HIT THE GREEDY LANDLORDS WHERE IT HURTS: BOYCOTT!!
 

Since the 1980s, when the Lower East Side/ East Village became fashionable again, we have lost countless locally-owned businesses that make up the fabric of our neighborhood. Small cafés and diners, hardware stores, bike shops, laundromats, clothing and jewelry designers, second hand stores, bakeries and theaters have been pushed out by expensive restaurants, yuppie dives, bars and clubs.

In recent years, with real estate prices and rents at an all-time high, these losses have accelerated, with an invasion by corporate chains like Dunkin Donuts, the GAP, Urban Outfitters, McDonald's and, worst of all, Starbucks.

Every time there is an upswing in the real estate market, lenders make money available that encourages landlords and real estate developers to replace low density buildings (garages, auto repair shops, plumbing supply houses, etc) with luxury high-rise apartments, to overbuild on the smallest of lots and to remove lower rent paying tenants by bringing about unsafe building conditions and suspicious fires that get their buildings vacated. This happened at the apartment building on the southwest corner of Eldridge and East Houston, and at a row of buildings on the west side of Avenue B, between Third and Fourth Streets. Once repaired and renovated, the original tenants and store owners were not allowed to return -- those apartments and store fronts now command market rate rents.

Once an area is sufficiently gentrified, corporate chain stores come rushing in to push out local businesses and further homogenize our neighborhood. Investors who purchase properties in this currently hyper-inflated real estate market are more reliant than ever on higher commercial rents in order to cover the huge debt service on their mortgages and real estate taxes on their over-priced properties. This, in addition to their overall greed, results in landlords jacking up rents on commercial tenants.

As a result, new businesses are immediately saddled with insanely high rents that they struggle to cover each month. If they fail to take root quickly, most of these new businesses run out of money within a few months and are gone. Though long-established businesses hit with rent increases are more able to absorb rent increases up to a point, either way, this translates into higher prices for customers already paying the highest residential rents in the history of the city.

National corporate chain stores can afford these insanely high rents, even if the income from their neighborhood locations doesn't cover expenses, since they have deep pockets and other operations to offset their losses here. As they maintain their presence in our neighborhood, these chains steal market share from smaller neighborhood businesses trying to stay afloat.

If greedy landlords who force neighborhood businesses out through rent increases fail to get higher rents for their commercial spaces in their buildings, they will be less likely able to cover their mortgage payments. The resulting deficits can lead to these landlords defaulting on their mortgages and having their properties foreclosed on by their lenders. These carpet-bagging parasites that pay too much for their properties are responsible for the inflated real estate market that results in astronomical rents for residential and commercial tenants, and higher prices for everyone, as they destroy the character of our neighborhood.

Ultimately, many of these investors end up losing their properties when they can't pay their mortgages and/or when they can't come up with the balloon payments they face 5-10 years later, usually due to property values decreasing as interest rates increase, and when lenders tighten the money supply as the inflated real estate market corrects itself. (This has happened before and it will happen again!!) Unfortunately, by then, the damage to our neighborhood has been done--neighborhood businesses are gone for good!!

By refusing to patronize any national chain stores or new businesses taking the places of neighborhood businesses that are displaced by greedy landlords' rent increases, we can help keep corporate interlopers out of our neighborhood and assist these landlords in losing their buildings. At the very least, it will demonstrate to these landlords that it is not in their best interest to force out neighborhood businesses.

If employed on a large enough scale, this can result in lower real estate prices, lower rents, more diverse neighborhood businesses and prices of food and consumer goods can become more affordable for all of us. Why should we pay to help pay the mortgages of greedy landlords who are gentrifying our neighborhood and feed the corporate chains that do not deserve our money? We have the power and we must use it!!

WHAT YOU CAN DO:
> Boycott corporate interlopers, chain stores, franchises and yuppie dives that have displaced or taken over the spaces of local neighborhood businesses, and let the landlords and incoming commercial tenants know it.!! Vote with your dollars--where you spend your money determines who stays in business–you can help decide who stays and who goes!!
> Put pressure on politicians and other elected officials. Push them to enforce restrictions on building heights and density, to landmark neighborhoods in order to prevent demolitions, to stop zoning variances that allow real estate developers to overbuild, and to block "big box" corporate chain stores from setting up shop here.
> Use your imagination to make life intolerable for real estate speculators and yuppie businesses!!

--Chris Flash