Submitted by michael, Aug 11, 2008 20:31

Before they rush to gain control over the Rent Guidelines Board, members of the City Council ought to visit the Housing Courts in the city and observe some of the by-products the Rent Regulation System has begottten: overloaded housing courts, thousands of landlord-tenant lawyers, thousands of private investigators, hundreds of judges, all working and litigating the effects of the Rent Regulation System. That system has given financial incentives to otherwise honest people to cheat and decieve -- by illegally subletting their apartments -- taking advantage of the artificially low rent.

People who otherwise would have given up their apartments because they moved out of the city, or prefer to live somewhere else, are holding on to their apartment, subletting it and charging more rent than they pay, pocketing the difference. People hold to low rent apartments sometimes as an address for welfare checks, while living in expensive private houses outside the city. Rent Regulation distorts the basic principles of the market, causing hundreds of millions in avoidable legal costs, causing shortage of apartments and benefitting the dishonest. And now Ms. Quinn wants to tighten that system? We should, instead, abolish the system all together, tax landlord as per every apartment they rent and the rent being charged. Use the tax money and the savings in legal cost to subsidize low income housing. But do not let politicians interfere with the housing market. Look what they have already done!

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