With rent regulations set to expire in June, millions could be affected

If regulations are not renewed many low and middle-income renters could be edged out of their apartments.

By Gina Lee and Chelsea Lo

Published March 9, 2011

Low and middle-income renters say they’re worried about being edged out of their homes in June when rent regulations are set to expire, bringing a million households across New York State up to market-rate rental prices they may not be able to afford.

State Senator Adriano Espaillat has proposed a bill to extend and strengthen rent-control laws, but supporters said his ambitious agenda—which includes re-regulating almost 300,000 apartments and repealing legislation that has been in place since 1993 —is threatened by the interests of powerful landlords and the real estate industry.

DRIVING RESIDENTS OUT
Cynthia Doty, a Democratic district leader on the Upper West Side, has lived in a rent-controlled building for the past 32 years, but she said about half of the building has been converted to market-rate rentals.

If rent regulations are not renewed before they expire on June 15, the tenants still occupying rent-controlled apartments—about half the building—will have to find new homes, she said.

“Without rent regulation at all, the remaining tenants in the building would have to move,” Doty said. “It would feel like a huge tax. People would be paying … 75 percent of their income to rent.”

Mary Tek, an organizer with the advocacy group Tenants & Neighbors, said that the city has one million rent-stabilized units, which means that if one presumes these units have an average of two to three people occupying them, these changes could affect two to three million people.

Ibrahim Kahn, a spokesperson from Espaillat’s office, said that this is what’s driving the Senator—who has the highest number of rent regulated apartments in his district, which covers much of northern Manhattan.

“If Senator Espaillat does not get this done, so many of those families could lose their homes,” Kahn said.

STRENGTHENING THE LAW FOR RESIDENTS
Mario Mazzoni, the chief organizer for The Metropolitan Council on Housing, a tenants’ rights advocacy firm, said that widespread public support for the bill doesn’t ensure that it will get passed in its current form, which includes measures to re-regulate housing formerly under the state-subsidized Mitchell-Lama affordable housing program.

“The landlords want to exempt apartments that are currently regulated from being covered, and they can do that in any number of ways,” Mazzoni said. “Our main goal is to preserve all of the apartments we currently have and to recapture all of the apartments that were lost.”

Tek said she has faith the rent regulations will be renewed, but hopes the laws will be strengthened for tenants.

“The laws are on the table,” she said. “You have tenants on one side who have very strong interests, and then you have the landlords on the other side who are very powerful and wealthy. We fear that weakening amendments could be added to the law.”

Vacancy destabilization, which became part of state law in 1997, though it has been in City Council law since 1993, is one such provision. Under vacancy destabilization, over 300,000 apartments have been converted to market rate. Emily Margolis, a member of the Park West Village Tenants Association, said that she hopes vacancy destabilization will be repealed, but that there are those who would like nothing better than to see it continue.

“New York City is becoming a place where young college graduates are no longer able to afford renting apartments,” she added, noting that renewal of current rent-control laws—which she calls “very detrimental”—isn’t enough to protect tenants.

Tek said that her group wants the new rent-control bill to guarantee lease renewal.

“A lot of tenants are afraid to complain because they face eviction,” she said, adding that though threat of eviction is not legally permitted, landlords can make residents’ lives difficult. “It keeps long-term New Yorkers who have dedicated a lot of energy to the city living in the neighborhood.”

‘MAKE-OR-BREAK-YEAR’
Mazzoni said it’s going to take a collective effort from residents, the city’s 150-plus housing organizations, and state politicians to get the bill passed.

“This is a make-or-break year,” he said. “A lot of people say ‘Oh, my Assembly member always votes the right way.’ But people who support those bills are going to have to do more than vote, they’re going to have to play hardball.”

Mazzoni added that it’s up to residents to show their representatives that they support such strategies for getting the bill passed.

“We’re fighting an uphill battle in terms of the mainstream media,” he said, noting that many real estate companies advertise in major papers. “People need to tell their senator, ‘We want you to do whatever it takes, and we’ll back you up if you do that.’”

Doty said Governor Andrew Cuomo’s public support of the bill doesn’t hurt.

“It’s possible that it’s going to be a harder fight there,” she said of the State Senate. “But the fact that the Governor is for it means that he’s going to put a lot of pressure.”

Doty added that rent regulation, now a fiscal matter, will probably be resolved as part of the state budget due in April.

With a strong partnership between grassroots activists and legislative leaders, the bill has a fighting chance of getting through, Kahn said.

“We feel pretty good about it. We think that we have the momentum to make it happen,” he said of Espaillat’s office.

Still, tenants have a long way to go in the fight for affordable housing, said Paul Bunten, president of Westsiders for Public Participation.

“I’m in favor of any legislation that might extend and strengthen the rent-stabilization law, but such legislation can only stem the tide of loss of affordable housing in New York City,” he said. “It does not address the critical need to increase our stock of affordable housing.”

news@columbiaspectator.com

Bloombergs dream.....A wealthy rich city.. All minorities must flee

Minorities are always the target. The price of living is ALREADY too high, the recession isn't going anywhere soon, gas prices are sky high, and they want to add insult to injury. Nice...real nice.

So now there is an entitlement to live in Manhattan?

Mexican Immigrants Face Darkest Housing Picture

By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: March 29, 2011


Among New Yorkers, it is a sentiment universally shared: the housing situation is tough. But a new study suggests that no one has it as tough as the city’s Mexican immigrants.

Mexican immigrant households are more likely to experience overcrowding and spend more than half their income on rent than those of any other immigrant group or the native-born population, says the study, to be released Wednesday by the Community Service Society, an anti-poverty advocacy and research group in New York.

About 43 percent of all Mexican immigrant households are overcrowded, compared with an average of 15 percent of all immigrant households and 9 percent of households in the general population, according to the report, titled “Housing the City of Immigrants.” The study also finds that about 35 percent of Mexican households spend more than half their income on rent, compared with 26 percent of all immigrant households and 24 percent of all households combined.

“Immigrants as a whole experience worse housing conditions than other New Yorkers,” wrote the authors, Tom Waters and Victor Bach, who based their study on the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey conducted in 2008. “They pay a larger share of their income in rent and they are twice as likely to live in crowded conditions.”

But the researchers, both housing policy analysts at the Community Service Society, also warned that such generalizations could be misleading because when examined close up, housing conditions differ widely among immigrant groups, reflecting the diversity and complexity of the immigrant experience in the city.

The report suggests that the relatively poor housing experience of many Mexicans is a function in part of the population’s newness to New York and their low income levels.

Those immigrant groups that have been in the city for a longer period of time tend to have better access to subsidized and public housing, the report said. In addition, Mexicans, particularly men who have immigrated alone to the United States for work, will crowd apartments to save money, especially if they live in neighborhoods where affordable housing is scarce, scholars say.

Among its other intriguing observations, the report noted that while home ownership rose from one generation to the next — to 44 percent of all second-generation immigrant households from 31 percent of first-generation households — the increase was even sharper among low-income immigrants, rising to 34 percent among second-generation households from 17 percent among first-generation households.

While the authors did not suggest a reason for this difference, David Dyssegaard Kallick, director of the Immigration Research Initiative at the Fiscal Policy Institute, said it could partly reflect the fact that some low-income immigrants were “pushed prematurely into home ownership by predatory lending.”

The study also found that 61 percent of all households led by Dominican immigrants occupied rent-controlled or rent-stabilized housing, the highest of any group. The authors posited one possible cause: Dominicans first settled in areas where Puerto Ricans were already established and where there was a large stock of rent-regulated housing, like Washington Heights.

While there is often a direct parallel between income levels and housing conditions, the study showed that such a correlation sometimes breaks down. Asian immigrants from countries outside South Asia, China, Taiwan and South Korea have the highest median household income of any group, yet 17 percent of their households are overcrowded, nearly double the rate among the general population. At the same time, that group has one of the lowest percentages, 22 percent, of households with extraordinary rent burdens.

The report also found that households led by European immigrants were more likely to be owner-occupied (47 percent) than those of any other group, and the least likely to be overcrowded (4 percent). About 24 percent of all European households are spending more than 50 percent of their income on rent, one of the lowest rates among immigrant groups. But in low-income European households, that rate shoots up to 62 percent, the highest — along with Mexicans — of any low-income immigrant group.

The authors speculated that low-income Europeans “may be paying a premium in order to live close to the higher-income members of their group.”

The study failed to mention the real reason why most recent arrivals from Mexico fail to take advantage of some of the services that might otherwise be available to them, namely that the bulk of them are illegal.

Fat capitalist pigs will have to start paying living wages - minimum of 40 dollars an hour in New York.
S.

Fat capitalist pigs will have to start paying living wages - minimum of 40 dollars an hour in New York.
S.


40 dollars an hour How on earth do you pretend to have that done? Who wants Hyper-inflation

UK London tube( subway ) drivers and many other people get 40$ an hour. If fat pig landlords want fat pig rents they have to pay fat pig prices for tube (subway) and to get their rubbish cleared etc.
Doesn't seem excessive - meal for two in NY is 200 dollars.
Locksmiths are charging 100$ an hour in London - I know I pay.
I looked up grocery and meat prices on www.freshdirect.com many prices are twice those of the DR - a little extra won't do any harm.
Strike and protest for a living wage!

NY state could write into its contracts 40$ minimum wage.

S.

The Rent Isn't Too Damn High

Why it's good news that more Americans are renting rather than buying homes.
By Annie Lowrey

Posted Tuesday, May 31, 2011, at 5:51 PM ET

Is renting really better? Click image to expand.Is renting really better?Today's news that national housing prices have double-dipped to a new recession-era low is grim for homeowners, home sellers, banks, builders, and the president. Prices are down in 19 of the 20 biggest metro regions—Washington, D.C., is the exception. And given the 1.9-million-house backlog in the foreclosure pipeline, nobody expects prices to rebound any time soon.
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But these data can be interpreted another way. The American economy is making a significant shift from buying to renting, and that may ultimately be good news. According to a USA Today analysis of Census data released this weekend, since 2006, the number of households that rent has grown by about 700,000 a year, while the number of households that own has fallen by about 200,000 a year. One reason is macroeconomic. The unemployment rate remains high and wages are down, meaning many people simply cannot afford to buy a house. Plus, nobody wants to take the risk of selling into a down-market. But there are also indications that Americans are electing to rent—and that is a very good sign.

Contrary to the housing-bubble dogma that a mortgaged apartment or house provides a pathway straight to the American Dream—and contrary to the tax code, which encourages buyers and discourages renters with a huge break for mortgage interest—renting is better than owning for many Americans. Indeed, dozens of recent studies have shown that, excepting the go-go bubble years, houses tend not to make very good investments at all: A prospective homebuyer would have made more money taking her down payment, parking it in inflation-adjusted Treasury bonds, and renting.
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Jordan Rappaport of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, for instance, recently looked at housing as an investment (PDF). In a few time periods, like the late 1970s and the late 1990s, buying a home "unambiguously" helped households build more wealth than investing in stocks or bonds. But overall, homeownership built more wealth in just about half of the years between 1970 and 1999.

In a paper titled "American Dream or American Obsession?" Wenli Li and Fang Yang of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank draw a stronger conclusion. They examined returns on housing between 1975 and 2009. Factoring in costs like depreciation and property taxes, "the adjusted real rate of return on housing actually falls below zero … -0.575 percent!" they note. (This is the first time I can remember two Fed economists using an exclamation point.) Nationally, between 1975 and 2009, the national rate of return for homeownership was 1.3 percent, they write. For stocks, it was 3.375 percent.

A number of factors conspire to erode the possible benefits of buying a house, rather than renting it. First and foremost, buying a house means cutting a fat check for a down payment, generally 20 percent of the purchase price. That means you cannot use that money for other investments, whether an education or stocks or gold. You're stuck with your eggs in one house-sized basket.

You are also literally stuck in your home. If you receive a fantastic job offer from a firm in another state, you cannot readily sell your property and move—not without taking the time to deal with brokers, contracts, and banks. That might depress your lifetime earnings, and thus your lifetime wealth. Even worse, if housing prices decline and you want or need to sell—that is, if you are underwater on your mortgage, as about one in four homeowners currently is—you might be truly trapped. That is part of the reason that some economists theorize that high homeownership rates tend to boost unemployment rates.

On top of that, buying and owning a home comes with considerable other costs, many of which are hidden both to purchasers and to analyses that look solely at purchase prices. Closing costs tack on 2 or 3 percent of the sale price. Homeowners need to pay for title insurance, regular insurance, fees, and periodic maintenance and upkeep as well. Plus, there are property taxes. True, in many cases, those costs are factored into rental rates. But in some cases they aren't. And if your roof caves in, you would certainly rather be a renter who can skip out than a homeowner with no choice but to fix it.

Despite all of those risks and costs, of course, for many Americans—particularly those looking to put down roots and stay for a while—owning a home makes sense. (For the record, my fiance and I own our apartment, given that our mortgage is a few hundred bucks cheaper than rent would be in our neighborhood.)

But it is conclusive: Not everyone should own a home. The recession has helped erode the stigma against renting, with about 70 percent of Americans now admitting that it has advantages over buying a house. If people are making unsentimental decisions about whether homeownership is really worth it for them, that is at least one small benefit of the housing bubble bursting.

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