Shelter Sham
Needy NYers need real aid, not Blasio rent gimmicks
CONTRA Jimmy McMillan, the rent is too damn low. At least in the world of New York’s rent-stabilized apartments.
On Tuesday, the Rent Guidelines Board will determine rent increases on one- and two-year leases of the 1 million rent-stabilized apartments in the five boroughs. Despite the charade of public hearings, the fix is in: The board isn’t even considering doing what’s needed and raising rents commensurate with rising maintenance costs. Pardon the cynicism, but this is a mayoral election year and all nine board members are appointed by Mayor de Blasio.
Although they’re supposed to act independently of City Hall influence, their recent track record indicates otherwise — voting for unjustified rent freezes last year and in 2015, and this year proposing a woefully inadequate 1 to 3 percent range when the board’s own research data shows that the 2017 cost of oper- ating a residential building rose 6.2 percent.
The writing on the wall is especially troubling coming off consecutive rent freezes and a total 1 percent increase over the past three years. This essentially denied the largest providers of affordable housing the revenue they need to repair and operate their buildings, and to enable them to keep up with 17 percent and 12 percent property- tax and water/sewer rate increases, respectively, that de Blasio has implemented since taking office.
The mayor promises to keep New Yorkers in their homes. But de Blasio’s rent-freeze program and affordable-housing agenda have produced the highest homeless levels New York City has seen since the Great Depression — with 61,935 New Yorkers (including 23,445 children) currently in the city’s shelter system. The mayor’s answer to affordable housing: 90 additional homeless shelters in neighborhoods across the city.
Taken together, de Blasio’s housing policies are a boon for the haves at the expense of the have-nots. According to Census Bureau data, 168,000 wealthy New Yorkers with annual incomes of $100,000 to $150,000 occupy nearly 20 percent of all rent-regulated apartments, while 172,000 poor households with annual incomes of less than $25,000 can’t get the affordable housing they need.
Tenants with low incomes need a lifeline — particularly the 172,000 households with incomes of less than $25K, and those that pay half their income toward rent. But rent-stabilized landlords should not be asked to subsidize tenants — they need this revenue to reinvest in their properties for their tenants’ benefit.
Plus, their property-tax dollars enable the city to provide police, fire, sanitation and other municipal services, so the city only stands to benefit from fair rent increases that enable landlords to re-invest the rent revenue in their buildings and in our neighborhoods.
Landlords of rent-stabilized apartments are the solution, not the problem. But it is difficult for them to provide quality, affordable housing in an economic environment where rental income is frozen and operating costs and expenses are rising.
On the surface, rent freezes — or token 1 percent increases like the one done in 2014 — sound like a win for tenants. But they’re nothing more than political gimmicks that negatively impact the city, affordable housing and income-challenged tenants in communities of color that need permanent rent-subsidy programs that will keep them in their homes.
The Home Stability Support proposal by Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi and Sen. Jeffrey Klein would address the city’s homeless crisis by providing a federal- and state-funded rent subsidy to tenants facing eviction. It’s designed to keep the poorest, income-challenged families in their homes.
Another proposal, the Tenant Rent Increase Exemption program (which passed twice unanimously in the state Senate), would provide a permanent rent subsidy to all tenants (not just senior citizens and the disabled) with annual incomes of less than $50,000 and who are paying half that income toward rent.
If de Blasio and other elected officials, such as Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and members of the City Council, really want to keep tenants in their homes, they would be pushing a lot harder for these proposals in the Legislature — rather than supporting rent freezes and more homeless shelters.