From the Daily News:The vultures are coming home to roost.
Affordable housing advocates sounded the alarm during the real estate boom, as private equity firms bought up dozens of rent-controlled buildings across the Bronx.
The advocates warned the investment firms would seek to maximize their returns by pushing existing tenants out and jacking up rents.
After the boom went bust, an even worse effect of "predatory equity" came to light: Overleveraged landlords are simply abandoning their buildings altogether.
6 comments:
shades of the 70's and the burning Bronx
"Affordable housing advocates sounded the alarm during the real estate boom, as private equity firms bought up dozens of rent-controlled buildings across the Bronx."
Back in "the day" when there were real teeth in NYC's rent laws, this sort of thing was -alot- less frequent.
When NYC instituted vacancy deregulation for apts after Jan 1 1971 (Urstadt law -Republican) all hell broke loose. The gouging was so bad that three years later even the GOP hicks up there passed an Emergency Tenant Protection Act.
We still live under the rule of farmers and two-bit upstate businessmen -paid handsomely by the landlord lobby.
Many of the buildings that have fallen victim to "private investors" are in dire need of repair. The existing residents should be given the opportunity of "Sweat equity" ownership, if they are able to repair their buildings.
But, business as usual, the buildings will instead be auctioned-off to yet another useless leech.
We've seen this before/ Remember Howard Cosell: The Bronx is burning.
Some enterprising fellow (for Christ sake this is the media capital of the world) should compare the mayor's words (rising prosperity!, emerging middle class!) with the reality.
Post it on You Tube.
Could burn up $10million of the mayor's money in self-promotion with a $1000 5 minute documentary.
"But, business as usual, the buildings will instead be auctioned-off to yet another useless leech."
But what law prevents the current residents from making the purchase and becoming the next "useless leech"?
Are they all yak and no sack? Are they serious, or just acting that way until the politicians (like Schumer and Jose Serrano - both race baiting loudmouths) fill their pockets with taxpayers' hard earned money?
Someone has to own and maintain the building. Use the beer and whore money to buy it yourselves and show us what real responsibility can be!
If you force me to be the owner, I'll never put a spoonful of fuel into the furnace, or paint a wall, or disinfect the elevators. Because, jimmy crack corn, and I don't care!
Plenty of perfectly respectable people don't have sufficient capital to tie up in a building or are in a life-stage such as just starting out and unsure if they want to remain in the city, growing older and sicker and so forth, where renting is more appropriate than owning.
Being a homeowner is not the same as being a canonized saint and there is no reason to tar respectable tenants with the odium of being drug addicts, drunks or perverts.
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