Vacancy decontrol has contributed to skyrocketing rents, gentrification and increased tenant harassment, as there is an economic incentive to evict rent-stabilized tenants for higher-paying occupants. According to the Rent Guidelines Board, the median income of households in rent-stabilized units was $36,000 in 2007, and the median monthly rent of rent-stabilized units was $925. Along with limits on rent increases, rent-regulated tenants also have stronger protections against eviction, rights to renew their leases and the ability to pass on their apartments to immediate family members. Senior and disabled rent regulated tenants can also qualify for rent freezes. According to the New York State Tenants and Neighbors Information Service, almost 60 percent of rent-regulated tenants are people of color.
For market-rate tenants, it is a different story. The mean rent in Manhattan for a one-bedroom apartment with a doorman is $3,737 a month, according to The Real Estate Group. Market-rate tenants have no protections against giant rent hikes. They also do not have a right to a lease renewal, which discourages them from complaining about living conditions in their apartments.
Tenant groups say the long-term effect of vacancy decontrol will be to eliminate rent regulations in all but the city’s poorest neighborhoods. The RSA’s Jack Freund agrees — but he says that’s a good thing. Although almost all of the unregulated apartments built in the city have been luxury housing, he contends that the increase in the housing supply “ripples down through the system” and that if the market were freed up, owners would be in a position to provide housing to all levels of the market.
How Vacancy Decontrol Works
Former-Governor George Pataki, the Republican-controlled New York State Senate and a compliant Democratic-held state Assembly enacted vacancy decontrol in 1997 after heavy real-estate lobbying and campaign contributions. Thus began the slow phasing out of rent-regulated housing.
For a landlord to get an apartment deregulated, it must be vacated by the tenant — either voluntarily or through eviction. Once it is vacated, the landlord can automatically claim a 20 percent increase. For an apartment with $1,000 in monthly rent, this gives the landlord a $200 hike a month without even having to put a new coat of paint on the walls.
For larger increases, the key law is that a landlord can raise the monthly rent by one-fortieth the cost of any remodeling work done. To get the rent from $1,200 to the $2,000 deregulation threshold, the landlord needs to say she or he did $32,000 worth of work. That sounds like a lot, but often the landlord does some cosmetic work coupled with cheap materials to make an apartment look better.
In many cases, the landlord swindles the new tenants by overstating the costs of renovations, but it goes undetected. The state housing agency, the Department of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), only investigates the landlord’s claims that an apartment was legitimately deregulated if the new tenants make an overcharge complaint.
Tenants who move into a new apartment should obtain a “rent history” from the DHCR. This will show the last registered legal rent in the apartment. If you see big rent increases, you may want to file an overcharge complaint. Act quickly, because you only have four years to make a claim. If you win an overcharge complaint, the housing agency will reset your rent; if it finds “willful” overcharges, it can award triple damages.
This article is reposted from the Indypendent with permission.
