Tom Waters and Victor Bach of the Community Service Society have written a comprehensive report on what J-51 is and how it affects New Yorkers.

The Furman Center at NYU has just published a report with telling statistics about rent regulation in New York City.

THE “UNIQUE OR PECULIAR” COURT CASE AFFECTS US ALL.

What is “unique or peculiar”?

Between 1971 and 1974, whenever a rent regulated apartment became vacant, it went to full market rate. That resulted in a serious shortage of affordable housing, and the state legislature responded with the 1974 Emergency Tenant Protection Act (ETPA). The ETPA put all apartments in big buildings built before 1974 into rent stabilization, and the starting “rent stabilized rent” was whatever tenants were paying before the law went into effect. This is important to us because when our buildings were taken out of Mitchell-Lama, we went into rent stabilization under the Emergency Tenant Protection Act.

But in some cases, the last rent the tenant was paying was silly: an owner charged his daughter $2 a month, or the super paid $0 in rent. When that apartment became regulated, they needed a way to figure out a reasonable rent. So the ETPA provides that under such “unique or peculiar circumstances” either the tenant or the owner could go to the state’s housing agency and ask the agency to set the rent.

The Community Service Society published "Destabilized Rents: The Impact of Vacancy Decontrol on Low-Income Communities" in June 2009.

Written by Tom Waters and Victor Bach, senior housing analysts at CSS, the policy brief includes the fact that only about 15% of the tenants in post-1973 buildings coming out of Mitchell-Lama would be eligible for enhanced vouchers.

Victor Bach and Tom Waters, housing analysts at the Community Service Society, have written several useful reports, listed below.

Making the Rent '08 Report

Closing the Door '08 Report

Where is the Property Relief for Struggling Renters?

Destabilized Rents: The Impact of Vacancy Decontrol

For earlier reports, see:

Closing the Door 2007

Closing the Door 2006

and

Making the Rent 2002-2005.

Re: Pre-1974 rental developments:

Building owners claim that just leaving Mitchell-Lama is a "unique or peculiar circumstance" under the Emergency Tenant Protection Act that would justify raising rents to market rate. While NYS's Division of Housing & Community Renewal (DCHR) passed regulations to the contrary, closing that loophole, owners Larry Gluck of Stellar Management and Steven Witkoff of Witkoff Realty among others have brought law suits against those regulations. The suits, after various changes (see the chart), ended up before Justice Alice Schlesinger, who sided with the tenants. Then the State's mid-level court, the Appellate Division, First Department, unanimously affirmed the court below. The owner of Columbus 95, Steve Witkoff, has now filed a motion seeking permission to appeal to the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals. That is pending.

What happens to us depends on how the state's courts interpret the law, as landlords appeal the new regulations - and whether the Democratic-majority State Legislature passes new legislation. As of now: