The buzz around Brooklyn these days revolves around a number: $3,035. That’s the going average for renting an apartment there.
The figure comes from Douglas Elliman, the city’s largest residential broker. And it confirms something that anyone who has been looking for an apartment in the city’s largest borough no doubt already knows: Brooklyn prices are fast approaching Manhattan levels.
This means that a place that was once an affordable refuge for middle-class families and young people starting out in their careers is quickly becoming just another expensive part of New York.
There are two ways the city can bring these rents down. The first and most sensible is to get rid of rent regulations that effectively seal off half the apartments in this city from the market. That makes the remaining apartments more expensive, which is the main reason so many middle-class people are priced out of this city.
Probably because it’s the most sensible thing to do, getting rid of rent-controlled and rent-stabilized apartments is next to impossible here. Those who enjoy big apartments at below-market prices will fight to the death to hold on to them, and the politicians fear taking them on because they represent a sizeable constituency.
There is another way. We’ll call this the Detroit option. In this model, you let crime rise, you make your city increasingly hostile to enterprise and you do nothing to stop the rot in the institution most important to your city’s families: good public schools.
If you follow this prescription, sooner or later property values will drop, and with them rents. Judging from some of the rhetoric from the mayoral race, we may already be heading in that direction.