RENT GUIDELINES BOARD AGAIN SAYS:
"DEATH TO NEW YORKERS!"
By A. Kronstadt

[June 19, 2008]: New York City's Rent Guidelines Board is a body composed of nine individuals, all appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who decide what increases will be allowed in the rents of about 2.5 million tenants covered by rent regulations that limit rents and ensure protection from evictions. 

It is almost certain that without these regulations, mandated according to the rent control laws of 1969 and the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974, most of the tenants now protected would have to move out of New York City. Communities as we know them would vanish and the cultural changes already wrought by gentrification would become finalized.

The annual Rent Guidelines Board meeting of June 19, where historically high rent increases, including a huge surcharge for persons residing in their apartments for six years or more, were adopted with a minimum of discussion, was yet another step toward running regular people out of New York City.

A Brief History of Rent Regulations

During the mayoral administration of Fiorello H. LaGuardia in the 1940s, rent controls were imposed by the city on almost all rental housing, including one-family dwellings with absentee landlords, two and three-family houses, and larger buildings. Increases were allowed upon application of the landlord and people could be evicted for nonpayment of rent, but LaGuardia believed that working class people should have their housing protected to some extent by the law.

In 1953, rent controls were removed from all one-and two-family houses. In 1971, after administration of rent laws had been transferred to Albany and while Republican Nelson Rockefeller was governor, rent regulations were repealed altogether. In 1974, after hundreds of thousands of apartments had already been de-controlled, rent laws were re-enacted under the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, which put in place the regulations that exist today, known as "rent stabilization." ("Rent control" is still in place for a small number of apartments in New York City, mostly for older people who did not abandon their apartments when the law was abolished in 1971. These apartments are governed by another formula, which in many cases results in a 7.5% rent increase every year.)

Around the time that the Emergency Tenant Protection Act came about, Albany Republicans promulgated the Urstadt Law, which made it impossible for New York City to have rent regulations stricter than those passed in Albany. This was a far cry from the days of LaGuardia, when New York City simply enacted its own rent controls and applied them to virtually all rental units.

The Emergency Tenant Protection Act was written so that it is not permanent and must be renewed by the New York State Legislature at intervals that the Legislature itself decides. So, in 1997, when republican State Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno attained a republican majority in the State Senate that allowed the laws to expire, New York City was completely at the mercy of Albany. A "compromise" worked out in a back room deal between Bruno, republican Governor George Pataki, and democrat majority leader Sheldon Silver allowed for "vacancy decontrol" of New York City apartments, whereby rents increase by 20% every time a tenant moves out of an apartment. Rent regulations were kept in place for existing tenants, and city residents breathed a sigh of relief. However, the vacancy increase meant that rent protections were going to be denied to the following generation of renters.

RGB: Rent Gouging Bastards 

The only autonomy that New York City has is the right to appoint a board to determine the level of annual rent increases. Since the mayoral administration of Ed Koch and the rise of gentrification, the Rent Guidelines Board has regularly approved large percentage increases for lease renewals.
There is a vast feeling of hopelessness on the part of tenants facing these increases. This desperation plays itself out in protests at the RGB's public session meetings. Legislation requires these meetings to be held in public and for testimony to be heard, regardless of whether or not a decision on the level of rent increases has already been made prior to the meetings.
Not surprisingly, the public meetings are often attended by people who let the RGB know how they feel about what is happening to them. The protests result from frustration over a completely undemocratic process which will take thousands of dollars out of tenants' pockets over the course of time. 

Folks in New York City can sometimes make a great deal of noise, and you can see on the faces of board members that they consider the raucous people in the audience to be barbarians. Because the RGB members have never been able to suppress the noisy protests, they have developed various ways of tuning it out.

But the noise is not decisive -- what is decisive is the dictatorship of Marvin Markus, who cast the deciding vote at the June 19 charade, and the fact that the board as a whole is chosen with a bias toward the real estate industry. Public members are required under RGB guidelines to have "experience in the real estate industry" -- landlord representatives are required to be actual owners of property. Only two members of the board are not required to have experience in the real estate industry or to be property owners themselves -- these are the only tenant representatives.
Despite the occasional board member like Martin Zelnick (an architect fired by Bloomberg), who has sympathy toward tenants, and the two public members on the board, most board members are connected with real estate owners as bosses and clients, and have the same perspective on what should be done to tenants. And they did it to us, on June 19.

Annual Farce Turns Tragic

The media has a stereotypical way of covering Rent Guidelines Board meetings and the raucous protests that accompany them. RGB meetings are described by news commentators as a "ritual," and they always say that neither the landlords nor the tenants go away satisfied, which is supposed to reflect the fairness of the process. Actually, the landlords at the meeting in the Great Hall of Cooper Union looked pretty satisfied on the evening of June 19, 2008, because they went away with everything they wanted, except for the total abolition of the rent laws themselves, which they will still have to work on in Albany.

Every year the RGB tries something new to suppress protests. Last year, they introduced metal detectors, though protests have never involved metal objects. The metal detectors were there again this year, along with signs stating that noise making devices would be confiscated. In the Great Hall itself, a Tensaband barrier was stretched between the audience and the podium, which is something never seen before at these meetings. There were no uniformed cops early on in the meeting, and no one from the angry crowd tried to breach the thin barrier.

It was evident however, that there were a larger-than-normal number of landlords present, carrying propaganda from the Rent Stabilization Association, an organization of building owners opposing rent regulations. They had been supplied with placards resembling those that many tenant protesters were carrying, but with slogans favoring a large rent increase. There were about three hundred tenants and maybe twenty landlords.

Someone smuggled dozens of plastic whistles into the room, circumventing the metal detector, along with a large supply of packaged earplugs for the benefit of the more sensitive. Immediately, the whistling overpowered the amplification system. RGB chairman Marvin Markus, known to the initiated as Marvin Markup since his days as a Koch appointee to the RGB, was visibly annoyed as usual. His face makes him look like he is always listening to a whistle.

The crowd quieted down briefly as Adrienne Holder a tenant representative on the board, presented a proposal that the meeting be postponed because, contrary to RGB bylaws, an item in the form of a 22-page document justifying additional charges for certain tenants, had been added to the agenda at the last minute for a vote, which tenant reps had been informed of only hours before the meeting. Ms. Holder's motion was seconded by tenant representative Ronald Languedoc, but the postponement was voted down by all of the other board members. Holder was referring to the so called "equalization adjustment," meaning that persons residing in their apartments 6 years or more would be given either a 4.5% increase for a 1 year lease renewal or 8.5% increase if they select a 2 year renewal, or a flat $45 increase for a 1 year lease or $85 for a 2 year lease, whichever is greater.

For the Poor, a Tax Of Course

In the midst of the noise, Markus adjourned the meeting briefly at 6:15. When it reconvened, it seemed as if the board members had become oblivious to the piercing shrieks of the whistles, and they were determined to hurry things up. Very rapidly, some double-talk was read by Marvin Markup as the whistles grew louder and louder. Markus was talking about his long-standing proposal that the RGB make adjustments based on the income of tenants, which had never caught on. As a substitute for this, he said that it was necessary to make unusual types of adjustments, such as the arcane formula of the "equalization adjustment." This led to some people in the audience shouting "no poor tax" during Markus' speech.

A proposal was then read that almost no one in the room could hear. The anger was growing, as people in the room who had picked up snippets of Marvin Markup's speech were coming to realize what was going on. A vote was taken. Although it was difficult to make out exactly what was going on, the proposal with the 4.5%-8.5% plus poor tax passed by 5 to 4, with Markus casting the deciding vote.

You can read the full guidelines at the RGB's web site at: <http://www.nyc.gov/html/rgb/home.html> These new guidelines appeared on line with shocking rapidity compared to the way things normally happen in NYC government--they were passed at 7:10pm on June 19 and were published at the time of this writing at 1:00am on June 20, suggesting that they had already been written up well before the meeting began.

[Also see "Rent Guidelines Board Soaks NYC Tenants" in SHADOW #52: <http://shadowpress.org/rent_board.52.htm>–Ed.]

[Photo by A. Kronstadt]