that 80-somethings on the Upper West Side in much smaller buildings will - many of them - probably be "steam-rolled."
There are half a dozen reasons to be outraged, but all it would take is one "statesman" like set of actions on the Mayor's part to stop this in its tracks.
I'm not the first to wonder just how beholden he is to the array of forces on the EVICTING side of this war, and I'm sure quite a few Councilmen depend on REBNY and similar to fund their campaigns, but this reminds me of Mayor Bill's earliest days - even some when he was still campaigning.
WHEN HE RECOGNIZED that his son was likely to be "targeted," he got that little bet EXTRA upset ... so as to do the right thing in that connection - i.e., reducing stop & frisk.
Can't he summon up some empathy for somebody ELSE's grandmother?
12
Here's another...An important report-from 2015...as timely & telling as ever. A must read:
https://www.progressqueens.com/news/2015/7/14/a-lack-of-democracy-in-new...
3
Matthew Desmond's "Evicted" is well deserving of the Pulitzer it won a few years ago.
He also helped launch the Eviction Lab web site and it's interesting to see the rates are in different areas of NYC, I'm surprised this article and the previous one make no reference to that site.
13
The first two articles in this series have been incredibly depressing - revealing as they do not only the extreme challenge of retaining authentically affordable housing in New York City, particularly in the outer boroughs, but also the intense corruption infecting the system, corruption that evidently begins with the politicians and judges who allow these shenanigans to go on - and who resolutely refuse to punish bad landlords and lawyers as they so justly deserve to be punished.
If our politicians and judges continue to be bought and paid-for extensions of the same revolting mindset that gave us Donald Trump as President, then they must not be later surprised when an increasingly disillusioned citizenry opts for a far more radical approach.
57
In one of the greatest cities in the world, how can this be allowed to happen? Orbach and Dunbar's management should be public pariahs. Mr. Mayor, where are you? What kind of community does this to its citizens, who are already paying to live in moldy, broken-down buildings? It is greed, plain and simple, that feeds this ongoing horror show. A judge should order Meyer Orbach to spend one month living in one of his own apartments. Seems like that would be a pretty fitting punishment.
45
Yes, it does seem to be a conundrum. If NYC is one of the greatest cities in the world, how can this happen?
Indeed, it is happening. Therefore, NYC is not one of the greatest cities in the world. NYC denizens pride themselves on being tough, cynical, and smart (self interest first). This is the end result. A dog-eat-dog city, waiting complacently for rising sea level to render inconsequential their real estate dreams.
4
The real issue is that Ms. Caranza has lived in NYC for 60+ years and still does not speak English. Why is that not questioned? How can someone live here for that long a time period and not learn the language of the land?
42
My wife's grandmother was an immigrant from Italy in the 1930s.
She never learned a word of English, she never needed to, the entire community where she and her husband lived, spoke Italian.
How many millions and millions of immigrants have come to the United States in our long history and had little to no English and yet our nation has thrived?
48
Do you really think for one moment that Ms Caranza would have been treated any better if she spoke English?
50
My grandmother came here in 1910 from Ukraine. She barely spoke any English until the day she died in 1984. If you live in a community where most people speak the same language as you, you tend not to speak anything else. Incidentally, there's no official language for the US, if that's what you mean by "language of the land."
46
This lengthy article, as extremely well written and researched, has brought back a few memories for me. I lived in Brooklyn for many years and about 11 years ago, retired to rural Montana. The 'shock' of the relocation was somewhat more extensive than I thought it would be, but after a time, I grew to enjoy this new home I retired in. The rents here are what New Yorker's would envy. I have a 3 Bedroom, 2 bath apartment with a Mountain view for $625.00 a month. Though I cannot get 'a slice', nor Bagels from Murray's, or Chinese Take-Out, the savings have helped enormously. (If you do decide to retire here, do not have 'Montana-Chinese' at any Chinese restaurant you come to; merely a suggestion.)
59
Capitalism........market forces......does anyone remember these ideas? If people can't afford to live in the city move out. This reason alone is why I live 2 counties from which I work. Commute and deal with the reality.
13
Frank..how easy is it to say to poor people "if you don't like it here, move" "If you can't afford to live here, move" If you are barely paying your rent and everything around you is going up in price, how, where, when, and in what capacity do you move? Move where, Move how, Move when????????
25
Capitalism? Market forces? The issue here is the criminality of landlords and their minions who force tenants out of their apartments by illegal maneuvers.
138
We do remember those lie ideas, and we're dead tired of groveling to them!
Landlords don't compete to set the lowest rents, they compete to get the people who pay the highest rents (and as an added bonus, to see who can chuck out the most blacks and Latinos with "construction" harassment and zero-grace-period rent billing). The so-called "free" so-called "housing" so-called "market" is none of those things, and a housing RIGHT with strict 2-per-person limits, landlords always available to contact on business days, eminent domain to punish cruel ones, strict rent controls, and no LLC or non-occupant ownership would fix all that in one-tenth of a jiffy.
But then, you'd know that. Landlords tend to give their peasants a wide berth of "2 counties"...or...oceans. The latter tend not to pester the former to obey basic laws when the choice is either drive to the landlord or drive to the job.
November's coming. So are we.
19
As usual, the extremes rule here.
After WW2, because of a housing shortage, the landlords were bilking the returning GIs and rent regs. were started including rent control.
The problem then got so bad for the landlords, they were abandoning whole apt. buildings like in the So. Bronx in the 70s/80s.
Now NYC has become trendy again and the landlords are back in the greed game. Any tenants with any rent regulated apts. have a bullseye on their backs.
How about a sensible policy with minimums and maximums on rent? A landlord should be guaranteed a minimum rent to make a profit but not market rents where they can gouge poorer people. Everything in between would be determined by the market.
This way we don't have the tremendous upheavals were either the landlord or the tenant gets destroyed.
15
Yes, well, sort of. You're right that whole buildings in the Bronx (and other areas of the city, like Soho) came about in the 1970s because landlords abandoned them. But that abandonment stemmed from a deeper cause--bad urban planning and the financial crisis of the city (which was at one point a mere 4 hours away from bankruptcy, saved only because the Teachers Union bailed it out).
Another big part of the disaster in the 1970s was Robert Moses and his ilk. Moses was in love with automobiles, and thought nothing of destroying whole neighborhoods in places like the South Bronx. He bulldozed them to smithereens, cutting them in half to make room for freeways. Destroy a neighborhood and its way of life and you destroy the local economy of that neighborhood and its localized tenant income.
This is happening again today, albeit in a different way. Beginning with Bloomberg's administration, the city decided local neighborhoods and local tenant income don't matter. The tax revenue that came from giving permits to rich developers to build housing for the rich and the super-rich was too tempting to pass up. We see the consequences on streets like Bleecker, in the Village, where ground floor vacancies abound. Gone are the cleaners, the small delis, the little shops--all gone, driven out by a city policy that permitted apartment rent increases without regard for the neighborhood.
84
Thank you for your reply Emile. Yes usually in some way shape or form it comes down to greed on somebody's side.
4
Very selective view of the causes and fixes of NY's 1975 financial crisis! No doubt the things you mentioned contributed to the last, and will contribute to the next crisis; but no mention of the recent increase in city employees (the most EVER) and the rise in pension funds, which parallels what happened in the 1960s, leading to massive debt as the economy (and tax revenue) slowed down?
Partisanship, letting "your side" off the hook, is what leads to these crises. De Blasio is using old style politics, building a political machine via city hall job handouts, that may very well lead to big debt problems in the future.
3