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Every year there is drama in May/June about rent stabilization hikes and whether the program will be renewed. It will be renewed. The only real question is how much landlords will be able to raise rent.
On the city level, the Rent Guidelines Board sets the rent increases in June. These take effect in October.
On the state level, the entire rent regulation scheme expires every four years of so. It's about to expire in June. This has happened many times, and almost alway leads to a game of political football. In the end, the regs get renewed. However the may get modified. It would take a huge political FIBA for them to be allowed to expire permanently.
In order to get around being called a permanent "taking" of property RS laws expire after a given period. They were originally supposed to be in effect for a few years to solve a housing "emergency", but that was back in the 1940's ...........
If new RS laws are not passed before the current laws expire no one is exactly sure what will happen. No one expects the statue to remain permanently gone so whatever is finally passed (assuming it is after a deadline) would be retroactive.
OTOH if RS laws were allowed to lapse for any length of time or even permanently then things could get interesting. As RS leases begin to expire there might not be any legal recourse to force landlords to offer renewals. Long story short the units would become deregulated. This being New York no one expects affected RS tenants and their advocates to take such things lying down, so there would be court action. Hopefully by the time cases dragged through housing court RS laws would be reinstated.
In any event this sad drama plays out each time RS laws come up for renewal. The Senate couldn't care less while the Assembly wants the laws renewed. Only question is in what form things take and which side will give up the most.
Don't worry...it's getting renewed. Guaranteed. And if it lapse, it'll be for a short time only.
RS is a political tool used by the ruling class in NYC, the ruling class being the liberal democrats. In order to keep ruling NYC, the democrats, despite the RS law being a worthless law, would support it to get the RS voting block and retain their power.
At the end of the day, its not about RS being right or wrong with the democrats, its about which side of the argument will generate more votes. There are way more tenants than landlords with many LLs living in the suburbs outside of NYC which them ineligible to vote for NYC politicians despite having a stake in NYC by having a business in NYC, so the obvious side the democrats will support will be tenant-friendly laws such as RS. And as we all know, it's been proven over and over again by economist (liberal or conservative) that Rent Control laws don't work and never will.
... so the obvious side the democrats will support will be tenant-friendly laws such as RS...
I agree with most of your post. However, I wouldn't characterize rent stabilization as "tenant-friendly." It is "pro SOME tenants" and "anti OTHER tenants." Market-rate tenants are hurt by these laws through restriction of supply and inability to bid higher on apartments with price controls, which are essentially off the market.
People who benefit from RS:
- rent-stabilized tenants
- market-rate landlords (who can charge higher rents due to less competition)
People who are harmed by RS:
- rent-stabilized landlords
- market-rate tenants
I pray that the rent stabilization laws will some day at least be reformed and eventually repealed. What I want is a free market in housing--i.e. complete separation of housing and state. No government intervention into the housing market.
If RS wasn't renewed from what I have read in the past it would effect about one million tenants who would be out of the street. So I doubt this will happen.
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