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Who is being put down? If you're offended, too bad. Just calling it what it is... It's a handout, plain and simple. I'm opposed to all of it. The fact of the matter is, those handouts artificially inflate rents, which is why the prices are out of control as it is. Deregulate these programs, and the rents would come down to what they should be.
We can talk about what someone "deserves", but without people paying market rate rent, who are essentially paying inflated rents, these programs can't survive, so if you want to talk about "value" and what people "deserve", people not getting handouts "deserve" to pay rents that aren't inflated, but unfortunately that's not the way the cookie crumbles. I should've bought when I was in my 20s to be honest, and I'd probably be half way through paying off my mortgage with what I've paid in rent. Oh well...
Do you realize the tax savings the landlord is getting with having affordable lottery tenants? Tax abatement in the millions. The landlord needs to make repairs to the apartment no matter what. It is against the law for the landlord not to fix the apartment because she won an apartment lottery. If the landlord didn't want a tax abatement for affordable apartments maybe they shouldn't taken the tax abatement. Regardless of that. Anyone that has a lease in that apartment building no matter what they are paying are entitled to a safe habitation conditions. What happened in her apartment was not her fault and she shouldn't be held liable for damages since she won a lottery apartment. Shame on you for inferring that she deserves less because she won a lottery apartment.
Do you realize the tax savings the landlord is getting with having affordable lottery tenants? Tax abatement in the millions. The landlord needs to make repairs to the apartment no matter what. It is against the law for the landlord not to fix the apartment because she won an apartment lottery. If the landlord didn't want a tax abatement for affordable apartments maybe they shouldn't taken the tax abatement. Regardless of that. Anyone that has a lease in that apartment building no matter what they are paying are entitled to a safe habitation conditions. What happened in her apartment was not her fault and she shouldn't be held liable for damages since she won a lottery apartment. Shame on you for inferring that she deserves less because she won a lottery apartment.
I'm not inferring anything and I have nothing to be ashamed of as I am not taking handouts, but rather making it possible for such programs to exist, as someone who pays inflated rent - soon to own thank God, as the whole rental system here is a sham. I simply stated what the reality is. As I said, without all of these housing programs, market rate rents wouldn't be so inflated. That's the real problem.
You are unbelievable. The apartment she is in is unfinished without HEAT or any kind of cooking facility. Her previous apartment is still uninhabitable, even without the mold issue.
If she had the money to move back to Poland, she could probably afford to move to another apartment. The child's father could be dead. My husband died of cancer when my son was 3.
People on this forum should be ashamed of themselves. I'm out.
My understanding is that her previous apartment is fixed up, but she is not going back because she alleges there is mold. But even without mold, why is this person being subsidized to live in a building that she can't afford, in a city she can't afford? One-way ticket from JFK to Warsaw can be found for about $400 - that is not incredibly unaffordable (she obviously could afford the ticket in the opposite direction). Cost of life in Poland is way lower than in NYC, so it is absurd to say that anyone has to live in NYC due to inability to afford Poland. Relatively few fathers are out of the picture because they are dead, so that possibility is statistically not the most likely one (or even a fairly likely one).
Immigration forms ask detailed questions aimed to prevent immigration of people who will become a public financial burden. How was she able to immigrate without ability to fully support herself? Poland is not having any social unrest, has been stable for decades, she is not a refugee - so how did she immigrate without being self-sufficient?
Mold is a classic weapon for making a landlord's life a nightmare while avoiding rent payment... mold is easy to find anywhere if you dig for it, and voila - no need to pay rent any more!
My understanding is that her previous apartment is fixed up, but she is not going back because she alleges there is mold. But even without mold, why is this person being subsidized to live in a building that she can't afford, in a city she can't afford?
She can afford to live there wtf are you talking about. Shes paying the rent that is listed for her apartment!!
She makes between 37-50K. So stop acting like shes poor and using the system.
Why arent you wondering why the owner is building when he can't afford to be building without millions.
Last edited by livingsinglenyc; 11-20-2019 at 06:38 PM..
My understanding is that her previous apartment is fixed up, but she is not going back because she alleges there is mold. But even without mold, why is this person being subsidized to live in a building that she can't afford, in a city she can't afford? One-way ticket from JFK to Warsaw can be found for about $400 - that is not incredibly unaffordable (she obviously could afford the ticket in the opposite direction). Cost of life in Poland is way lower than in NYC, so it is absurd to say that anyone has to live in NYC due to inability to afford Poland. Relatively few fathers are out of the picture because they are dead, so that possibility is statistically not the most likely one (or even a fairly likely one).
Immigration forms ask detailed questions aimed to prevent immigration of people who will become a public financial burden. How was she able to immigrate without ability to fully support herself? Poland is not having any social unrest, has been stable for decades, she is not a refugee - so how did she immigrate without being self-sufficient?
Mold is a classic weapon for making a landlord's life a nightmare while avoiding rent payment... mold is easy to find anywhere if you dig for it, and voila - no need to pay rent any more!
Why are you insisting she move to Poland? If she got an apartment she obviously has a green card or is a citizen. You yourself said you were not born here. So quit making it about immigration.
Why are you insisting she move to Poland? If she got an apartment she obviously has a green card or is a citizen. You yourself said you were not born here. So quit making it about immigration.
I'm not insisting on anything, just pointing out an example of how too many people are living off of other people in NYC, which is destroying the once great city. Yes, I am an immigrant (from the southern edge of Eastern Europe, so the same broad general area from which she came), but I NEVER used any subsidies in the US. I worked for everything I have, and always paid the market price for everything I used, including my home condos. I had not lived in NYC (at the time when it was far more interesting then now, and when I unquestionably wanted to live there) because I could not remotely afford NYC when I was younger. I lived where I could afford to live (including 5 years in a certain semi-rural county, which I, having grown up in a large European city, did not like at all - but I had to be there, because that is what my work/training and my financial circumstances demanded).
Another poster said that the developer/landlord received tax abatement in return for having subsidized units in the building. But these tax abatements are generally insufficient to offset loss of rental income, and are not known as a good deal for developers/landlords. They accept the situation because accepting it is the only way they can get a building permit and run a rental business, but I can assure you that any landlord would much rather have full rental income than that tax abatement. The landlord still loses money on tenants who do not pay full rent, and has to raise rents for other tenants to compensate for the loss of income (the mechanism of rent inflation that Pierrepont mentioned. It is like a seesaw: if you have to drop rents for some tenants, you have to raise them for the others to keep the rental income even).
There is the incomprehensible, mindboggling unfairness of the fact that some people in NYC are given (either for free or at a heavy discount) some major things (such as housing - and even luxury housing) for which other people have to kill themselves working, in order to earn those same things that the others are just given - and, to add insult to injury, those people, who work in order to earn for their housing, also have to work to give somebody else free (or discounted) housing, since this handout is subsidized from taxpayer revenue! (in this particular case, the part covered by taxpayers is the tax abatement for the landlord. So, taxpayers are screwed because they have to pay the tax which the landlord should normally pay, and the landlord is screwed because he receives a tax abatement that does not meaningfully cover the rental loss from tenants that do not pay full rent).
But in addition to that, as exemplified by this case, people who are given handouts always want more. I suspect that this person wants to not pay rent at all, because mold is a frequent reason that people try to exploit so they can stop paying rent. I mean, if a place is moldy and you can't tolerate mold, you terminate the lease for a cause (ie, mold) and move somewhere without mold - that is what a decent person would do, who really objects to mold, rather than wants to use mold for further financial self-advantage. I'm typing this from my San Francisco condo, located in an old woden Victorian, built in the 19th century, that has survived the big 1906 earthquake. SF is a foggy, humid, year-around mildly coldish city that has mold everywhere, including certainly our building. You can smell it, but it is the smell of SF, and I have gotten used to it to the point of even liking it. For us 16 condo owners in this condo association, battling invisible mold inside the walls in San Francisco would be an endless high expense, which we agree we can't pursue. Since we own our units, we are the ones who would be paying for de-molding the building, so we think very hard whether we do or do not need to pursue this de-molding. If any of us were sensitive to mold, we would move from San Francisco to Arizona (or some other dry place where mold can't grow). But if everything is just given to you for free or at a major discount, of course you don't care for cost-containment, but just the opposite - you look how to squeeze even more from people who were forced to give you a major rent break in the first place. That is what I sincerely believe this woman is doing, based on what is written in the article, and on my own experiences with low-income renters in NYC.
She can afford to live there wtf are you talking about. Shes paying the rent that is listed for her apartment!!
She makes between 37-50K. So stop acting like shes poor and using the system.
Why arent you wondering why the owner is building when he can't afford to be building without millions.
I was responding to another poster who stated that "she would move back to Poland if she could afford to" (ie, I replied that moving to Poland is far cheaper than trying to live in NYC - unless of course you get a housing subsidized by taxpayers and the landlord, which is a NYC specialty, and much harder to find in most other places).
She is not paying the rent that most other tenants in her building are paying for the same apartments. She is paying much lower rent - the rest is subsidized partly by taxpayers (who pay for the landlord's tax abatement) and by the landlord (who is forced by regulations to rent her the apartment for reduced rent, where the tax abatement that he receives does not compensate for his rental loss).
A person making 37-50k cannot afford to pay unsubsidized, market-rate rent in Manhattan, and should therefore either have her housing covered by people who hired her as a nanny in NYC, or should be trying her luck somewhere where her earning ability matches the housing prices (eg, in Syracuse or Buffalo). Her "luxury" housing rental should not be paid for to any extent by taxpayers and the landlord, but by her employers (if they are retaining her for work in NYC) and of course by herself.
How is applying for a housing lottery a handout in a city that calls said lottery affordable when the rent can be 60% of your check?
Housing lotteries advertise for 3 units, 5 units. How in HELL is that a handout? That is a DREAM.
Actually I mentioned in my posts how housing lottery is a handout. Lottery winners pay the rent which is below market rent - in the worst cases (as in this example we are discussing), they pay much lower rent than what rhe majority of other renters in the same building pay for the SAME apartments.
This is only possible as a handout. And how is this a handout? By the following mechanism:
1. The landlord is required by city regulations to set aside a certain % of apartments as "affordable" in order to build the rental enterprise.
2. In return, the landlord's real estate tax is partly abated. Since somebody has to pay the taxes that the landlord is not required to pay, each such abatement is covered by an increase in other tax collections - ie, all other NYC taxpayers pay tax for someone who doesn't pay tax. So, part of this woman's reduced rent is subsidized by NYC taxpayers.
3. The tax abatement is typically only a part of rent reduction for lottery apartments. The landlord still does not receive anything close to a market rate net income from a lottery unit, even after the tax abatement. So, the landlord is forced to subsidize the rest of rent reduction for this woman and similar tenants. Most landlords in this situation will raise rents for other tenants as much as the market and rental regulations allow, in order to compensate for the loss of rental income from lottery units. So in that situation, market rate renters are also subdidizing lottery apartments.
So, in summary, lottery apartments are subsidized by taxpayers, landlords, and market-rate renters. Since lottery tenants do pay some of their rent (unlike welfare recipients who get free housing), lottery tenants are only partly subsidized, but partly subsidized is still subsidized. Lottery tenants do not receive as big handout as welfare recipients, but they still receive handout - they receive something for which they are not fully paying.
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Oh well...
