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Pols accused of pitting landlords against tenants in housing hunger games
Calling it the “housing hunger games,” city landlords say
the government its pitting tenants against them in a battle to see who is more
deserving.
“Renters and owners are trapped in the housing hunger games, begging the government to consider who is worse off and fighting each other to prove who’s struggles are more deserving of redress,” said Jay Martin, executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP), a group that represents 4,000 owners and managers of over 400,000 rent-stabilized New York apartments.
His comments came after the Rent Guidelines Board voted to
freeze rents for six months and then raise them 1.5 percent on one-year leases
and 2.5 percent on two-year leases. The new rates take effect in October, which
means rents won’t rise until March 2022.
The Rent Stabilization Association, the city’s biggest
landlord group with members responsible for over one million apartments, called
it “incomprehensible,” claiming the board was ignoring its own mandate of politics-free
objectivity and data from its own studies.
According to Joe Strasburg, president of the RSA, the board’s
own studies found a minimum two percent and as much as a 5.75 percent rent
increase on 1- and 2-year rent-stabilized leases was needed to help landlords try
to balance their books.
Over the past seven years, landlords’ property taxes have risen by nearly 50 percent and insurance costs have doubled. Meanwhile rents have increased by just six percent. During COVID, they say they have had to spend more on cleaning and maintenance, many while collecting little to no rents under the statewide eviction moratorium.
“This is unsustainable,” said Strasburg. “This board has done the political bidding of [Mayor
Bill] de Blasio since day one. We can only hope that the next mayor allows the
RGB to operate independently of political pressure and interference, and
embraces the city’s largest providers of affordable housing as the solution,
not the problem – or else affordable rental housing will collapse under their
watch, placing full blame on them for de Blasio’s miserable housing failures.”
With the COVID eviction moratorium extended through the end
of August, Jay Martin said the future for many New York landlords has never
looked so bleak.
“We understand that many renters struggle to make ends meet.
But the government should be providing them with the assistance they need
through vouchers, targeted tax breaks, and other subsidy programs,” said the
housing boss.
“Instead, the government is failing renters. It jacks up property taxes, forcing rents to
skyrocket, and then puts political pressure on the RGB to implement rent
freezes on rent-stabilized units. This forces housing providers to make up the
difference, often leading to higher rents on other New Yorkers to help
subsidize this broken system. Meanwhile elected officials ignore their role in
driving up rents in the first place.
“This system must be changed if we are ever going to address
the critical housing needs of our city.”
Both the landlords and tenant groups agree that a statewide Emergency Rent Relief Assistance Program (ERAP) that launched June 1 and is supposed to help both sides is flawed. With a September deadline to distribute the federal money, a backlog of over 112,000 applications could take up to six weeks to get through, according to the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance which is running the program.
Robert Desir, of the Civil Law Reform Unit, said the newly
approved rent increase will hurt the city’s most vulnerable populations.
“Those in government must advance policies that protect
these communities, not measures that will add further economic harm to people
who are already struggling to make ends meet,” said Desir.
REBNY president James Whelan conceded the RGB is between a
rock and a hard place. “It is clear that the Board had no good options from
which to choose,” he said.
However, Whelan argued that the entire process of regulating
rents in the city is flawed. “This process has once again demonstrated that
rent stabilization in New York City operates under a broken system that places
the role of subsidizing housing wholly on the private sector, regardless of
individual tenant need.
“We remain committed to working collaboratively with the
public sector to develop and implement commonsense solutions that will ensure
better outcomes for tenants and owners alike.”
The post Pols accused of pitting landlords against tenants in housing hunger games appeared first on Real Estate Weekly.