NY Renters Alliance

FINALLY! NYC desperately needs more housing. We've been making this point for at least 10 years now. Great to see our politicians coming around.

For a generation, developers were vilified as 'gentrifiers' or worse. But it turns out that if the population goes up, but no new housing is produced, it sets off a pretty nasty fight for the remaining units, and that is what causes gentrification. Adding 500k new units would go a long way towards limiting rent increases and reducing homelessness!

As NYC housing crisis worsens, Mayor Adams calls for 500,000 new units by 2032 The plan would speed up development reviews, which can take months or even years.

This bill seems like a good idea. Council members already have to disclose sources of income, and as rent control is a 'benefit' (as determined by the court of appeals), they should disclose it too.

Bill Aims to Expose City Council Members’ Rent-Stabilized Units A bill introduced last week would require City Council members to reveal whether their primary residence is a rent-stabilized apartment.

Welcome back "Key Money!" Nora Ephron (who wrote "When Harry Met Sally") famously paid $24000 (or close to $100,000 in today's money) for the right to take over a tenant's lease at the Apthorp.

Now we know where all of these giant broker fees are coming from!

The Return of "Key Money" to NYC | City Journal Excessively stringent rent regulations have resurrected a black market.

There are apartments that, if rented, will generate huge and ongoing fines, but, if renovated, can't cover the renovation costs. So reasonable people keep them empty.

This doesn't benefit any of us.

How the radical left is pushing property owners to the brink These property policies leave Eccles between a rock and a hard place. If he renovates his units, he stands to lose a fortune on each one, an investment the new laws aren’t allowing him to recover.…

This is rich: 3000 low-income kids can't go to UC-Berkeley because there's no housing for them, and a "community group" sued to block additional students until more housing is created.

Why isn't there enough housing? Because the combination of rent controls and NIMBYism mean that almost no housing gets built, and what little housing exists is snapped up by long-term renters who pay below-market rents, and is almost never put back on the market.

U.C. Berkeley Says It May Have to Cut Student Admissions by Thousands The announcement is the result of an appellate court ruling in favor of a neighborhood group that has sued the university, contending it is causing housing problems in the community.

Landmarking strikes again: This 'historic' used car dealership is preventing the creation of 75 new apartments. Gotta live nimbyism in its purest form...

Commission OKs landmark status for Tower Ford building over developer's objections The Village of Thomaston’s preservation commission has determined that the Tower Ford building, site of a planned multiunit apartment development, meets the criteria for landmark status, reaching the

Landmarking strikes again: parishoners would love to knock down their church and build affordable housing plus a new sanctuary. But local activists have made this impossible.

So, we'll get a pretty church until it falls down, and we won't get 34 new units of affordable housing.

Hope the 100 people who didn't get housing because of this decision enjoy the view!

Why New York City Is Trying to Preserve a Crumbling Church Grace Congregational Church wants to stay afloat by redeveloping its building, but a new historic district aimed at protecting Black culture now stands in its way.

We've been talking about how HDFC coops are income restricted, but not wealth restricted for years. There's a similar problem with 'low-income' housing -- a decent chunk of it is snapped up by recent graduates with low current incomes, but great futures.

We're all paying for this in the form of lost property taxes -- about $45 per person. Hope you enjoy subsidizing a rich person's kid's apartment!

New York’s Real Estate Tax Breaks Are Now a Rich-Kid Loophole If you have a modest income but access to lots and lots of cash, New York City has an apartment ownership program that’s right up your alley. Except that it wasn’t meant for you at all.

NYC made development much harder in the past 10 years than before. Fewer houses and apartments got built, and it was nearly impossible to take an underutilized apartment and repurpose it.

Somewhere, there's a house member who will lose a house seat over this.

For NYC to keep its congressional reputation, it needs to grow faster, and that requires removing administrative and legal burdens that choke off apartments before they are built. It also means seriously examining why single people should get 1970s pricing on larger apartments just because they've been there longer.

N.Y. loses single seat in Congress by just 89 people as Census Bureau releases reapportionment figures In New York, the loss of at least one or possibly two seats is likely to spark a push by dominant state Democrats to get rid of at least one of the districts held by GOP lawmakers.

The berlin rent cap was incredible for current tenants, but basically locked everyone else out of the market. Let's see what happens next.

German constitutional court strikes down Berlin rent cap Many tenants are now facing the prospect of paying back rent discounts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/opinion/biden-infrastructure-zoning.html

Opinion | How Biden Can Free America From Its Zoning Straitjacket If a state wants funds for infrastructure, it should meet strict conditions about housing construction.