Blas readies new bla$t at landlords

Mayor de Blasio is ready to hit landlords’ wallets again by overhauling a program that lets them boost rents to cover major capital improvements in rent-stabilized apartments.

De Blasio said Wednesday the program is fatally flawed because owners get to collect the increases forever.

“The way the law works now in Albany, you keep paying and paying and paying even when the capital improvement is long since paid off,” the mayor said on WNYC radio. “That law is broken and needs to be fixed. I think it’s outrageous something like this hasn’t been addressed a long time ago.”

His criticism comes two days after the Rent Guidelines Board voted to freeze rents on one-year lease renewals and cap increases on two-year leases at 2 percent.

It was the second rent freeze in two years.

Landlords said the mayor’s latest comments don’t add up because they fail to account for the borrowing costs associated with major capital improvements, or MCIs.

“It shows his lack of understanding of the business world,” said Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 property owners.

“People aren’t going to invest in buildings at all if all they get back is their initial investment. It doesn’t recognize the cost of borrowing money.”

Changing the MCI formula would require approval by Albany, which Strasburg described as a long shot because the GOP-controlled Senate would likely reject such a proposal. But that could change.

“The Senate is the firewall,” said Strasburg. “If that firewall collapses, a lot of what he wants will actually occur.”

De Blasio also fielded questions Wednesday from a landlord who complained that the rent freeze doesn’t allow property owners to cover unexpected costs.

“Marios” of Elmhurst asked de Blasio why he should pay “close to $10,000” in exterminator fees when tenants bring bedbugs onto his property.

“It’s a lengthy process that the tenant needs to do and perform. They’re not doing that, so the exterminator is going back and forth,” the landlord said. “How do I figure that into my budget?”

De Blasio seemed to sympathize, saying tenants should do their “share, too.”

The mayor rejected critics’ charges that he had politicized the process.

But he conceded that the two rent freezes were meant to offset previous rent increases granted by his predecessors, which he claimed were not justified by the numbers.

“The past is where we had politicization,” he said.