LOVE THAT RENT CONTROL

A resident of Brooklyn, New York is facing eviction. It’s a fairly common, nondescript occurrence in a city of eight million residents. This particular resident, however - sixty-six year old Ella Taliercio - has been attracting some attention. She has been living in her place of residence - in a neighborhood called Park Slope - for half-a-century. She currently pays $147.08 a month – a rate that has remained steady for two decades or better – in a neighborhood where $2000-a-month rents for two-bedroom apartments are not unusual. (The rent was $33 a month when she first moved in, back in 1958).

The 66-year-old faces eviction because the Berkeley Carroll School - which owns Taliercio’s rent-controlled home - wants to renovate her building as part of a multimillion-dollar classroom expansion … Rent-controlled tenants are exempt from eviction unless the landlord is a nonprofit organization, like Berkeley Carroll.

It is, indeed, an emotionally complex situation. Spending an entire lifetime (or close to it) in one place is something most Americans don’t experience. There is a Rockwellian splendidness in such longevity – a kind of storybook quality – that harkens to a different period, when mobility wasn’t so normal.

Taliercio says, “Besides the apartment holding all the memories, my whole life has been here. It's made a big turnaround. I remember the race riots - people left, but I stayed.”

Without question, the pain of vacating her home of fifty years - one that harbors so many of the memories that comprise her life - will be very real. Her sadness will be profound. Anyone with a heart will sympathize. However, significant policy decisions that affect a good number of people cannot be taken through a filter of micro-level emotion. While I genuinely feel for Ms. Taliercio on a personal level – and I mean that most sincerely – there are times when progress benefiting "the many" cannot be stifled to accommodate "the few" – or in this case, the one - especially when more-than-fair compensation has been offered.

Besides, it isn’t as if the Berkeley Carrol School is pulling this decision out of their hat and giving Ms. Taliercio thirty days to get out of their building – which, incidentally, every other resident of the building has already done. She is the only tenant remaining in the building. This has been ongoing for decades.

Did she reasonably expect to pay such a miniscule amount of rent forever? Will her memories be less poignant or significant if she leaves? Certainly she must have realized that she was living beyond her means for the better part of two decades, no?

The reality of life is that micro-level compassion cannot be an adequate barometer when handling macro-level issues. Nothing would ever get accomplished if it were.

I know to many of you I’ve probably spiked into the red on the “cold hearted bastard” meter, and I genuinely don’t mean to be ... but if Ms. Taliercio should live to be one-hundred years old – and I only wish her a long, prosperous and healthy life – is it fair for the rightful and legal owners of the building to wait until then before they are allowed to do what they want with their property?

“Ella Taliercio” - sounds like the lady is ethnically Italian. Oh my! They tend not to like to move since they put down deep, deep roots. Remeber all those people dying in their homes when Mt. Vesuvius erupted? Since I have Italian relatives, let me speculate on this a bit.

She’s lived there since she was 16-years old. It may be the only home she has ever had and now, at age 66, she is being (in her mind) cruelly forced out. Offering her money is no good! It will not replace the comfort of home, all the memories of home. She is not motivated by money. She is emotionally attached to this place!

So, her relatives must be pressed into action and persuade her that there are better situations “out there”. When emotions are involved one must replace old, comforting emotions with other emotions, ones that elicit equal comfort but promise greater satisfaction. Trying to physically force her out will lead to hysterically operatic displays of emotion hinging on black comedy!

No relatives, you say? Want to show yourself as a compassionate and caring person? WOW! Is this ever the spendid opportunity to help someone.

Well, Andrew, here is your chance to be a gentleman and make news. I can’t do it. Hell! I live in Washington state.

I enjoyed your post very much.

I’m not sure where to begin, but I will try to touch on all the points I can.

Respectfully, New York Italians are in no way averse to moving. Looking at Brooklyn as a perfect example - a large, sizeable portion of the Italian population has moved away - and not just the “young ones.” In neighborhoods like Bensonhurst, for example, a good portion of the Italian population, including old timers, have moved away - many to Staten Island, for example. Many moved from homes and apartments they lived in for years for a variety of reasons - changing neighborhoods, rising rents, etc ... I appreciate your Mt. Vesuvius example, but it is a bit of a stretch, I would think, to suggest that the people who died there refused to escape the raging volcano - assuming they had the chance - because of their Italian lineage.

Being motivated by money isn’t the issue - but since you’ve brought it up ... can one not make the case that SHE was motivated by money, not moving away? Who in their right mind would leave an otherwise nice neighborhood - a particularly EXPENSIVE neighborhood, mind you - when they can get away with UNDER $200 a month rent WITHOUT ownership propert taxes. If the apartment were NOT rent control, what are the chances she stays for fifty years? I am not saying - and never would deny - that she is attached emotionally to the place.

So what?

Thank goodness human beings don’t live their lives or make important decisions entirely on emotion.

As for her relatives - using your “Italian” lineage logic - how “alone” do you think she really is? It’s possible, I’m sure, but no friends? Relatives anywhere? No one? My goodness, how did people get along before government rent control? How ever did humans survive?

I am compassionate. I am VERY compassionate. Like so many others here, I actually do volunteer and give 10% of my income to charity. I am active in my community. I am also a Dad - father of two - married to a wonderful woman and take care of my own mother .... It is not up to me to take care of Ms. Taliercio. I have my own family to tend to!

Again, many many thanks for your post. I am most appreciative.

Be well.

Andrew Roman
Brooklyn, NY

“Or why not an old folks home, given her age?”

LOL. She's only sixty-six! Not ninety-six!

My sixty-six year old lady friend and I just spent a week hiking and climbing around the canyons near Sedona’s Red Rocks (and playing footsie with rattle snakes - I thought they were supposed to rattle to warn you). I'll have to ask her if she's ready to move to an old folks home.

You might be in big trouble with that comment on FR. I suspect there might be more than a few sexagenarians who still run marathons, jump out of perfectly good airplanes, etc.

Still, it was funny.

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