The Issue: Whether rent regulations truly help the middle class and poor find affordable places to live.
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“The Apartment Complex” got it exactly wrong (Editorial, July 10).
Rent regulation is the result of a housing shortage, not the cause.
Tenant protections were created to give more New Yorkers homes they can afford. Even though the median income of rent-stabilized households is a mere $37,000, protections have been systematically gutted by the Real Estate Board of New York and Mayor Bloomberg’s landlord pals.
The senseless subsidies that The Post should be seething about are the millions in tax-breaks for the luxury condos of wealthy New Yorkers and non-residents. Those giveaways to developers are often funded by tax dollars from New York’s working families — the people hit hardest by the huge increases for rent-stabilized apartments, adopted by Bloomberg’s rent board.
Our next mayor should support stronger rent regulations and create more affordable housing.
Michael McKee
Real Rent Reform
Campaign
Manhattan
Why is anyone surprised at the shortage of apartments and the amount of rent required to get one of them?
That’s what more than 60 years of war-time, “temporary” rent control brings. Rent is artificially kept low because of a shortage of apartments, and then the shortage continues because it is not economically feasible to build more at the allowed rent.
Steve Becker
East Meadow
Supply and demand is a basic element of price determination, but greed is another element. In every American city where rent regulations were either decreased or eliminated — including Boston, San Francisco and Cambridge — there was no stabilizing of rents and no additional housing created.
Rather, the loss of regulations led to exactly what is already occurring here: landlords charging whatever they feel they can get, often much more than is supported by simple supply and demand — even if that means that both the lower and middle classes are unable to pay.
I resent the implication that after helping to create neighborhoods that are so desirable that landlords can charge exorbitant rents, those of us in rent-regulated apartments should be forced out because we cannot pay outrageously inflated rents.Ian Alterman
Manhattan
The shortage of affordable housing is the direct result of years of weakening rent laws, including vacancy decontrol, by the state Legislature.
Unfortunately, without campaign-finance reform, the real-estate industry will continue to have its way with many of our legislators in Albany. These are the same legislators who have blocked all attempts at rent reform, while they dole out corporate welfare in the form of tax abatements for luxury towers in Manhattan.
To blame the lack of affordable housing on rent regulations is ludicrous. Barry Soltz
President
Janel Towers Tenant
Association
The Bronx
In cities like Boston and Cambridge, where rent regulation ended, the result was a huge increase in apartment price, not more affordable housing.
Ending regulation — from housing and gun regulation to Wall Street and Texas fertilizer plants — harms, rather than helps.
In fact, many developers are now choosing rent regulation because they get tax breaks. And if owners get less than 8 percent return on investment and are willing to open their books to the state, they can get a rent increase. So they’re not suffering.Sue Susman
President
Central Park Gardens
Tenants’ Association
Manhattan