The Real Rent Reform Campaign rally was a great success.

For some articles about the rally, click on

NY State Senator Pedro Espada proposed a bill that merges a landlord wish with a tenant gimmick. In fact, it is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

The bill would permit landlords to take apartments out of rent stabilization even though they have J-51 tax breaks. This would reverse the Roberts decision by the state's highest court.

Thus as happened at Stuyvesant Town, landlords who repaid the J-51 tax benefits could deregulate apartments that were rent stabilized or rent controlled even BEFORE the building ever got J-51 benefits. This deregulation (invalidated by the state's highest court in Roberts) occurs

• when the apartment is vacant and the owner makes improvements to raise the rent to $2000 or more, or

• when the people living in the apartment have a household income of $175,000 or more for 2 consecutive years.

Worse still, this bill is so sloppily written that attorney Seth Miller has expressed concern that the bill could potentially let landlords de-regulate all rent regulated apartments in buildings whose J-51 benefits are repaid - by reclassifying those apartments as never having been subject to the rent stabilization law.

The bill would also freeze the rents of stabilized tenants with annual incomes under $45,000. This is consistent with the landlords' position that only the poorest tenants should have rent stabilized apartments (the middle-class be damned.) It ignores the fact that when vacant apartments were de-regulated between 1971 and 1974, the result was a massive housing emergency, ended only by the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974.

RESOURCES:

The Real Rent Reform Campaign (R3) has made a video, Real Rent Reform / Housing Here & Now - 2009 Year In Review for our Campaign about two main issues:

• the repeal of vacancy decontrol, and
• saving Mitchell-Lamas.

City Limits recently reported on a demonstration against the Dime bank - resulting in a conversation with tenants of the run-down buildings that Dime financed.

Mother Jones magazine had an excellent pieces on predatory equity. focusing on Laurence Gluck, Stellar Management and the Riverton Apartments.

Click here for the article by Adam Matthews.

The New York Times reports that Pedro Espada has swung his support back to the Democrats on condition that he become majority leader.

Along with Governor Paterson's July 8, 2009 appointment and swearing-in of Richard Ravitch as Lieutenant Governor, it is possible that some bills may actually be passed by the State Senate.

Click on "read more" below for the NY Times article which discusses both Espada's swings and the appointment of Mr. Ravitch.

The Community Service Society has just published its 2008 report, Closing the Door, which notes that, as stated in the Crain's New York Business.com headline, "Predatory Equity is Smothering Affordable Housing."

Click on "read more" below for the Crain's article, and click here for a Guide to Surviving Predatory Equity.