Rent-controlled tenants worried for law changes

For almost half a century, home for one Upper West Side resident has been her rent-controlled apartment on 95th Street.

She likes meeting friendly faces in the elevator on her way to the painting and writing classes she attends regularly. She likes her thick walls, which makes life easier on her at almost 90 years old. She likes that Central Park is nearby, so she can have her “little afternoons of tree and grass and birds.”

Like many other rent-controlled tenants, she doesn’t want her name published for fear of retribution from her landlord. If rent control laws aren’t renewed this June, she and at least 30,000 other rent-controlled tenants fear they’ll find themselves without homes.

The prospect of rent regulation laws expiring June 15 has sent residents and tenant activists into overdrive in a massive campaign to renew and strengthen the current regulations. One million families living in rent-stabilized apartments may also be affected if rents are allowed to increase to market rate, according to the Rent Guidelines Board.

City Council member Gail Brewer has said that residents aren’t at risk until at least March 2012, but rent-controlled tenants, most of whom are elderly, say they’re still worried.

PENNY PRESSURE
When she moved to her rent-controlled apartment in the 1960s, the 95th Street resident was paying $140 per month for her rent. Forty-six years later, she’s paying almost 10 times that, and her rent has more than doubled in the past seven years to about $1400.

At this rate, she’s not sure how much longer she can hold on to her home – and neither is the man who takes care of her savings for her.

“I don’t believe I can and he says I got to,” she said of not dipping into her savings to pay off her rent. She said she gets about $60 more than her rent in Social Security, which usually leaves her with about $45 in her pocket each month.

“I can always stop eating and rush the end,” she said with a light laugh. “It’s not nice to say that but it’s not nice to worry.”

Another rent-controlled tenant on 95th Street isn’t doing much better. She said she likes living in her “nice little building” of less than 40 apartments, but her day job isn’t enough to make ends meet. She was almost evicted this past fall before friends stepped in to help her fight her landlord.

“I put so much money into my pension that I bring home half of my rent,” she said. “So I’m taking out of my savings to pay off my rent. I have to think about when I go out with somebody, and everyone’s ordering lunch, I can order a bowl of soup.”

A rent-controlled tenant on 94th Street said it’s a hard way to spend the final years of her life.

“It’s dreadful, it’s a really scary way to live. I even dread going to get my mail,” she said.

WHAT'S AT STAKE
Rent-controlled apartments were built before February 1947 and rent control stopped adding new tenants to its rolls in the early 1970s—which means that most such tenants are elderly.

Councilmember Brewer said rent-controlled tenants have nothing to worry about this June, because although rent control laws are administered by the state, they are determined by the city. The regulations won’t be up for renewal by the city until March 2012—and she expects that they will be renewed then.

“In terms of Albany, they don’t have anything to worry about,” Brewer said.

A December 2010 document issued by the tenant activist organization Tenants & Neighbors affirmed that view, saying that tenants would probably continue to be protected “through March 2012, when the Council would need to extend rent control, which it is expected to do.”

Tenants & Neighbors organizer Katie Goldstein said that the way rent-controlled tenants have fought the changes by rallying at City Hall is significant, but that the issue still may have to be resolved in court.

“Basically there’s no consensus among housing experts in the field about how rent-controlled tenants will be affected,” she said. “They’ve nevertheless thrown their weight behind a common agenda and demonstrated an incredible amount of solidarity.”

She added that she expects rent-controlled tenants and housing activists to come forth with a legislative platform and a campaign soon.

DRIVEN OUT
Some residents, however, say they need action as soon as possible if they’re going to feel secure in their homes of often over 40 years.

“It’s really scary, I mean it’s really scary. I feel very vulnerable,” one of the 95th Street residents said. “I mean, I thought this was my home, my neighborhood. We moved here when it was not desirable. People from further downtown did not want to visit me up here. For a long time it was not safe. We were pioneers.”

Unlike rent-stabilized tenants, whose rent increases generally go up by two to three percent each year, rent-controlled tenants are subject to rent increases of up to 7.5 percent each year in addition to other charges levied by landlords.

The 95th Street resident added that many rent-controlled tenants aren’t necessarily aware of the issues they face because they don’t have computer access.

“They’re intimidated, they don’t know that they have some rights. When their landlord says jump, they jump,” she said.

She added that though she’s one of the more informed rent controlled tenants and is active in local advocacy campaigns, even she is intimidated and confused by the housing forms she gets in the mail.

“Even though you think ‘They can’t go and evict me!’ when you get eviction papers you shake,” she said. “This is your home for two-thirds of your life – for some, all of their lives.”

A resident on 83rd Street said the notion that rent-controlled tenants are well-off residents cheating the system is simply false.

“Is there abuse of the system? Yes, it would be foolish to deny,” he said. “But it’s probably miniscule, I believe that the actual abuse of the system is very marginal. The real estate industry wants us to believe it’s a massive thing.”

He said he feels indignant when other tenants suggest that his rents are unfairly low or that he should move out.

“We’re the people who made these neighborhoods desirable and now they want us out, because we’re somehow the interlopers in our own neighborhood,” he said. “Why am I the one who has to leave? It’s like, ‘Oh, thank you for making our neighborhood nice, but now you’re in our way, so please leave.’”

“We don’t have much else besides the little we can create around us to make our lives comfortable and convenient,” another 95th Street resident said. “But the rents are sort of doing a thing on us.”

chelsea.lo@columbiaspectator.com