Rent control debate
February 3, 2010Jon Brooks Comments OffIn working up the two posts on Stuyvesant Town in New York City, I came across this rent control debate in the comments section of an article in New York magazine. The two main posters are a long-time resident of the Manhattan housing complex, which includes many rent stabilized apartments, and an opponent of rent control. Somewhat nasty, the exchange is indicative of the emotional responses that the rent control issue provokes.
Anti-rent control guy
I’m tired of hearing the residents of Stuy Town complaining that their low rents need to be preserved because Stuy Town is a middle class oasis filled with hard working firemen and teachers.
This is nonsense.
There are people who have been living their for decades paying obscenely low rents. Good for them, but everyone else is subsidizing them with obscenely high market rents.
There is no law that everyone has to live in Manhattan. If they can’t afford a market rate rent, let them move across the river to Queens.
StuyTown resident replies
I’m sick of the wealthy real estate developers catering to the wealthiest citizens. I’m even more sickened by the complete lack of a community oriented, humanistic approach to urban development. Furthermore sickened am I by the lack of even half-way decent public schools to send your children to. Do you work for Bloomberg?
Anti-rent control guy
Hey StuyTown Resident-
If you can’t afford to live in Manhattan, or are too cheap to pay to live here, get out. Everyone else in the city is subsidizing deadbeats like you.
StuyTown resident
(BTW I’m not looking for a fight.)
A) I am not a deadbeat.
B) I can afford to live in Mahhattan, because I’m lucky enough to live in Stuyvesant town.
C) I don’t want to move, because this is my home. I’ve lived in Manhattan for 20 years. My wife was born and raised and publicly schooled here. Our children were born, are being raised and attend public school here.
D) Can you explain to me, clearly, how high market rental rates are directly subsidizing my rent stabilized lease?Anti-rent control guy
When some people are paying artificially low rents, this creates housing shortages. Other renters not lucky enough to have a rent controlled or stabilized apartment wind up paying artificially bloated rents.
This is not some far out right wing theory. This is basic economics 101.
StuyTown resident
There is no housing shortage. There IS a shortage of AFFORDABLE housing. Occupied, existing apartments, don’t create housing shortages. Poor foresight and greedy development to cater to the wealthy do. Reagan tried supply side, trickle down economics. Look where that got us.
Anti-rent control guy
This has nothing to do with Reagan.
You have been living in Stuy Town for 12 years. You have not moved from your apt. for 12 years because you have an artificially low rent. In other words, since your apartment is essentially off the market it causes a housing shortage.
Trying to make housing more “affordable” by enacting price controls is a bit like putting out a fire by pouring gasoline on it. No other city in the US has rent control and no other city in the US has the endemic housing problems like NYC. The only reason why your apartment is kept artificially low is because of a bunch of pandering spineless politicians. It has little to do with good economics or creating a truly efficient and affordable housing market.
Apparently your version of liberalism does not extend beyond your apartment. As long as you have a cheap place to live to hell with everyone else who is paying a bloated rent subsidizing you.
Stop justifying your greed by attacking Reagan and a bunch of mysterious, faceless landlords. I’m sorry, but you lose this argument.
StuyTown resident
I haven’t moved from my apartment in 12 years because I like it there. It’s my home. I’m not a transient.
Many other cities in the United States have rent control including Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, CA.
I never stated my version of liberalism, and your concise description thereof is based on assumption and inaccurate.
I made no justification of my greed by that statement. I am not greedy. I didn’t attack Reagan. I simply stated that his idea of supply side economics didn’t work, which is fact.
You are allowed to believe you won an argument.
I am allowed to believe you are wrong.
I wish you wealth, so that you never have to worry about the cost of living and can afford any place you may so desire to live.
Anti-rent control guy
You have been living in Stuy Town because it is cheap. If NYC would do the right thing and get rid of rent control your rent would rise to a more rational level (and everyone else’s rent would plunge).
If you had to pay a fairer, market-based rent for Stuy Town you would leave in a New York minute.
StuyTown resident
If I had to pay a “fairer market based rent” in Stuyvesant Town, I’d get a second job to be able to afford it. Just like my parents worked two jobs when we were kids to afford the mortgage on their house so we WOULDN’T HAVE TO MOVE OUT OF OUR HOME.
Maybe I should make assumptions about you as you do about others. I assume you are seated pretty comfortably and don’t understand that most of us work very hard for financial gains that aren’t very lucrative and have to struggle to make ends meet. If you understood that dynamic, you may be more sympathetic to those of a lesser standing than yours.
Anti-rent control guy
I work very hard for my money, thank you. The difference between me and you is that I don’t have a sense of entitlement. I don’t believe I have the right to live somewhere that I can’t afford.
As I said before, if living in Manhattan is too expensive for you, why don’t you move to Queens, Brooklyn or Staten Island? How dare you assume that society owes you a cheap Manhattan apartment with gardens and a river view simply because you want to live here.
Against rent control too
I’m not going to defend Anti-Rent Control Guy’s tone, but don’t be so quick to dismiss the substance of what he’s saying by merely calling him a crank.
What he’s saying is fact: rent control is a market distortion that creates winners and losers, and what’s more sacrifices efficiency in the process. Whether you’d leave Manhattan or work two jobs absent rent control is besides the point. You are a lucky winner in the current situation by not having to do either, but others pay the price and the whole system is suboptimal and unfair.
StuyTown resident
Anti-Rent Control Guy,
I don’t doubt you work very hard for your money. You’re welcome. But again you read into my words. I am saying that you may not understand the dynamic of the struggle to make ends meet.
I don’t want to move to those areas you name, because I’ve made my home in Manhattan.
I don’t have a sense of entitlement. I can afford Stuyvesant town.
Society owes me nothing and I don’t dare to make that assumption (the assumption I made was about your standing). Anything I have I’ve earned. No one owes me anything.
I would pay a higher rate if the laws were to change, in order to be able to keep my home.
To me, it’s beginning to sound like you are a little jealous of we Stuyvesant town residences with our park and river views. TS is still renting some apartments. Maybe you should consider moving here.
Anti-rent control guy
The only reason you’ve been able to make Manhattan your home is because people like me are subsidizing your lifestyle.
I remember a year or so ago the NY Times, hardly a bastion or right wing thinking, ran an editorial critical of Tishman’s antics in Stuy Town. However, in the same editorial it had harsh words for a system that was so dysfunctional that it allowed a lucky few to have cheap apartments in Stuy Town.
You’re damn right I’m jealous. I wish I had a cheap apt. with a garden and river views.
Pro rent-control
Anti-Rent Control Guy, could you please enlighten us as to how YOU specifically are subsidizing rent stabilized tenants?
Another issue for you to grapple with, aren’t tax paying renters subsidizing home owners who get tax breaks on their mortgage interest and property taxes?, plus a $500,000 tax free capital gain on the sale of their home every so many years?
What about the regressive FICA taxes paid by the poor and the middle class on their entire income while the wealthy stop paying it once they reach just over $100K
Warren Buffet, a multi-billionaire and the second richest person in the US, complained to Congress that the wealthy are not paying their fair share of taxes, telling them that his tax rate was 16% and his secretary’s is 25%.
If you are upset over what you consider to be societal inequities, you are better off starting with the wealthy who take governmental financial bailouts from the middle class taxes, then pay themselves insane compensation and bonuses.
Another person against rent control
The fact that there probably exists someone (many ones, in fact) in StuyTown Resident’s exact financial position who is unable to live in his same neighborhood in a comparable apartment for a comparable rent is proof positive that the system as it stands is unfair. He is LUCKY to live in a nice neighborhood, in a nice apartment, in the most desirable borough of the most desirable city in the US, if not the world. No use in comparing him to someone who makes more and can afford more. But plenty of people DON’T make more and CAN’T afford more and DO live in the outer boroughs in much worse neighborhoods in much worse apartments! Is it because they don’t work (as) hard? NOPE. Is it because they are worse people? NOPE. Just like the wealthy are paying high(er) rents to subsidize cheap(er) rents, the UNLUCKY middle and lower classes are paying to live in areas/apartments that are a far cry from where StuyTown Resident lives. Can they afford his rent? YEP. But they didn’t get lucky. Fair?
