NYC Council Crazies Do It Again
It seems that the present NYC Council sits and imagines all the various ways they can create a chaotic situation with the housing market than already exists. It’s true that housing has become tight and expensive when it comes to the rental market, but the reality that they do not want to face is that the magic wand of local laws they keep piling on the real estate owners and landlords in the city are creating a tighter market rather than opening up the market in any appreciable way.
Rent Control, which was created back during World War II due to difficulties in housing, was supposed to be canceled at the end of the war. Instead, it has been dragged into the present via “grandfathering,” offering no fairness solution to anyone other than the tenant who passes the baton to the next generation as they hold onto that elusive “rent control unit” at a rental price that in some cases would not even cover a good steak dinner.
As a result, when a landlord gets a vacancy in one of those units, instead of renting it out again this time at a market price, he keeps it vacant because the laws of rent control on the books do not let him raise the price of the rental to at least something where he is not losing money on the apartment.
Rent Stabilization, although better, creates the same situation. City Council laws regarding rent stabilization do not allow landlords to raise the rents on the apartments they rent out, even by amounts that equal the cost-of-living percentage increases, which results in rentals that not only do not bring a profit to the landlord, but do not provide any cushion for repairs or upgrades to existing units. As a result, the landlords are not able to make upgrades, and if their losses become too great, they end up abandoning the buildings. Yet, with all these scenarios, the City Council sits dumb and blind to all of this and only talks about lowering rents to tenants, thereby forcing landlords into artificially subsidizing tenants in need as opposed to the government taking on this responsibility.
So, the latest circus trick they are now discussing and contemplating is a bill to amend the administrative code of New York City, which would establish a right of first opportunity to purchase for qualified entities, prior to a building with three or more units being listed for sale in relation to giving qualified entities (those qualified entities to be anointed of course by the City Council) a first opportunity to purchase and an opportunity to submit an offer to purchase certain residential buildings when offered for sale. The bill would require building owners to notify the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and a list of qualified entities when their buildings will be listed for sale.
This means that building owners of multiple-family houses (of three or more families) would be required to notify the housing department at least 180 days prior to putting their building on the market, and then freeze any attempt to sell their building for a 120-day waiting period while these anointed “entities” of the City Council have an opportunity to make offers on these buildings without any outside buyers getting in the way.
After the 120-day waiting period, the owners may entertain outside offers, but would still be required to offer the anointed “entities” an opportunity to match any competing offers that were higher than theirs.
Essentially, what is slowly happening to all real estate zoned for rental use in the city is a slow takeover by progressives in the City Council to turn rental building ownership into a quagmire of socialized housing units, leaving landlords and owners powerless to collect rents to cover their expenses and then, in a greater outrage, restricting them from selling their buildings for at least 6-8 months while they restrict the seller from selling to any buyer other than pre-chosen buyers anointed by the City Council.
What is happening here is that we are allowing New York City to change from a Democracy to a Progressive Socialist quagmire that none of us signed onto.
The time has come to write to all our representatives to stand up and put a reign on this invasive form of political takeover of our state before laws are set into place that will be hard to reverse. While I sympathize with low-income earners struggling to find affordable housing, putting the responsibility of subsidizing housing for them through private owners and landlords is against everything democratic in our country and this has to stop. n
Anessa Cohen lives in Cedarhurst and is a Licensed Real Estate Broker (Anessa V Cohen Realty) with over 20 years of experience offering residential, commercial and management real estate services. You are invited to visit her website at WWW.AVCREALTY.COM. She can be reached at 516-569-5007 or Readers are encouraged to send any questions or comments by email to [email protected].
