Posted on 04/24/2012 12:38:16 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Fans of rent control cheered yesterday when the Supreme Court declined to take up a case challenging New York’s rent-stabilization laws. Yet killing the rent laws would be the best way to get us back to broadly affordable housing.
In March, Manhattan rents blew past their 2007 high: The average rent (excluding rent-stabilized apartments) is now $3,418. This is a real crisis; people can’t find or are being driven from their homes.
This, when the local economy is far from booming. As The Post recently reported, the city’s overall unemployment rate now stands at 10.2 percent. The rate in Manhattan, 8.5 percent, is still nearly double the 2007 level.
That means housing demand should be relatively weak, so the problem is supply. Indeed, only 2,229 apartments are slated to enter the Manhattan market this year — a third off the average of the last seven years.
Why are so few apartment buildings being built if rents are so high?
The city has a host of laws that make construction more expensive, but the rent laws are the worst.
Tenants living in buildings built before 1974 (and often their children) must be given a never-ending series of lease renewals at the “legal” rents. That means these older buildings can’t be demolished and replaced with modern high rises, because there’s no way to evict the protected tenants.
That’s why the city’s streetscape is still littered with century-old tenements — low-rise “walk ups” with outdoor fire escapes. In a free market, developers would assemble and then demolish several adjacent tenements, and build a modern structure with hundreds of apartments to replace those lost.
Thanks to the rent laws, even a single protected tenant can block a major development. They can even bar development of vacant land —
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Rent Control. Another superb Democratic idea.
Another reason I’d love to put NYC behind me.
The rent is high because Europeans (for example) pay .75 for a dollar and get another 10% off at Macys just for having a passport.
The rent is to damn high for some people because it’s too damn low for others.
This story is misleading. Rent control is a problem, certainly, but does this jerk really want to tear down all the old “walk ups” to make way for crummy looking high rises?
Rents are high because rich foreigners will pay whatever it costs, and because there are still tons of rich people living in the city. A bigger problem is that there are huge areas of slums and burned out houses where thugs are on the second or third generation of welfare payments from taxpayers largely living in upstate NY, and where it’s unsafe to go.
Pressure from the high rents has resulted in some gentrification, but there would be a lot more, if not for the permanent gangster welfare policies of LBJ and John Vliet Lindsay.
Three thousand for an average rental in the Big Apple? Such a deal——NOT....
Another find government solution to our problems.
You’re out to lunch on this one. Sure, the int’l crowd helps to bid up the price on a perfectly located Park Ave penthouse, but it is the regulation-driven clamp on supply that leads to the high prices and overcrowding on the demand end of things.
Why are liberals complaining about what liberal politicians they’ve voted for, have done, or not done? Liberals are getting exactly what they voted for.
Where there is no rent control those that cannot afford to live in the cities where they work use public transportation. It is just the way it is. Even in tiny out of the way places such as Alyeska in Alaska. It is a ski resort town, lots of condos and expensive homes. The service people who work the resort cannot afford to live there so they commute via car pool or public transportation the 90 miles daily round trip to Anchorage. This is the free market.
Rent control robs...steals from the property owners to give to the poor. That is unfair and unconstitutional. If the citizens of NY want to have the poor pay $500 per month for a $3,000 per month apartment then the TAX PAYERS should fund it, not the property owners.
Liberals are always so willing to give to the poor when it is someone else’s money.
By the way, here in Georgia I rent a very nice little home on 200 acres for $500 a month. Can’t afford $3,000 in NY.
That’s the average. It may be distorted by apartments on Park Avenue renting for $30,000 per month, featuring 9000 sq. ft over 5 floors, with a grand staircase and private elevator.
One word: government.
Somewhere, there's a Milton Friedman video on YouTube that clearly and incisively discusses this - just can't find it.
Alyeska Resort is a privately owned, planned resort community.
Thomas Sowell has done a lot of work on how real estate zoning in CA has jacked up the price of land and led to more of the sprawl that do-gooders lament.
But 200 acres in GA sounds fantastic.
Wait, you think Upstate NY subsidizes New York City? Have you set foot in New York State in the last 20 years? Upstate's economy is anemic - at best. Its population is shrinking. Upstate cities have all of the urban problems of NYC, but none of the economic activity.
According to a Rockefeller Institute study, in 2009-2010:
NYC paid out $4.1 billion more in taxes to New York State than it received in services;
Suburban New York Counties (Rockland, Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk) paid $7.9 billion more than they received;
Upstate New York received $12.1 billion more in services more than it paid in taxes. Upstate, therefore, is the big welfare sieve in the state.
$3418 a month only goes to prove Theirs a sucker born every minute. We said bye bye to the rotton apple 30 years ago.
For many years I lived in a NYC apartment building built in the 1932, complete with outdoor fire escapes. It has high ceilings, large rooms, oak parquet floors, wall mouldings and sconces. The lobby is marble (floors and walls) and has stained glass windows. The building, inside and out, is beautiful! The thought of tearing it down and replacing it with a "modern structure" sickens me.
Upstate may be subsidized, but it’s also taxed to death with NY State income and sales taxes.
Yes, I’ve been upstate, and the farming country there is virtually dead. Vermont is hardly a model of economic good sense, but Vermont farms are thriving while NY State farms across the lake are dying.
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