NEW YORK, NY - “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” This sentiment has long been attached to my home, New York City. It conjures up an image of a city filled with the best in their fields, all vying for that ever-elusive American Dream.
Unfortunately, this sentiment has also paved the way for accepting some pretty frustrating, difficult, and sometimes inhumane behaviors and practices within the boroughs. Want a decent relationship? Rare. Dream job? It’s called a dream for a reason! Reliable housing? Not gonna hap—hey wait a second! One of these things is not like the others.
There are three things that are essential in order for a human to survive: food, water, and shelter. Yet somehow, we have let one of these necessities become the playground for narcissistic venture capitalists, leading to the absolute decimation of affordable housing through both legal and illegal deregulation. What does that mean? I’m glad you asked, and what I am about to explain to you might very well be the most important thing you learn as a tenant in New York City.
Housing is in short supply in New York City, there is no secret about that. So when our homes become the investment portfolios of the mega-rich and the people living inside of these homes are merely collateral, the toll on those who are simply seeking shelter and the ability to remain living in their native city becomes unimaginably devastating.
One might assume that, at the very least, this would lead to immaculate upkeep of these properties, but often the opposite is true. The demand is so high in New York for apartments, that landlords can and have let tenants freeze without heat in the winter, ignored them as their homes flooded and were overtaken by vermin... and still, people are lining up to replace these tenants should they leave. It’s an incredibly dangerous situation to be in because if the government doesn’t, and they don’t, hold these landlords to the flame and make sure they are abiding by the law... then humans become cattle, and quite seriously lives can be lost.
Let’s consider a hypothetical scenario:
It’s 1995, and the Manhattan Gazette is a real estate/property management company. We know the best way to turn a profit is to buy low and sell high—obviously. So, where do we go shopping for buildings? Keep in mind that, at the time, landlords could remove a unit from rent stabilization after a tenant vacated, a possibility that existed until 2019.
But it’s 1995, and we’re shopping. Are we going to buy a building full of market-rate units? No way! Too expensive. Instead, we purchase a building full of rent-stabilized units, all occupied by long-time New York natives. These buildings come at a fraction of the price. If we can get all the stabilized tenants out and pull the units from regulation, we can turn it into a market-rate building and sell it for 60 times the purchase price.
Buy low. Sell high. And you remember the collateral we mentioned before? Those humans living inside of our portfolio? They are simply a means to an end. They are also a nice way to make some money while we are in the process of ripping these units from regulation. Might as well be an opportunist, am I right or am I ri—*cough* evil incarnate *cough*—ght?
We have no interest in meeting these people and forget responding to their emails. We’re not in the business of being landlords; we’re in the business of white-collar crime.
Now, think about this: If one way to rip units from regulation is to harass a rent-stabilized tenant out of their home (vacancy engineering) and then renovate the unit to the extent that 1/40th of the renovation costs plus the current rent exceeds the legal maximum rent for a rent-stabilized unit (pre-2019), imagine how much more profit we could make by just saying we did the renovations instead? This way, we don't spend $100,000 to deregulate a unit, and our profit margins soar.
That’s called illegal deregulation.
The DHCR (Division of Housing and Community Renewal) never checked landlords who claimed to have legally deregulated their units to ensure they followed proper procedures. This failure has led to a backlog of investigation requests regarding potentially illegally deregulated units—a backlog that stretches several years. All because the tax-funded DHCR didn’t do the job our taxes pay for.
Instead, they cozied up to the mega-wealthy creeps who were taking homes from New Yorkers. It’s time we held them accountable.
I will repeat this as many times as necessary until they understand:
Reliable, affordable, and habitable housing is a human right.
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