Forcing Landlords into Bankruptcy Will Destroy NYC

Landlords throughout New York State and especially those in the City claim our elected legislators (backed by DeBlasio) have set up, with their recently enacted stricter rent regulations, a Pandora’s box of potential conflicts. Challenges are already being worked up by teams of lawyers and it’s more than a certainty that litigation opposing these new draconian measures will end up in the courts and most assuredly way up to the Supreme Court for jurisdiction. By their actions the Albany crowd may have doomed rent control altogether.

The City Rent Stabilization Association and the Community Housing Improvement Program have both filed cases in the Eastern District claiming that New York’s law violates both the Due Process and Takings clauses of the United States Constitution. And, of course, leave it to those radical Leftists, Progressives, Socialists and Communists who bask in disrupting the economic growth and welfare of whatever city they decide to destroy by residing in. UBS analyst, Jonathan Woloshin, writes: “We wish to emphasize that these recently passed laws may not mark the end of ‘rent reform’ in New York. A number of tenant advocacy groups including The Upstate Downstate Coalition, Citizen Action New York and the Democratic Socialists of America have been very publicly vocal of their desire for even more stringent rent regulations.”

We have always been on the side of those who own their own businesses, those who have gambled their own dollars to build, purchase and develop safe, secure housing for those who wish to rent and reside in our city. These entrepreneurs fuel the stability and growth of our city yet our legislators wish to strangle them with rules and regulations that carbon copy those of a dictatorial regime. Just take a gander at the housing as seen in videos of Cuba that are dilapidated, crumbling, dangerous and to put it plainly, ugly.

As an example one of their tyrannical laws stipulated that a landlord is forbidden from taking a unit in his own building for his own use. It also limits the size of security deposits, sets new barriers to evicting tenants who are criminals or rent withholding ones and guarantees that high income tenants can’t have their up scale apartments escape the rent stabilization program. We ask, “Just who owns these buildings? Who pays for the renovations to keep them safe, clean and up to code? Who is forced by law to rent to those whom they see as unfit to live in their units?” It is patently unfair for the city or state to poke their politically tainted fingers into forcing landlords to fall into bankruptcy merely to satisfy those who would turn our city into another Havana or Caracas. We recall vividly the Communist apartment houses built during the Stalin years and saying so, we blink when we walk past the public housing buildings run by the City. And legislators are telling actual landlords how to run their business? Give us a break!!!