Christine Quinn Speaks Out At Pro-Renter Rally

Landlords and realty groups are so upset over the Tenant Harassment Act that they have sued to strike it from the books. Although I have quite a few disagreements with the Speaker, I am fully with her on this one as she speaks up and fights for renters in our city:

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?

Rent Raised Despite Large Protest

Well the Rent Guidelines Board met last night down at Cooper Union and raised our rents again. The Board passed a 3% increase on one year leases and 5.75% for two year deals. Ronald S. Languedoc who represents the renters wanted a rent freeze for the coming year, but was rejected in favor of the landlords of over one million apartments throughout the city. Higher rent increase proposals were also rejected, leaving the outcome to be in the middle. In the end, neither group was happy.

From The New York Times:

Tenants, some of whom came expecting a higher increase, were nonetheless unhappy. “They could have come down to about 4 and 2,” said Priscilla Durant, 61, who has lived in a rent-stabilized apartment in Washington Heights for 8 years. “That would have been good.”

Hector Lozano, 61, a landlord in her neighborhood, however, said that he was feeling the crush of high taxes and low rent. Mr. Lozano, who owns a 26-unit building in Washington Heights, said that he did not want to have to raise rents, but would this year have to pay $12,000 more in property taxes. “This is insane,” he said of the rental adjustments. “Some landlords are making a lot of money. But a lot of small landlords are going to hell and back.”

There should be a compromise, but only if the two sides are on an equal footing. The fact is that while tenants who do not pay their monthly rent are evicted, nothing happens to landlords who frequently rack up housing violations. With my own building included, landlords are allowed to get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist while they get to charge higher and higher rents.

Maybe if the Housing Authority took better action against negligent building owners, tenants would be more willing to pay the extra rent. I know that the City Council passed a bill to target slumlords, but it is up to the Authority to carry out the council's bark with an appropriate bite.

NYC Looking To Get Tough On Derelict Landlords

If you've had a landlord here in New York, chances are you've had problems getting things done. Generally in my building issues get addressed in a 2-4 month timeframe. When we had that frigid coldsnap in mid-February, our boiler went out and had to be replaced, leaving us in the cold. As bad as that is, it doesn't even come close to what some tenants have to deal with. Rats, seriously leaky plumbing, lead paint and many other problems languish all over the city. Thats why the city council is proposing a bill backed by the Mayor to have a stronger hand in dealing with bad landlords.

From The New York Times:

New York City wants to strengthen its hand against recalcitrant landlords by giving itself broad new powers to overhaul entire building systems — like heating, electrical or plumbing — in long-troubled properties, and to force landlords to pay for the work.

A bill to be introduced in the City Council today with the Bloomberg Administration’s support would give the Department of Housing Preservation and Development the right to go into buildings that have dozens of serious housing code violations and a history of emergency repairs, do cellar-to-roof inspections and fix not only immediate problems, but also the underlying systems.

The proposed program, which city officials said would go beyond anything they knew of elsewhere, is intended to bring as many as a thousand severely run-down buildings into compliance with the housing maintenance code over the next five years and to shore up the supply of habitable apartments for lower-income families at a time when the inventory of lower-priced housing is rapidly declining.

Generally I do not like the government getting into matters such as building repair on this level. Yet the problem here in the city with lazy and/or careless landlords is a serious problem and has to be addressed. Normally when I can't get something fixed I threaten them by paying for the repairs myself at a premium and then deducting it from the rent. Many people unfortunately can not do that and when it comes to structural issues neither can I. When the city takes over, they can pay for those major repairs and force the building owners to cough up later.

Speaker Christine Quinn is one of the sponsors and she knows the territory here after being an advocate for tenants in the past. I have my qualms with her leadership in the council but on this I am fully behind her efforts. Don't expect immediate improvements though, the bill wouldn't take effect for at least five months and only for buildings with a certain number of violations. Nevertheless, I am glad it is being pursued.