New Yorkers -- rent destabilization?

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As in, have you or your friends ever successfully fought having your apartment's rent destabilized? I moved to my current Park Slope pad in '95, and for my 10th anniversary the landlord has begun the process. If he's successful, my rent doubtlessly goes up 50% to "market value" and I am off to Greenpoint, Astoria or wherever. The relatively low rent is why I'm the only roomie-less Sloper in my circle.

The process is utterly mysterious. Apparently only 340 apartments in the whole city were destabilized last year -- awful low. I've chipped in for an initial consultation with a tenant lawyer ($100) with 3 of my neighbors. (btw, rent stabilization is not as awesome as rent CONTROL. I think.)

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 20:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Legally, rent stabilized apts. can go up a certain % each year, and then if your apartment's monthly rent goes above $2,000 it's not rent stablized anymore. The end.

― JNYC, Wednesday, 19 January 2005 20:54 (twenty-one years ago)

oh man
I did a whole report on rent stabilization/control laws in new york city last term.

― MY FAVOURITE LIGHTER IS CHEESEBURGER (trigonalmayhem), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 20:55 (twenty-one years ago)

I wish there was a term limit on the amount of time people could have rent stabilized/controlled apartments before they had to pass it on to someone else. Just like whoever is with Johnny Depp should have a term limit before someone else can have him.

― S!monB!rch (Carey), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 21:09 (twenty-one years ago)

It's annoying as sand in your crack. Even with rent stabilization, it hardly meets cost of living increases in salary or even raises. There is only so much you're going to get paid, but there is no limit to how high your rent will go. With my stabilized pad it has only gone up $150 over the past 8 years or so, but if I stayed here until I was an old man, I'd be shit out of luck. It also seems the rent stabilization board always agrees on the MAXIMUM of 6% increase, never below.

― Snoozefest, Wednesday, 19 January 2005 21:15 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/downloads/HousingAGrowingCity2002.pdf

you might read that
even though it's oriented towards how current trends cause people to become homeless, the same reasons but to lesser extents are why housing is more and more unaffordable to normal people.

it's chock full of facts/figures/graphs/etc. that are really enlightening and kind of scary.
it's also ridiculously long, but a very good read.

― MY FAVOURITE LIGHTER IS CHEESEBURGER (trigonalmayhem), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 21:22 (twenty-one years ago)

> if your apartment's monthly rent goes above $2,000 it's not rent stablized anymore.

I know that, but my rent isn't halfway to that ceiling.

I know I'll be priced outta the Slope eventually, but I was hoping for 5 more years.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 22:44 (twenty-one years ago)

With your doctor's salary can't you afford more?

― S!monB!rch (Carey), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 22:47 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm a 26th-century doctor; time wasn't kind to us.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 22:57 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/News/9809/03/showbuzz/birch.jpg

― S!monB!rch (Carey), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 23:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Wait a second, I think that's correct though IIRC from living in a rent stabilized building myself (complicated story, I worked for the company that owned the building so there was an ongoing saga within the company of trying to kick out the "old" tenants pre-buyout of the space, because the agreement the "new" tenants, all employees, made was that once all the "old" tenants were gone, we were to be removed as well so they could rip out the building, so the ins and outs of the laws and the constant BITCHING about them, cos, you know, god forbid crazy poor old people live in Lincoln Center, were familiar to me). Has the law changed or am I thinking of rent CONTROL, vis a vis the $2000 thing? I don't think he can start procedings to change the rent if you're not at $2000 yet, unless I'm mixing up control vs stabilization, which is v. possible.

― Allyzay Highlights The Fallacy of Radiohead (allyzay), Thursday, 20 January 2005 00:35 (twenty-one years ago)

You might be. A "major rehab" post-'74 is theoretically all that's needed to exempt from stabilization. ('cept this fucker didn't DO that, his predecessor did, and he's trying to sell the building now)

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 20 January 2005 14:55 (twenty-one years ago)

If the people have been in the building since I think sometime in the seventies there's a chance their apartments are rent-CONTROLLED. Landlords really hate that shit and do everything they can to boot the old tenants out to make more money.

― MY FAVOURITE LIGHTER IS CHEESEBURGER (trigonalmayhem), Thursday, 20 January 2005 21:45 (twenty-one years ago)

I've seen some of the rents on rent controlled 1 bedrooms. $180 for 700 sq feet 6 blocks from the Bedford stop.

― S!monB!rch (Carey), Thursday, 20 January 2005 22:20 (twenty-one years ago)

I didn't even know there was "rent control" in the burg. I thought it was on for fancy Mancrappin apts. Anyway, S!mon, your portrait upthread nearly made me piss myself.

― Je4nne ƒury (Jeanne Fury), Thursday, 20 January 2005 22:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I get rent records a lot for work and it always pisses me off when I see someone that has close to a $100,000 job paying less than $600 a month in rent.

― S!monB!rch (Carey), Thursday, 20 January 2005 23:01 (twenty-one years ago)

I thought this thread would be about something else: I was reading recently about a couple odd legal cases that could theoretically lead to the collapse of the whole control and stabilization system? I might be misremembering -- I didn't get time to really go into it, and it was mind-hurtingly difficult to theorize about what the overall results would be if anything along these lines actually happened. I'm not sure whether the system itself benefits someone like me or the opposite: having no connections of any sort, I doubt I'll ever directly benefit from stabilization, let alone control; and I don't know enough about the system to imagine how it affects the remainder of the market. (I can certainly imagine ways in which loads of wealthy people squatting in ridiculously below-market spaces tilts the system against the rest of us, but I can also imagine ways in which it helps.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 20 January 2005 23:24 (twenty-one years ago)

HAHAHAHA you want to get mad at rent control?

The dude who lived underneath me in my old building (which wasn't fancy, about 400-500sq ft jr 1 bdrms but was on 66th and Columbus Ave) paid $78 per month in rent last year. Presumably it went up 2% this year. $79 now.

$78 fucking dollars a month. $78!!!!!

― Allyzay Highlights The Fallacy of Radiohead (allyzay), Friday, 21 January 2005 06:54 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm all for rent control. it always pleases me whenever someone succeeds at fucking over the system.

― cathy berberian (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 21 January 2005 10:17 (twenty-one years ago)

imo, the people paying $2000 a month for a small apartment are suckers. if the rent pisses them off, they can just move out to queens like everyone else.

― cathy berberian (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 21 January 2005 10:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, mine is not even close to $900, yet.

Apparently you can thank Pataki for favoring the landlords in recent law "reform."

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 21 January 2005 14:31 (twenty-one years ago)

jbr is OTM.

― Allyzay Highlights The Fallacy of Radiohead (allyzay), Friday, 21 January 2005 17:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I might want to get mad at rent control, Ally: I don't know enough about it! My point is that I don't ever expect to live in a controlled or stabilized apartment. So my question is what it does to the market at large to have, you know, some dude paying $78 for his place. Like I said, I can think of ways in which that might hurt someone in my position and ways in which it might help me: I suspect it all depends on who's in controlled apartments (lucky wealthy well-connected people, or old ladies who've been there since the 60s).

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 21 January 2005 18:26 (twenty-one years ago)

That's the thing, I guess--I know of both situations occurring. The guy in question with the $78 was not a poor dude, but whatever; the reason why he made everyone so mad about his apt was not because he was screwing the system because he inherited a rent controlled place from whomever but rather because he spent all of his time bitching and moaning and carrying on like he was in a luxury apartment. The best story about him was when the front door buzzer broke on the building and--surprise--the landlord didn't exactly run to fix the thing. So what was going on was that we all had to go downstairs and let in our visitors (that was the part that was broken--you could hear on the intercom who was there and everything, you just couldn't buzz them in). So he kept breaking down the door with a hammer!! Which let homeless people in the building, there were a few vandalisms, etc. It was crazy! But OTOH other people in the building were old ladies who'd been there forever, a poor hispanic family where the grandfather had lived there since like the 50s, really nice people as well. So I dunno, I'd hate to see people like that lose their apartments because it's bad for the rest of the market but I wouldn't mind seeing my downstairs neighbor be set on fire.

The building I'm in now is stabilized, not controlled. But Columbia somehow bought out the top two floors of the building and so students live there too, and we pay less than the stabilized people, which I'm sure they hate.

― Allyzay Highlights The Fallacy of Radiohead (allyzay), Friday, 21 January 2005 18:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I'm currently in a Columbia-subsidized place as well. I don't feel like it saves me any money, but it puts me in a much larger Manhattan apartment than I'd otherwise be: I'm sure I could find someplace cheaper, but it'd be tiny and in Brooklyn. Which I'm half looking forward to -- I don't really need half of the space I have now.

Old-lady PR strikes me as the main thing that's keeping rent-control laws in place: people would bug out if the news was suddenly flooded with friendly old ladies getting kicked out on the street. Sometimes I feel like they're actually a service that's being provided -- like, your apartment will be $2500, but check it out, we have picturesque old ladies downstairs who can tell you where the bakery is and let you feel good about yourself when you hold the door for them.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 21 January 2005 19:06 (twenty-one years ago)

it's a supply-side shortage that causes most of the problems with housing costs in new york, you know

― MY FAVOURITE LIGHTER IS CHEESEBURGER (trigonalmayhem), Friday, 21 January 2005 20:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Clearly, dude: so what would the impact of cutting out the stabilization system be? Newly-available cheapish old-lady apartments, or more incentive than ever to convert everything into upscale spaces I couldn't dream of living in?

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 21 January 2005 20:19 (twenty-one years ago)

if your apartment's monthly rent goes above $2,000 it's not rent stablized anymore

I'm pretty sure this kind of deregulation only applies if household income is in excess of $175,000 for two successive years. The other way a rent-controlled / rent-stabalized apt. can become deregulated is if it becomes vacant.

The most recent changes to rent laws didn't seem to have that much impact on the deregulation of occupied rent stabalized apartments, but they do allow for an increase (on renewal) from a previously offered preferential rate to the maximum allowed on that apartment under rent stabalization. This might be what the good Dr's landlord is up to.

There's a lot of info available here:

http://www.housingnyc.com

― Graeme (Graeme), Friday, 21 January 2005 20:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Thanks, Graeme, but the letter we got -- from the STATE Housing Division -- claims that "buildings completed OR substantially rehabilitated after 1/1/74 are exempt from Rent Regulation." Since the major rehab was done on my building around '90, and it's been stabilized all along since then, that doesn't seem to make sense. (Oh yeah, the current 'lord is selling the bldg, too.)

Anyway, I've got my assemblyman's office on the case, and he's supposed to be kickass.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 21 January 2005 21:37 (twenty-one years ago)

And we HAVE been paying the max increases under stabilization with each renewal. My rent's $255 higher than it was in '95.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 21 January 2005 21:39 (twenty-one years ago)

selling the building=they are looking for any way possible to get out the remaining control/stabilized tenants because having those apts in their building means the building is not worth shit. So it makes sense that all of a sudden they're pulling out the "renovations" loophole even though it's been stabilized consistently since the renovations...I don't think there's a statute of limitations on doing that unfortunately.

― Allyzay Highlights The Fallacy of Radiohead (allyzay), Friday, 21 January 2005 23:35 (twenty-one years ago)

If somebody had the balls to put a bunch of money into modernizing and adding sensible tributaries to the mass transit systems of the Northeast corridor from MA down to VA the entire area would be flush with both new money AND affordable housing without rent control.

But that will never, ever happen.

― TOMBOT, Friday, 21 January 2005 23:55 (twenty-one years ago)

The process of applying to deny the landlord's exemption is so Kafkaesque I can't tell you. My neighbors and I have been strongly advised to hire a tenant lawyer AND an ENGINEER (to evaluate the extent of the building's rehab).... alas not with Monopoly money. I can see myself throwing in the towel and just moving in May.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 January 2005 21:17 (twenty-one years ago)

so my grandparents are paying 150 bucks a month for this apartment in sunset park that they've lived in for 40 years. now they're healthy and i hope they live forever but how does it work in terms of keeping it rent-controleed? do they have to will it to me. how can it stay under my grandpa's name? wouldn't the landlord know i'm not my grandpa livuing there? thanks everyone

― harold bloom, Friday, 28 January 2005 21:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Dude, you remind me of my Uncle Jim saying to Grandma Morbius, "I get that chair when you die."

The Housing Division has deigned to give us a 30-day extension for our tenant "comments."

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 4 February 2005 17:48 (twenty-one years ago)

eight months pass...

My building was indeed sold in April, and the new 'Lord just picked up the ball from the old one. The DHCR (city agency) still hasn't ruled on whether we're stabilized NINE MONTHS after the case was opened.

The new guy has renovated one of the top-floor apartments recently, and new tenants have moved into it, no doubt paying 'market' rent (ie, a shitload more than us).

HERE'S WHERE IT GETS GOOD 'N SCARY.

The landlord phones me ten days ago and says "I'm about to renovate the unit over you and wondered if it might be more convenient for you to find another apartment."

I reply, "No, it'd be more convenient not to move," and I plan to stay until I get a ruling from the city.

A half-hour later, I pick up an Express Mail letter from same landlord telling me he wishes to terminate my monthly tenancy as of Oct 31 (my lease expired on May 31 and they didn't offer a new one) or they'll start eviction proceedings, and I will be held "responsible for all amounts resulting from (my) holding over."

The first-floor tenant got one of these awhile ago and is on her second lawyer. I've just heard from a housing lawyer who says I now also HAVE to hire counsel (NO, I can't afford any I'm aware of) and if the termination is found valid and I'm found to have "held over," I'll be responsible for "use and occupancy" of the apartment which "theoretically" could be set at market. They'd need a lease clause to seek legal fees in the case they prevail, but I don't see one. Overstaying at what turns out to be 'market rent' could screw me good for years.

So if you live in an "up-and-coming" neighborhood in NYC, prepare to get fucked someday if you can't hire a lawyer. I have one more freebie consultation tomorrow night, but barring some sort of miracle I expect I'll have to move. Soon.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 18:43 (twenty years ago)

In last parag, make that "gentrifucked."

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 13 October 2005 13:21 (twenty years ago)

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