Don't Forget Rent Control, Say Housing Advocates

They are the dama gazelles of the New York City rental market. From a high of more than 2 million in the 1950's, there are now only 27,000 "rent-controlled" apartments in the city – down from 38,000 just three years ago.

Rent-controlled tenants live in buildings built before 1947 and have lived there continuously since 1971. They tend to be seniors on fixed incomes. They are beneficiaries of the city's first rent control laws, which were established after World War II to protect returning soldiers and their families from being gouged by greedy landlords.

And due to tenancy succession rules, which require cohabitants or family members to live in an apartment two consecutive years before the lease holder passes away, the city could very well be looking at its last generation of rent-controlled residents. Like those gazelles of the Sahara Desert, they are approaching endangered species status.

This group is not to be confused with their statistically younger and more affluent first cousins," rent stabilized" tenants, who occupy just over 1 million apartments and represent 47 of the city rental market. Unlike rent-stabilized tenants who have to renew leases, rent-controlled tenants are considered "statutory" tenants. They basically come with the property.

So as various interest groups prepare to converge on Albany this spring to restore, strengthen or thwart the rent regulation laws, which are due to expire on June 15, rent-controlled tenants find themselves a minority within a minority, accounting for just 1.2 percent of the rental stock in the city.

And like any other endangered species, they are outnumbered and nervous.

"People pick on rent-control tenants because we're like the little kids in the school yard. There's so few of us, we can't fight back," says Lucy Levy, a rent-controlled tenant who has lived in her two-bedroom apartment on Ninth Street in the Village since 1955.

Bullied or not, the rent-controlled tenants have one big issue they want addressed this spring: a fix to the formula that has driven their rents sky high.

The prevailing misconception about rent-controlled tenants is that most of them are paying $250 a month for posh Manhattan digs. To be sure, some rent-controlled tenants pay very little in rent. Brooklyn Assemblyman Joe Lentol volunteered that he has a cousin in Greenpoint, a veteran on a fixed pension, who pays $150 a month for a three-room railroad apartment. But this is hardly the norm.

Recently released figures from the city's 2014 Housing and Vacancy Survey show that the median rent for a rent-controlled unit in the city is $1,020 a month — this for a population whose median household income is $29,000. By way of contrast, rent-stabilized households, whose median income is $40,600, are paying $1,300 a month in rent.

Thousands of rent-controlled tenants are shelling out $2,000 or more for rent each month, amounts that are inhaling upwards of 50 percent of their income.

"It's killing me," says Levy, a 61-year-old paralegal, about her $2,100 a month rent. "I'm paying a lot more than 50 percent of my take home pay to rent. My monthly rent increase was $150 [last year]. My salary hasn't gone up."

The enemy, rent-controlled tenants and their advocates say, is the 45-year-old formula used to calculate the rent hikes. The formula was adopted by the city, but is now administered by the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR). Under state law, the city cannot change the formula.

"The whole formula is grossly unfair," says Michael McKee, treasurer of the Tenants Political Action Committee and a board member of the Metropolitan Council on Housing. "It's archaic, and like any formula … that was enacted in 1970, it just makes no sense anymore." 

Last year, the RGB capped the rent increase on a 1-year lease at 1 percent. At the same time, Levy was socked with a 7.5 percent rent hike for her Ninth Street apartment.

In 1973, Levy was paying $208.10 a month in rent. Today, she's paying $2,107 – a 1,000 percent increase.

Over this same period, if she was paying the increases granted by the RGB for rent stabilized tenants — not including extra rent increases for capital improvements her landlord might have made— her rent would be $1,194. That's $900 less than what she's paying now.

Beyond the maximum collectible rent, rent-controlled tenants can be hit with fuel-cost pass-alongs and charged extra if labor costs rise.

Levy doesn't blame her landlord for her high rent.

"He only does what he's allowed to do," she says. "And I am obligated to pay it."

Read more at City Limits website.