Posts Tagged ‘New York’

New York’s government blockade

The final chapter in Our Lot is devoted to renters, and looks at property owners’ successful efforts to curtail tenant protections through state-level lobbying. Even if you don’t live in New York, by now you’ve surely heard about our state Senate’s shameful breakdown. As Tom Robbins points out in The Village Voice this week, the Senate was jut one day away from voting on a bill that would have made it much more difficult for landlords to pull apartments of out of the state’s rent regulation system when two Democrats defected to the other side of the aisle and brought New York’s legislature to a standstill. The deliberate chaos is also preventing, among much other action, urgently needed gun regulation and a welfare benefit increase in one of the stingiest states in the nation.

It’s perversely heartening: opponents have to resort to undermining democracy because they would never prevail politically on the merits. In the 1990s, when the legislature first tore apart rent regs, 70 percent of New Yorkers were in favor of government protections for tenants. (On the other side: 93 percent of economists polled in 1992 agreed with the statement “a ceiling on rents reduces the quality and quantity of housing.”)

Now that an estimated 200,000+ apartments have been yanked out rent regulation since 1997, does that mean that New Yorkers are hungrier for change, that much more burdened by high rents? Or has the mass deregulation killed a big part of the political constituency that has fiercely supported rent regulation? Someone oughta do a poll, but it’s a good bet that a majority still support rent regulation.

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 | Tags: , ,
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