Paterson Urged To Revise Rent Control Laws

By PETER KIEFER, Staff Reporter of the Sun
April 25, 2008

Tenant advocates are pressing the Paterson administration to revise rent control laws that force an increasing number of apartments onto the free market, an issue that could influence this year's state Senate elections.

Yesterday housing advocates from two organizations, Tenants and Neighbors and Housing Here and Now, staged a rally in Queens and met with the president of Manhattan, Scott Stringer, State Senator Elizabeth Krueger, and representatives from the offices of Assemblymen Brian Kavanagh and Richard Gottfried to demand the repeal of what is known as vacancy decontrol.

Vacancy decontrol permits landlords to charge market rate for a regulated apartment if its rent rises above $2,000 and it becomes vacant. Opponents argue that the city's entire stock of rent-stabilized and rent-controlled apartments eventually will be deregulated through this provision, although it may take decades to do so.

"The bottom line is this: Control of the state Senate will control the fate of vacancy decontrol," Mr. Stringer said yesterday in an interview. "This is going to be revisited. You have a governor who is pro-tenant and a looming Democratic majority that is going to take a look at a lot of these housing issues."

Since his days as a state senator representing a district in Harlem, Governor Paterson has been a strong advocate for "affordable" housing, but as governor he has so far avoided the issue of rent stabilization.

A spokesman for the governor, Jordan Isenstadt, said yesterday: "Governor Paterson's record on affordable housing is well known. The particular issue of vacancy decontrol is under review."

The law, established in 1994 and altered in 1997, also established luxury decontrol, which prompts deregulation if a stabilized apartment's rent is more than $2,000 and its occupants' combined income is $175,000 for at least two years in row.

Still, under a loophole, a tenant or tenants who consistently earn more than $175,000 a year can legally live in a rent-stabilized apartment if its rent is less than $2,000 a month.

"To call it vacancy decontrol is really misleading," the president of the Rent Stabilization Association, Frank Ricci, said. "It was never the intent to protect people that make that kind of money. If there is any injustice it is that we don't have an income report for all people to expose all the millionaires who are living under rent control."

About 1 million apartments in the city are rent-stabilized, and each year the Rent Guidelines Board decides how much landlords can increase rents on those units.

The state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, is seen as one of the last holdouts on maintaining vacancy decontrol, but his slim two-seat majority in the Senate is in jeopardy.

In 2006 the number of rent-stabilized apartments in the five boroughs dropped by 6,022, according to a report by the Rent Guidelines Board. Last spring, Governor Spitzer, whose father is a real estate developer, introduced a bill that would have increased the deregulation threshold to $2,800 from $2,000. The bill did not pass.

"I have not seen or read any of Mr. Paterson's stand on this," Mr. Ricci said. "One can only assume that when he was a state senator, he was more in tune with these groups than the Spitzer administration was, but he has changed his position on a number of things since he became governor."

"I think that this is a governor that understands the significance of the housing crisis here in the city and is likely to put more weight behind addressing the issue," Mr. Kavanagh, an assemblyman who represents parts of the East Side, said.