Working Families

Over the last two days, we sent out some emails with a humorous take on the campaign for real rent reform. Actually… I have to take a large part of the blame. After all, the message was officially from Charles “Landlord” Lenchner, and that’s me!

Not everyone saw the humor, and that’s been a learning experience. (To see the original email, see our previous post here.)

I’m leading with the best response, from SK. Caps are in the original:

You people and this campaign is absolutely positively no different than Bernard Madoff. You guys want to get rich or richer (Mr. & /or Mrs. House in the Hamptons) while screwing over the little guy.  Well my response to you is HELL NO, NOT HERE! PLEASE DO NOT EVER AGAIN TRY TO GET ME TO JOIN THIS CAMPAIGN! OTHER ONES SURE. THIS ONE? YOU HAVE A BETTER CHANCE OF WITNESSING A BLIZZARD IN HELL.

Some more comments:

EE: If you are a real estate investor or landlord, and are trying to stop the laws, tough bananas. Who cares about your stupid home in the Hamptons?

LW: “How did you get my email? I don’t want rents raised!”

LT: remove me from your spam list. housing should be cheap!

OK actually wrote to warn us that someone was emailing all of our petition signers. After we told her it was a spoof, not spam, she replied: “Sometimes it’s hard to see the sarcasm on screen.”

CB wanted us to know he got a little heart attack:

“I have my landlord entered into my address book as “landlord,” so that his emails look pretty similar to yours and they keep spooking me about rent (briefly skimming through your emails on your phone and seeing “landlord” + “rent” is a nightmare). Just a heads up.”

My heart goes out to JG, an actual landlord, who make the case that we were wrong for demonizing landlords in this way. We exchanged a few emails in which I made an effort to clarify our intent. His final response deserves to be read:

Thanks for the swift response, and the reassurance that WFP hasn’t entirely gone off the rails in its approach. I don’t disagree that there are problems with the real estate system here, and I’m glad to have strong public voices advocating reform. I don’t disagree with most of the provisions of the various bills that have been introduced in this area, though the retroactive re-regulation of any apartment deregulated in the past 15 years is draconian, and will be a killer for small buildings like mine.

But to return to this ad campaign, it’s difficult enough to establish a relationship of mutual trust with tenants who have been burned by bad landlords in the past. Your message is just reinforcing the notion that landlords are always out to abuse tenants, whenever and however. That’s not the kind of atmosphere that will benefit tenants in the long run; distrust breeds distrust, and leads to bad behavior and animosity. There are a lot of landlords, like me, who don’t want to see Manhattan become the exclusive preserve of those who can afford second homes and live-in maids.

Thanks JG. You make some great points.. The sum total of all the “good” landlords in the city don’t add up to a solution for the affordable housing crisis. Pure market forces can lead to unwanted outcomes that citizens and voters need to address with legislation. Owners of apartment buildings can and should make a profit. I wish you the best of luck with your building.

What did you think of our spoof landlord email? Use the comments section below to tell us what you think.