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Not true ! You can look this up by building address. You might be surprised.
I challenge you Harlem to prove that some residential landlords don't pay property taxes. Put a link up to back up your claim otherwise your rants are a bunch of BS.
I can tell you that it is not property taxes that kill me...it is everything that adds up that kills me..it's not just one thing. I pay the property taxes, water/sewer for the whole building, electric in common areas, and most people pay heating for the entire building as well (gas or oil). These are fixed costs you must cover, in addition to whatever mortgage and insurance you must pay. Now add to that the costs to repair/replace everything as needed, including appliances, doors, toilets, flooring, electric, plumbing, new rooves, etc.....and you kind of get the idea where I am going here.
And all of those costs are market rate, no subsidies, no breaks. So when you cap income, but have unlimited increases for expenses...you see the problem here. And therein lies the problem I have...cap rental income....fine...but cap all these other expenses too! Or let them both be "free" market....I don't care either way.
Yes, I have observed this as well, and also the behaviors of truly anti-social tenants. Keep in mind that some of the very wealthy landlords are receiving steep tax breaks, most often the same people who employ three or more lobbyists in Albany, for example. The breaks often involve identifying "blighted" neighborhoods in need of investment, which sounds okay on the face of it, but these people do little to relieve the so-called blight. More often, they use the tax breaks to deregulate apartments and little else. Because they do not live in the neighborhood, much less in a given building, they do not care about raising the quality of life or improving anything.
Something will happen with those things, I think. I do a lot of listening to the various groups but still, I am not yet sure what. It could be something forming around subsidized co-ops, or expanding those programs that exist. This would encourage accountability and responsibility, which are very much needed among some populations. Something along the lines of "no work - no eat."
And all of those costs are market rate, no subsidies, no breaks. So when you cap income, but have unlimited increases for expenses...you see the problem here. And therein lies the problem I have...cap rental income....fine...but cap all these other expenses too! Or let them both be "free" market....I don't care either way.
Exactly right but these socialist people on this board like Harlem and KK don't care if you or I have to pay more in expenses as long as THEY BENEFIT from thee system in the way of cheap rent, then its all good. They could care less about us and would say anything, even if it doesn't make sense to justify RS/RC.
Beyond the money issue, the real problem I have against Rent Stabilization is that you get a tenant for LIFE. Meaning that an RS tenant is entitled to get their lease renewed. No matter what. No matter if they're a crackhead, a drug dealer, a thug, a gangster, a hoodrat, etc. This is what RS law inhibits which makes it VERY DIFFICULT and practically IMPOSSIBLE to clean up a building or neighborhood from all the riff-raff in order to improve quality of life.
This is especially true in my backyard of the Bronx. The Bronx has so much potential but its the current tenants that bring it down. If RS didn't exist, cleaning up the Bronx would be SUPER EASY. Just don't renew the leases of the undesirables that make your building or neighborhood bad...end of story and your community improves.
However as we all know, thats not the cases. Us landlords are OBLIGATED to renew their lease, hence the riff-raff continues and any hopes of cleaning up the neighborhood in a reasonable time frame goes out the window. Welcome to the world of Rent Stabilization!
Everyone, I cannot speak for all posters, but I am in no way personally impacted by rent stabilization or any lack of such. In fact ... but, that's a different topic.
My positions are a matter of more general principles and convictions, developed after working among a lot of different NYC populations - very wealthy to Section 8 to homeless - and doing lots of listening and thinking about what I have heard. Like most attentive participants in life, I see the complexity of things for that reason and have few solid solutions at hand.
Succinctly stated, my positions are not formed around me-me-me-me-me, my experience = "truth," "truth" stops at me, but something that wants to engage a bigger picture.
Can't we have a civil conversation without dragging out the old "you liberals hate business and are ruining the world" song and dance? Plenty of successful business people are liberals, for one thing, so obviously being a liberal doesn't preclude an understanding and appreciation for economics.
As for the topic, if these tenants are so rich, then he should be able to deregulate based on the salary cap. I can't imagine anyone could afford a house in the Hamptons without making over $200k/year. There are also other ways you can legally raise their rent, for example economic hardship. And fuel prices and labor costs are also taken into consideration for rent increases.
I'm also interested in these builders who only build luxury buildings just so they can avoid rent stabilization. Considering the fact that our housing market can support seemingly limitless luxury units, don't you think they'd choose to build the type of housing that will make them more money anyway?
Full disclosure: I live in a rent stabilized apartment, and would have to move probably out of the state if it was deregulated, but I do think it's important to make sure landlords aren't carrying an unreasonable burden due to stabilization. I always thought it was subsidized through tax relief, and now that I know it isn't, I think it should be.
And to the poster who would like to "clean up" the Bronx by kicking out the "riffraff", that's EXACTLY what rent control laws are there to prevent. Everyone deserves a place to live, including low income people, and it keeps our city diverse. In the end, if you're not making money, or don't like being a landlord, it sounds like you need to find a new business.
Everyone, I cannot speak for all posters, but I am in no way personally impacted by rent stabilization or any lack of such. In fact ... but, that's a different topic.
My positions are a matter of more general principles and convictions, developed after working among a lot of different NYC populations - very wealthy to Section 8 to homeless - and doing lots of listening and thinking about what I have heard. Like most attentive participants in life, I see the complexity of things for that reason and have few solid solutions at hand.
Succinctly stated, my positions are not formed around me-me-me-me-me, my experience = "truth," "truth" stops at me, but something that wants to engage a bigger picture.
Like Harlem Resident, I am not impacted by Rent Stabilizations or controls either. I speak only from the issue of fairness and morality and democratic lawmaking as I see it.
I have no irons in this fire unlike some of the landlords here who seem to have ony ONE thing on their minds and that is MORE MONEY! For some landlords here, one in particular, it seems there is NO issue in life worth discussing other than their getting MORE MONEY.
I envision Scrooge McDuck whose ony joy was to swim in his money vault.
PS, The greedy landlord's case against rent stabilization will go nowhere.
And to the poster who would like to "clean up" the Bronx by kicking out the "riffraff", that's EXACTLY what rent control laws are there to prevent. Everyone deserves a place to live, including low income people, and it keeps our city diverse. In the end, if you're not making money, or don't like being a landlord, it sounds like you need to find a new business.
Oh really? So you're telling me that in the other 49 States where Rent Stabilization doesn't exist, poor people don't exist as well simply because there is no rent control? Give me a break!
You say poor people need a place to live as well, so where do poor people live in the other 49 States that doesn't have Rent Control? Hmmmmm?
Poor people will ALWAYS have a place to live. Rent Control or NO Rent Control. So using Rent Control as a tool to keep poor people around is moot. If anything, RS/RC does WAY MORE harm than good. If you break it down, you would see that and change your opinion.
So by saying Rent Stabilization was made to prevent Landlords from kicking out the riff-raff is basically saying the City WANTS crime and drugs in the City! In a nutshell thats what you're saying.
For your information, NOT every poor person is a criminal, a drug dealer, a thug or hoodrat. But the ones that ARE, are protected by the Rent Stabilization law and landlords can't get rid of them and neighborhoods remain GHETTO and can't improve. If you were a tenant in a building that had drug dealers, thugs and crackheads, YOU TOO would be pissed that the RS law makes the landlord POWERLESS to remove these undesirables. And YOU as a law abiding poor tenant who can't afford to move elsewhere has to live with and tolerate such behavior from these animals. How does that make you feel as a law abiding tenant? See my point?
The common (invisible) enemy is at the luxury market-level, which also involves itself in the so-called "equity portfolios" and similar, all predatory in conception - like the banks. This group makes rent stabilization necessary, and laughs at you when you complain, rightfully, that you have expenses that are not therefore met.
Standing smaller or middle landlords and tenants against each other is just one of those fictions that comes up in the system we have. The working class person blames people on welfare, the middle class person blames them and the working class, etc. Yet, the real problem and "enemy," if you will, is a person with whom few people have contact. And unless you have this contact, you will not realize how truly selfish and anti-social this group is. Nor will you understand just how much money and power they have.
You must admit that most of the market-rate ranters, like most people, are really not smart. So they engage what they think is true, or what is easier.
Reading things here, one would think we were in the 1950s, Cold War context. I thought my students were bad ! I do see the humor but it is also a pathetic testimony to the substandard educational system here. One moron actually used the term "socialist pig." I thought that was funny and shared it with my students because we were reading documents about "red-baiting." They loved it.
I predict that because things have failed, capitalism has absolutely failed, communism has absolutely failed, that the solutions will be a combination of different things. Certainly there have been successes in countries with socialist policies mixed with different things. However. Here, those people who have enjoyed ENORMOUS privilege - and many people do not even understand the extent of that privilege - are now pushing back, hard. Most people don't realize that, either, who is really doing the pushing or what it is about. There are just trickle downs, small people with no idea what is really happening, ranting because they believe the group just below them is to blame. Truly small people, and quite uninteresting to me.
The beneficiaries of rent control and rent stabilization are sometimes NOT in a "lower than" socioeconomic category. Correct me if I am wrong, but in order for an apartment (and its tenant) to become destabilized doesn't the rent have to go to $2,000 per month AND the tenant's income have to be over $200,000 a year for TWO consecutive years? That's a JOKE. People are even allowed to own other real estate with no restrictions but can still claim the apartment as their "primary residence." That's another joke. What you own should be your primary residence.
Last edited by I_Love_LI_but; 12-16-2011 at 12:14 PM..
I wonder if that is the argument this guy will make it is a pretty compelling one on its face. You are in affect forced to subsidize people with no relief from the government. If the government feels there is a common social good to keep rents low then they need to subsidize expenses as well.
Especially when a lot of the tenants the landlords are forced to subsidize don't NEED the subsidizing.
They can make $199,000 a year and still be subsidized by the landlord if the rent is $2K or over.
If the rent is UNDER $2K, the tenant can be a billionaire ... no income limit.
They can outright own a portfolio of real estate and still be subsidized by the landlord.
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