February 25, 2003
Thank you for allowing me to testify today about the crisis New York City faces if rent control laws are allowed to expire.
With Resolution 690 we are declaring a public emergency, and we don’t have to look far to find that emergency. In New York City, a minimum wage earner would have to work 154 hours every week to afford a two-bedroom unit at fair market rent. New York is the fifth least affordable state in the nation for housing. This affordable housing crisis is an emergency, and rent control is one of the few tools that tenants have to protect themselves.
Our city’s economy depends on people from all walks of life being able to afford to live here. Rent deregulation will drive many working and retired New Yorkers from their long time neighborhoods. Contrary to what Republican legislators would have us believe, according to a recent study, the average rent-regulated tenants are minorities living in outer boroughs with a median annual income of only $26,200, rather than wealthy white Manhattan residents.
For many tenants, paying more for housing means having less for other essentials. Sadly, I have heard from senior citizens who say that their tight budgets require them to choose between prescription drugs, food or rent. Without rent regulations, many more seniors will be forced to make these choices.
During the 1997 negotiations, “vacancy decontrol” and “luxury decontrol” were expanded.
As a result, over the past decade the city has lost nearly 100,000 rent-regulated apartments. At the current rate of deregulation, New York City will lose half its rent-regulated apartments in the next decade, and almost all of them within 20 years. Without rent regulation, a high apartment turnover rate would destroy the unique cultures of many of our neighborhoods.
I have heard that in order to deregulate apartments some landlords harass tenants to give up their affordable homes. These landlords prey on the poor and senior citizens despite criminal penalties enacted in 1997 to prevent “vacancy decontrol” abuse. Some landlords have made one-time investments in renovating vacated apartments in order to reap great windfalls in increased rents. These one-time renovations can allow a landlord to raise the rent by $1,000 per month, pricing many New Yorkers out of the market.
The steady increase in decontrolled apartments accelerated as a result of the 1997 law. We can ill afford for this trend to continue. Affordable housing in New York cannot survive if the law rewards a landlord’s attempts to evade regulation.
Resolution 692 has my support because it urges the State Senate to extend rent regulations and repeal high-rent vacancy decontrol.
Finally, I strongly support Resolution 691 to repeal the Urstadt Law. The City should be allowed to decide its own destiny. Instead we have upstate Republican legislators deciding the fate of critical protections that benefit citizens of New York City. It simply makes no sense, and its time for the law to go.
I commend Speaker Silver and the Assembly Democrats for voting to extend the current rent regulations and repealing some provisions of the 1997 law. I thank Speaker Miller and the City Council for their efforts, and join in the fight to preserve affordable housing. This period of financial downturn is no time to further reduce affordable housing units in New York.
Thank You.
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