David Is To Goliath, As Renters Are To Landlords

You won't see that one on an SAT exam, but it should be required if you take the test here in New York. It is common knowledge to any New Yorker that if you rent, chances are your landlord sucks in some way or another. For me, nothing gets done with out problems. For the most part, I just call 311 if I want something fixed, otherwise they ignore me. When the temps were around zero this past February, coincidentally the heat went out for three days. So if it isn't a major problem, I just fix it myself, like water damage to my ceiling or a bad pipe under the sink. Compared to some renters in the city, that is nothing compared to what you will see in a Housing Court.

From The Village Voice:

Any given weekday, just poke your head into a hearing room in the city's housing courts. There, row upon row of despairing tenants grimly clutch legal papers that demand back rent and/or eviction. Stalking the aisles, briefcases in hand, shouting out the names of their next victims, is a platoon of lawyers, all of them representing building owners willing to spare no legal expense.

As combat, this has all the fairness of a Panzer division rolling up on a fife-and-drum corps.

More than 90 percent of tenants arrive in these corridors without any kind of legal representation; for landlords, the ratio is the exact reverse. And no wonder: At stake here are the enormous profits that New York's housing market represents, now more than ever.

If you are looking for the proverbial stone to throw at Goliath's head, don't be surprised not to find anything. The real estate lobby is the king compared to the servants that try to reform laws for renters. The money to be made by de-stabilizing rent prices is too much for landlords to idly stand by, they look for anything to evict renters to make way for those that will pay market prices.

Assemblyman Jose Rivera, Maria Baez and others want to "balance" Speaker Quinn's legislation so that renters do not bring "frivolous" claims, so their bill will make it harder for tenants to come to court. Baez and Rivera claim to not be influenced by the Rent Stabilization Association (the real estate lobby), but all you need to do is follow the money. Baez's term is up on the Council and word has it she's running for Bronx Borough President. Want to take a guess at who has funded half of her campaign so far?