You'd think a law that would give small businesses a fighting chance against astronomical rents and the soulless chains willing to pay them would be an easy sell for a City Council chock-full of progressives and our supposedly liberal mayor.
Yet Mayor Bill de Blasio, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Public Advocate Letitia James, and Robert Cornegy, the chairperson of the council's Committee on Small Business, won’t even allow the legislation to go before a committee hearing, even though 27 councilmembers support it. Why?
In short, because it would supremely piss off the powerful real estate interests that all major politicians in New York City must answer to, which makes it a total nonstarter. Debating the Small Business Jobs Survival act would start a conversation about the future of the city that no ambitious politician actually wants to have.
At 9 a.m. Friday morning, a group of community advocates will hold a rally outside City Hall to protest the mayor and the council's willful inaction on the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, which would give commercial tenants a ten-year minimum lease, as well as the right to renewal, and a right to go to arbitration to settle on a new rent.
The SBJSA has been kicking around in some form or another since commercial rent control died in New York City in 1963, and with it, the ability for a small business owner to have any sort of economic stability in New York City. Instead, they became subject to the whims of landlords and speculation, larger market forces that are able to take a vibrant, locally owned business district and completely clear it out, in just a few months.
"This isn’t a silver bullet of legislation," said Jenny Dubnau, an artist based in Long Island City, who’s a member of the Artist Studio Affordability Project (ASAP), an organization that aims to unite artists and small business owners who are each being displaced by commercial speculation. "All we’re asking for is some level of negotiating power. We need something to help us stop the bleeding."
Unlike rent-stabilized units, or rent-controlled apartments, under the SBJSA, there wouldn’t be state-dictated increases or freezes. However, the all-powerful Real Estate Board of New York has viewed even a discussion of the law as an affront to good manners, and gotten City Hall to label the proposed legislation as rent control.
8 comments:
Small businesses cannot survive, unless a small business rent stabilization law is passed
Banks, chain drug stores, national brand stores, etc. are the only ones that can afford the tents in NYC.
And...if you happen to own your own small one story taxpayer building that your store is in....you are being taxed out of existence!
More and more, many cities throughout the world, are losing sir unique stores and are being replaced with Mc Donald and the like.
Soon London , Paris and New York will all look the same.
And this fucking mayor and certain shitty fucking city council members want to challenge the quasi-fascist plutocratic policies of President Trump?
And these certain shitty fucking city council members will pointlessly protest and march in front of 725 5th avenue the same day these community advocate groups are organizing in front of city hall.
Can it be more obvious now?
they want small businesses to pay for huge increases in the cost of doing business: ex: 15 dollar wage, health insurance, sick pay, FMLA, FAIR WORK WEEK SCHEDULING---- but not to ever help small business with one of their highest costs, rent. they are all hypocrites; that is why trump got the nomination.
Trump pushed out rent stabilized tenants.
Why would he support rent stabilization now after decades of not supporting it?
>> that is why trump got the nomination.
A business only has to provide health insurance if they have 50 or more FULL TIME workers.
How many small businesses do you know that employ 50 full time workers?
Landlords are also small business owners depending on the size of their business . If the landlord is required to take a smaller rate then the government should pay the difference of the share market value back to the landlord and then pay for it out of taxes . Don't think it's fair taxes are used to subsidize a business , well I don't think it's fair to force a landlord to take a lower income .
I have said this many times before, these clowns are hardly liberal progressives, just in name only.
Give it up. The SBJSA runs afoul of state property rights. When your lease is up, you enter free and open negotiations with the landlord to renew. Just because you were already there does not give you or your business some legal claim to the building. "But what about rent stabilization laws?" There are a number of exceptions to force out the tenants. If the tax breaks are big enough, the landlord won't pursue it that hard for 1-2 year leases. Commercial leases run 10 years - there's much more incentive to activate those loopholes.
This would be far better solved with an FHA type program for commercial businesses.
Post a Comment