The rent is too damn regulated (with no apologies to Jimmy Mcmillan)

New York Post ^ | 03/28/2011 | Nicole Gelinas

[SeekAndFind]

New York has controlled the rents on “private” apartments since after World War I. The city determines annual rent increases for half of its roughly 2 million rentals. Another nearly 800,000 apartments are “free market,” in buildings too small for regulation or built after the 1970s. The state rules that govern these “tenant protections” expire in two months.

So why does nobody care?

The clue as to why the public is not up in arms right now won’t be found at either extreme of the city’s wildly diverse rental market.

Sure, we’ve all heard about 98-year-old great-grandma who would lose the $400 apartment she’s lived in for eight decades — and about the guy who rents a place in the Time Warner Center for $50,000 a month.

But the truth — which New Yorkers have gradually absorbed despite politicians’ best efforts — is in the boring middle.

If you look at how much government-protected tenants pay, they’re not getting a break. Sixty-two percent of “rent-stabilized” households paid between $800 and $1,750 monthly in 2008. But 56.8% of vacant non-regulated apartments rented in the same range.

Man bites dog: What the pols and the market have done worked.

Former Gov. George Pataki allowed vacant apartments to escape regulation above $2,000, so between 1994 and 2009, nearly 100,000 units have become unregulated — spurring landlords to invest and compete for tenants. Government bureaucrats have been reasonable about allowing landlords to raise the rent on “stabilized” units, and landlords have maintained them better.

New York has what the pols have long said was their goal: a healthy market.

[Red Badger]

New York has what the pols have long said was their goal: a healthy market.

They would have had a 'healthy market' all along if the government had stayed out of the 'private sector' housing market.............

[firebrand]

Nicole will twist the facts any way she can to get rid of rent regulation for other people. I guess she has a high rent.

[PapaBear3625]

The healthiest thing that could happen to New York would be the elimination of rent control and much of the burdensome rental regulations. The net effect would be to price the Welfare Class out of the Manhattan housing market, followed by an influx of middle-class tenants who would actually work in the city and pay taxes.

The main opposition to this would be wealthy condo owners, who would see the value of their condos drop if more middle-class and luxury housing came on the market.

[firebrand]

The main opposition would be the hardworking people who are struggling to keep a roof over their family’s heads and would be homeless. One point one million apartments, equals at least two million people. How is NYC supposed to handle that? I’m sure you don’t live here.

[PapaBear3625]

I used to live in NYC. Your thought is that elimination of rent control would mainly impact working-class families. Mine is that it would mainly impact welfare-class housing. Lack of rent control would create an incentive for landlords to upgrade housing that is currently slum-quality to working-class/middle-class standards.

[firebrand]

That is the story, or one of them. But most poor people are in public housing or Section 8. There’s a huge Tier 2 “homeless shelter,” really an apartment building, in my neighborhood where people stay forever, refusing apartments because they like my neighborhood and don’t want to get sent to an outer borough.

Rent-regulated apartments are mostly held by working people who have had the apartments for years and have not managed to get on the income elevator so could not afford anything else. It is a middle-class or even lower-middle-class group and the apartments are not in slums. There are many artists, musicians, and actors who have not made the Big Time.

Don’t believe all the myths on this subject. They are mostly generated by envy, except that the people spreading the myths would not trade their high income for a low-rent apartment, so they are just blowing smoke and being good little conservatives.

[jkeith3213]

Here’s what I don’t get, you’re on a conservative small limited government website, advocating for big government control over and regulation of the free market, in this case , the housing market, with price controls.

And you wonder why anyone on here would be opposed to that?

No wonder we are in trouble in this country, everyone wants less regulation and spending, less socialism and more freedom, until it threatens to derail their particular gravy train, then their big government program is the best thing ever.

Maybe while New York is at it they should cap the “cost” of groceries, fuel, clothing, and what you in particular, can charge for your work, in the name of “working people” and “actors,artists, and musicians.”

Big government socialism is a heck of a drug.

[firebrand]

I was trying to explain to you the social costs of eliminating the regulations. It would end up costing the taxpayers more. It would be like suddenly ending Social Security. Where would all those old people go? And also the reasons why people keep harping on this like there is no other issue—Gelinas is in particular a one-trick pony. I hate to think what her rent must be for her palazzo pants to be in such a twist.