By now, you’ve seen the news: Albany is coming for your landlord. Since election day, it seems like every week, tenant activists and elected officials call for increasingly unworkable and bizarre regulations.
We are landlords, and we get it. Housing in New York is brutally expensive, and when your landlord is a jerk, it can make life miserable.
We believe state and city policymakers can and should do everything within their power to responsibly protect vulnerable tenants from exploitation, harassment and intimidation.
But we also think there is a limit, and that labeling an entire industry as greedy, irresponsible slumlords is counterproductive. Responsible property owners play an important role in growing and preserving New York City’s housing stock. That role is especially important in places where government — like the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) — have completely and utterly failed residents. To our surprise, Mayor de Blasio now seems to agree.
In recent weeks, de Blasio announced he’d like to bring in private property owners to manage NYCHA buildings so that long-delayed critical repairs to tens of thousands of units will finally get done. Today, we are proud to announce that our members are ready to take on this responsibility to help these residents and New York City.
We hope that by taking on such an important responsibility, elected officials in New York City and Albany will begin to see that responsible property owners as allies. But in order for that to happen, a lot would need to change.
From 2014 through 2017, the New York City Council Committee on Budget and Housing has voted through nearly twice as many (114) bills targeting property owners as the same period prior (60). The resulting cascade of regulation is crippling.
Some regulations are just inane: for instance, current regulations now require virtually every building in the city (even a three-story walk-up) to contain 120 postings, markings and posters throughout the property. That creates a jigsaw puzzle of paper for any tenant walking in the door, and a full-time job for the landlord to keep them all current.
Others seem downright pernicious: As of July, a new City Council law puts almost anyone who buys a property in the outer boroughs on a “speculation watch list” — the type of Scarlet Letter that stigmatizes even the best-intentioned owner and scares off any bank she or he may need to make building improvements.
Over the years, we’ve become the number one punching bag for media and elected officials. Part of that is our fault; we’ve let the worst among us get all of the attention in the press, while doing our best to stay under the radar and out of everyone’s way.
We’re doing our best to change that, because a few bad apples shouldn’t ruin the whole bunch. By the end of this year, we’ll be asking all of our members — property owners and managers who account for approximately 400,000 rental units across the five boroughs — to sign a strict new code of conduct. The harassers and the speculators are few and far between.
But no matter how isolated, we don’t tolerate that behavior, especially from our membership. Anyone who violates that code will be subject to hefty fines and potential expulsion from our association.
That’s a big deal for our members, who, unlike public perception, reflect the diversity and ingenuity of our city. Forty-eight percent are either immigrants or first-generation Americans. And unlike the Wall Street tycoons who are buying (and flipping) an increasing amount of New York City’s real estate, our members hold and manage their properties for an average of 20 years.
We know that many of Albany’s newcomers want to show tenants that they’re unafraid to punch landlords in the nose. But it’s important they make decisions based on data, not ideology. We welcome the conversation about how to enhance New York City’s housing stock — and the public acknowledgment by de Blasio that we can play a critical role in making housing better.
Now it’s time for the policy proposals in Albany and New York City to reflect that fact and finally make us part of the solution.
Martin is the executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program, Kraebel is CHIP board member and president of Barklee Realty Co., LLC.
