City of Lithium-Ion

 

Crain's New York 

The city is giving landlords the ability to generate some extra cash by installing outdoor battery charging stations in front of their buildings and charge a fee for bikers to access the amenity. 

 The Department of Transportation on Monday launched an application process for building owners to install e-bike battery charging and swapping cabinets on public sidewalks outside of their properties. 

The idea is for landlords, or their ground-floor retailers, to offer tenants and the delivery workers most city eateries rely on, greater access to outdoor e-bike battery charging, instead of risking lithium-ion batteries sparking deadly fires inside businesses and apartments.

 In 2024, lithium-ion batteries ignited 279 fires and killed six people, FDNY data shows. The fires are tied to the city’s delivery economy boom and its workers’ reliance on inexpensive, uncertified electric bikes and mopeds. DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in a statement that the effort seeks to make safe charging infrastructure more accessible to curb fire safety concerns, while giving private property owners the perk of monetizing public space to better serve their tenants. “We need to do our part to ensure charging is safe and accessible,” said Rodriguez. 

 Building owners can charge bikers a fee to access the cabinets, but the Transportation Department hasn’t worked out potential restrictions for such fees, according to the agency. One e-bike cabinet company, the Berlin-based Swobbee, that the city is partnering with to add the infrastructure on sidewalks says it plans to charge a maximum of $2 a day for an unlimited number of battery swaps.

  A landlord or ground-floor tenant in a building with an eatery, shop or community space, or with five or more apartments, can apply for permission to bolt the skinny, vending-machine size metal cabinets to the sidewalk, which are lined with lockers that store and juice up batteries. Building owners interested in applying can contact DOT to obtain a permit at revocableconsents@dot.nyc.gov.

Rent stabilized apartments have been memory holed

 

 

THE CITY 

 In December, THE CITY highlighted a sizable decline in the number of registered rent-stabilized apartments across the city, even after a new state law prohibited removing units from the rent regulation rolls in most cases. Now a tenant advocacy group is using city property records to detail, down to the individual building, where landlords may be failing to report stabilized apartments to the state.

The nonprofit group JustFix shared with THE CITY records of 44,470 buildings that reported rent-stabilized units on their property tax bills in the last few years. The city Department of Finance says it gets that information directly from the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal (HCR), which requires property owners to annually certify the number of rent-regulated apartments in their properties.

Very few rent-regulated apartments should have had their registrations disappear after June 2019. That’s when former Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, which ended landlords’ ability to remove apartments from rent-stabilization except under rare circumstances.

Yet since then — even as affordable-housing programs have created thousands of new rent-stabilized apartments — the number of units registered with the state has declined sharply.

For tax year 2021, landlords registered 803,216 units as rent-stabilized. That’s down from 869,220 as of the same date in 2019. 

During that time, about 4,000 units left rent stabilization legally, after landlord tax breaks expired. Meanwhile another 10,000 units were added through these tax programs, annual reports from the city Rent Guidelines Board show. 

The reports also show that about 900 remaining rent-regulated units in buildings once converted to condominiums or cooperatives have legitimately left the rolls, as longtime tenants moved out or died. 

It’s also not uncommon for landlords to file their state registration paperwork late — meaning that some of the 10,400 buildings that show a drop to zero rent-regulated units in their 2021 tax bills will eventually get back on the rolls.

But another roughly 3,100 buildings reporting a decline in the number of rent-stabilized apartments since 2019 still have one or more stabilized units registered — meaning that late registrations don’t explain the drop. 

In one Brooklyn building recently profiled in THE CITY that dropped from 12 registered rent-regulated apartments in 2019, to six in 2020 and 2021, tenant rent histories provided by HCR show apartments appear to have exited from rent regulation even after the 2019 rent law should have prohibited their removal.

THE CITY created an interactive map that lets readers search by address and see every apartment unit that was registered with the state as rent-stabilized in 2019 but no longer is.

This data release comes days after a federal appeals court struck down a challenge, brought by landlord groups, seeking to have the entire rent-regulation system ruled unconstitutional — a decision that landlords are now hoping to bring before the Supreme Court.

Landlords publicly shames DSS worker tenant for stiffing them on rent

NY Post 

In a sign of the times, a fed-up Queens landlord posted two giant banners calling out his allegedly deadbeat tenants for owing him $17,000 in back rent.

“MY TENANTS ON THE FIRST FLOOR ARE NOT PAYING RENT” read the bold posters slung above the first-floor rental on 175th Street in Springfield Gardens.

Landlords Calvin and Jean Thompson posted the banners — which can be seen from the Belt Parkway — in the hopes of shaming their tenants into paying up. It was also featured in a TikTok video that got more than 14,000 likes — and supportive comments like, “Not paying your bills is ghetto.”

The Thompsons, who are married, have owned the two-family home since 1989. They began the process of trying to evict Marie and Eugene Lamour and their daughter Kathia in Queens Housing Court last month.

But with nearly 200,000 eviction cases pending in the city after pandemic protections and the state’s eviction moratorium created a historic backlog, the landlords see humiliation as the next best tactic.

“The signs are very embarrassing and shameful for them,” said the Thompsons’ son, Calvin Jr. “That’s the only voice we have at this stage: freedom of speech.”

The signs seem to be working: Kathia Lamour tried to cut one sign down, Calvin Jr. claims.

“When she calls Uber, she won’t do it in front of the house anymore,” he said. “She runs to the end of the block, so they don’t see them.

“It’s uncomfortable that we have to hang these up, but we’re $20,000 uncomfortable, so I think a sign is very minor.”

Problems began in July when the Thompsons raised the rent on the Lamours’ three-bedroom pad from $1,800 a month to $1,900, the first rent hike in nine years, according to Calvin Jr.

The Lamours didn’t want to pay the 5% increase. Kathia, who works for the city Department of Social Services and makes $46,731, according to GovSalaries.com, told The Post she tried to drop off $1,800 in rent instead of the new amount, but the Thompsons refused to take it — so she stopped paying altogether.

It's easy to sympathize with Ms. Lamour for standing her ground here, because in her municipal position she's probably very aware of how dangerous the shelters the DSS "runs and monitors" are

Baited, switched, fisted

 

Bloomberg

 The pandemic-era rental market in Manhattan gave people the chance of a lifetime to move into the apartment of their dreams. Ten months is all they got.

Landlords are jacking up rents — often by 50, 60 or 70% — on tenants who locked in deals last year when prices were in freefall. Some renters are being forced to move at a time when the market is roaring back to nearly pre-pandemic levels. And concessions are slipping away.

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Andy Kalmowitz didn’t think twice in November before signing a 10-month lease on a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in the desirable East Village neighborhood for $2,100 a month. When it was time to renew, his landlord asked for $3,500, a 67% increase.

“When I asked why, they said, ‘It’s a different world,’” said Kalmowitz, 24, who works in TV and had moved from New Jersey.

Across New York, landlords last year were forced to cut rents and offer freebies when the Covid-19 pandemic all but shut down the city, scattering residents who were looking for additional space or more-affordable housing.

Now the market has rebounded, and people appear to be flooding back: Large employers are demanding people return to the office, universities are ramping up in-person teaching and New York City’s public-school system — the largest in the country — has reopened without a remote-learning option.

“More are moving back from out of town, after being away quarantining for the past 18 months,” said Bill Kowalczuk, a broker at Warburg Realty. “There are more inquiries, more apartments renting within a week or less of the list date, and more prices going over the asking price than I have ever seen.”

The median asking rent in Manhattan rose to $3,000 in July, the highest it’s been since July 2020 and up from the pandemic low of $2,750 in January 2021, according to StreetEasy.

Fauxgressive council cronies writes bill to cancel criminal background checks for renters

 

Queens Chronicle

A bill pending before the City Council woud ban landlords from conducting criminal background checks on prospective tenants.

Councilman Steve Levin (D-Brooklyn) and supporters say it is necessary and bans discrimination against ex-convicts who have turned their lives around. Many have trouble getting leases once their backgrounds are known. Advocates told the Daily News on Monday that the bill would ease homelessness and shelter overcrowding.

The bill reportedly has 27 co-sponsors — and the backing of Mayor de Blasio.

Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, represents thousands of landlords. He told the News on Monday the bill is problematic, and should be rewritten to allow exemptions.

He said landlords should have control over their properties, and have a right to prevent drug dealers, gun dealers and gang members from operating in their buildings. He also said the bill would expose landlords to unacceptable levels of potential liability. The measure is expected to come up for a vote in the next few weeks.

Homeless Cuomo leaves tenants and landlords hanging for rent aid.

 

NY Post

 Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been missing in action as the state failed to release the vast majority of $2.6 billion in federal funds for tenants on the brink of eviction, the head of the emergency rental relief program testified Tuesday, just before the accused sexual harasser announced his resignation.

“I have not had conversations with the governor about this,” Michael Hein, commissioner of the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, admitted to lawmakers at an Assembly hearing in Lower Manhattan.

Assemblyman Mike Lawler (R-Rockland County) had asked Hein when was the last time he’d spoken with Cuomo about the Emergency Rental Assistance Program passed by Congress in January.

That’s when Hein answered that he’d never spoken to the governor about the program. Instead he communicates with Cuomo’s deputies, Hein testified.

While Hein’s office has paid out $140 million to contractors to administer the program that’s beset with tech problems and only recently added a “save and resume” button to the lengthy online application, only $100 million has been distributed to tenants and landlords since June 1.

That’s just 3.7 percent of the $2.6 billion pot. The state risks forfeiting the federal funds if 65% of the money isn’t paid out by Sept. 30.

“I think what this shows is that the administration is incapable of administering this program,” Lawler fumed.

Tenants and landlords left wanting for rent relief

NY Daily News

Getting injured during the height of the COVID-19 crisis was just one of many hardships Fernando Livingston faced when he found himself out of work last year and, even worse, falling behind on rent.

The 68-year-old former security guard has been living on food stamps and workers’ compensation since he got pinned under a gate for nearly an hour while on the job. The resulting spinal injury makes it hard for him to walk.

 The 68-year-old former security guard has been living on food stamps and workers’ compensation since he got pinned under a gate for nearly an hour while on the job. The resulting spinal injury makes it hard for him to walk.

The prospect of a fund that could cover months of back rent buoyed the Brooklyn man’s hopes and initially assuaged his fears of becoming homeless as he applied for the state-run Emergency Rental Assistance Program in early June.

Nearly seven weeks later, and now behind another month’s rent, Livingston and thousands of others have received no response from the state despite promises that $2.3 billion set aside for rental assistance would soon begin flowing.

“I’ve never been homeless before. I’ve never really had problems with rent before,” he told the Daily News. “I’m scared. I’m not going to tell you no lie. I can’t sleep at night thinking of what’s next, what’s going to happen.”

Livingston, who emigrated to the U.S. from Panama and served in the military for six years, owes his Flatbush landlord more than $10,000.

“If this thing doesn’t work out, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “I’m just hoping and praying this works out.”

Coreena Popowitch is in a similar situation.

The 45-year-old has been unemployed since the start of the pandemic. She also applied for rental assistance through the state.

“I don’t know what’s going on. I really wish that they let us know,” she said. “It’s frustrating. It’s been pretty much just silence.”

Popowitch says she has paid off some of her Bronx rent but still owes her landlord more than $8,000.

The pair are examples of the more than 160,000 New Yorkers who face a frustrating and byzantine application process with the Emergency Rental Assistance Program that has left them with little patience.

The $2.3 billion program was made possible by federal cash set aside in the state budget with the understanding that it would be up and running in time to help struggling New Yorkers before the state’s eviction moratorium expires at the end of August.

The application process didn’t launch until the first week of June, despite promises from Gov. Cuomo and administration officials to get it online earlier.

Making matters worse, the web application portal has been riddled with technical glitches.

Applicants have complained that submissions must be completed in one sitting and can’t be saved and have reported problems uploading documents and other issues.

Landlords are also anxious about the slow relief rollout.

Anthony Sarro, a small-scale residential and commercial landlord who owns one building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and another in Forest Hills, Queens, said the eviction ban has caused major headaches after one of his tenants refused to pay rent for almost a year and then vanished.

“He stayed on for 11 months and told me, ‘You can’t evict me,’” Sarro said. “Now he has disappeared and left the apartment completely destroyed. There were cocaine bags all over. I think he lost his job, and now he has disappeared.”

Sarro says he’s out more than $100,000 and had to let some employees go because of the financial stress caused by the deserter and giving a few tenants breaks on rent during the worst of the pandemic.

He was initially hopeful that the rental assistance program could help both him and at least two of his tenants who he knows have applied. But the slow process is just making matters worse in the short term, he said.

“It sort of inspires people not to pay rent,” he said. “What the tenants are doing is that they’re putting themselves in arrears, even though they may be able to pay at least some of their rent because why wouldn’t they? If they can get the city to cover their arrears, why would they try to pay them? It’s hurting me rather than helping me at this point. It’s a little bit egregious.”

 

Tenants struggling to pay rent are struggling with application online platform

Gothamist

Tenant advocates say the $2.7 billion federally-funded emergency rental assistance program aimed at helping struggling New Yorkers behind on their rent due to the pandemic might not be reaching the residents who need it the most.

New Yorkers started applying for the program on June 1st. The agency in charge of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA), received 119,209 applications by the end of June, with the 91,457 coming from New York City (the agency says some applications might be duplicates).

But advocates say problems with the online application portal could be preventing the lowest-income, immigrants and senior New Yorkers from successfully submitting applications, adding further stress in paying their back rent.

“I fear we will not reach the very communities that the legislation specifically wanted to reach, mainly people under 50% of the area median income, survivors of domestic violence, survivors of sex trafficking and people living with disabilities,” said Jack Newton, director of the public benefits unit at Bronx Legal Services. “I think that will continue to be a problem in the weeks to come.”

Bronx Legal Services is one of 29 non-profits that sent a letter to OTDA earlier this month asking the agency to address the problems people are experiencing: the difficulty of collecting all the necessary documents and uploading them, an issue that has frequently tripped up tenants because applications can’t be saved and resumed; “error” messages that force tenants to exit and restart an application; inadequate translations of the information about the program into other languages; and needing to have an email address to submit an application.

Justin Mason, a spokesperson for OTDA, said they “are addressing any technical issues promptly and as they are encountered,” and are reviewing the letter.

“The agency has undertaken an unprecedented effort to establish partnerships with local governments across the state and welcomes any input we receive from community-based organizations—especially those groups actively involved in helping New Yorkers apply for this critical assistance,” he said.

Timothy Johnson, 59, said he and his partner, who live in a two-bedroom apartment in the Morrisania section of the Bronx with their two daughters, made five unsuccessful attempts in applying for the program. Johnson said their landlord told them they owe $11,000 in back rent (an amount they dispute) from during the pandemic. He has tried to apply on his phone because he doesn’t have access to a computer, but said he ran into issues uploading documents.

“It's confusing,” Johnson said. “It tells you to upload documents and it doesn't tell you which documents to upload. You really have to be computer-savvy to know how to fill this out.”

Landlord groups have also expressed dissatisfaction with the rollout of the program. Jay Martin, the executive director at the Community Housing Improvement Program, which represents 4,000 property owners in the city, said the most successful landlords are the ones who’ve been scheduling 30-minute appointments with tenants in their offices and assigning their staff to assist with applications, which he sees as the state’s failure to establish a user-friendly application process.

“You can go on Amazon, you can order toilet paper and have it at your house in 24 hours,” he said. “But when we're talking about a multi-billion dollar program from the government to help keep people in their homes and to keep the housing market from collapsing, we can't even figure out a way to keep the website from not crashing.”

The broker fees remain

 

 

Queens Chronicle

 So, you didn’t hire a real estate broker, but you’re paying fees for one anyway? It may feel like robbery, but the longstanding practice is completely legal.

A state Supreme Court judge in Albany Court ruled April 9 that the Housing Security and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 did not prevent landlords who hire the middlemen from passing off the financial burden to their tenants.

The argument was raised after real estate representatives challenged a February 2020 New York Department of State guidance memo that stated, “A landlord’s agent that collects a fee for bringing about a meeting of the minds between the landlord and tenant (i.e., the broker fee) from the tenant can be subject to discipline.”

The Real Estate Board of New York and the New York State Association of Realtors filed an Article 78 petition to overturn the guidance, claiming that the 2019 legislation did not clearly restrict broker’s fees from being placed on tenants.

After a year, the court sided with the landlords.

“The guidance was issued in error of law and represents an unlawful intrusion upon the power of the Legislature and constitutes an abuse of discretion,” acting Supreme Court Justice Susan Kushner wrote in her decision.

The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) and Assemblymember Carl Heastie (D-Bronx), prohibits landlords from charging application fees, except for the cost of background checks, credit checks and monthly late fees. Furthermore, the legislation defines rent to exclude extraneous fees and charges to protect tenants from eviction due to failure to pay fees. There is no specific mention of “brokers” or “agents.”

Even renters who find apartments on their own may still be subject to broker’s fees, which can sometimes be as high as 15 percent of the annual lease, often paid in one lump sum by tenants before they’re handed the keys over.

REBNY President James Whelan celebrated the win over the DOS’s “erroneous interpretation,” stating that the decision ensures commission for thousands of real estate agents across New York who no longer have to fear being disciplined at the hands of the DOS.

Michael Johnson, the communications director at the Community Housing Improvement Program, said that even if the ruling hadn’t gone in the landlords’ favor, the prices for brokers could have been reflected in rent instead.

“What the ruling really does more than anything is help boutique, smaller brokers and small property owners to keep rent lower,” Johnson explained. CHIP members are mostly small- to medium-sized multifamily landlords, while REBNY represents some of the city’s biggest developers.

Brokers fill a need for both tenants and property owners, Johnson said, especially prepandemic when the housing market was tight. With limited options, prospective renters may have had a difficult time finding dwellings that fit their needs at an appropriate price, he said.

If Kushner ruled against fees for broker services, Johnson said, it could influence a change in the market force — rent would jump for new tenants because agents would still be used.

Renters’ advocates differ.

Including brokers’ cost in rent rather than as their own fees would not affect rent-stabilized dwellings, which Tenants Political Action Committee Treasurer Michael McKee pointed to as an example that jacking up the rent would not be the viable alternative Johnson says it is. Landlords would welcome any chance to raise rent, he added.

“This has been a giant scam. It’s been going on for years. It’s basically extortion. It basically means if you want to rent an apartment you have to pay a bribe,” said McKee.

Landlords and tenants in agreement against City Council's mandatory sprinkler regulations

Habitat

The New York City Council will consider a bill on Wednesday that would require all residential buildings over 40 feet tall – single-family homes, rental apartments, and co-ops and condos – to install sprinklers by 2029. The proposal, known as Int. No. 1146-B, has already generated vigorous pushback from co-op and condo advocates, homeowners and landlords.

“The astronomical cost of such an endeavor is equaled only by the stress of chopping into each and every room in the building to install the sprinkler system,” says the Council of New York Cooperatives & Condominiums, which plans to testify today in opposition to the bill. “Mandating the tremendous capital expenditure for sprinklers will surely divert scarce funds and attention from other urgent goals of carbon reduction, energy conservation, etc. with minimal impact on public safety.”

 “This law will have a catastrophic impact on lower-density neighborhoods where owner-occupied multi-family buildings are common,” says a Change.org petition against the proposal started by the 200 Jefferson Avenue Block Association in Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood. The petition has garnered more than 400 signatures since it was put up Monday.

Rent apocalypse now

QNS

Hundreds of people marched from Glendale to Bushwick, and back to Ridgewood where they held a sleep-out to demand an eviction-free New York on Saturday, Aug. 1.

 “Today is the day to pay rent, unfortunately, more than 1 million people have lost their income and haven’t been able to pay rent,” said Raquel Namuche, an organizer with the Ridgewood Tenants Union (RTU). “That’s why we’re here demonstrating to tell [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo … [we need] ‘universal rent relief, the actual cancellation of rent.'”

 While the city has entered phased opening and hundreds of thousands returned to work, the city has 1.3 million workers out of work with the unemployment rate at about 20 percent as of July — “a figure not seen since the Great Depression,” according to The New York Times


The demonstration, organized by RTU with support from Mi Casa No Es Su Casa and various other tenants associations representing Queens and Brooklyn, began at the Glendale Veterans Triangle on Myrtle Avenue and Cooper Avenue with some English and Spanish speeches.
Throughout the introduction, protesters were repeatedly heckled by a group of people and passersby watching the event.

An organizer with RTU reminds protesters about why they’re there, and emphasizes not to engage or even look at those trying to agitate them. There’s a crowd of what looks like counter-protesters across the street. pic.twitter.com/OqNP2BEuxj

— Angélica M. Acevedo (@angacevedo15) August 1, 2020

The event was one of many eviction protests held throughout the city during the months of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, as advocates fear for the safety of tenants at risk of eviction once Cuomo’s eviction moratorium expires entirely on Aug. 20. NYC Housing Court began accepting new eviction filings on June 20.

The 25%

Patch


The New York City housing market is in crisis as tenants are unable to pay their rent due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report from Bloomberg Businessweek.

A quarter of the city's renters have not paid rent since March, the report said, citing information from the Community Housing Improvement Program, which represents landlords of rent-stabilized buildings.

As renters fail to pay, landlords are lacking funds to pay their own bills, so the city could see hundreds of millions of dollars in delinquent property tax payments, according to the Bloomberg report.

More than 735,000 households in New York City have lost income due to the pandemic, according to the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. An estimated 526,000 of these households filed for unemployment insurance and one in four households now face eviction, according to the center.

The double agent crisis actors of hashtag cancel rent movement

 

NY Gentrification Watch

So, for the past few months now, I’ve been struggling to figure out how to broach the subject of how anti-landlord populism is actually just another cynical psychological warfare tactic being exploited by Big Development. It was in anticipation of talking about this topic that prompted me to write Gentrification & Psychological Warfare: The Culture War.

In spite of having written what I thought was a fairly decent write up about how culture wars are often exploited by Big Development, I still struggled to complete an entry on how it was now using the one between landlords and tenants for its own gain. The reason why I had such a hard time is that so-called “tenant advocacy” groups have been doing such a bang up job hijacking and destroying any nuanced discussion about rising rents and gentrification that it’s practically impossible to try to explain the situation from the landlord’s perspective without being immediately seen as The Enemy.

But then again, that’s how a culture war works. You make it so that a very complex issue is boiled down to either/or, black or white. There are no shades of grey, no balance. In the case of gentrification, everyone must completely demonize and scapegoat all landlords for rising rents and displacement; if you color just a hair outside the “all landlords are the devil” line, you’re an evil supporter of gentrification.

Because the culture war between landlords and tenants has been so successfully hijacked by fringe tenants rights groups–I struggled to figure out how to write about this topic without stepping on everyone’s toes. I was worried of what people would think, afraid that they might think I had gone turncoat or have been insincere this entire time about my fight against gentrification. But then came the #cancelrent movement, a completely ridiculous, counter-productive slacktivist campaign that seemed to come out of nowhere and has all the earmarks of a carefully coordinated troll farm campaign by fringe elements on the internet. 

Neir's: It ain't over yet

Well folks, it takes a lot for me to come out of semi-retirement to weigh in on current events, but this whole Neir’s Tavern situation became such an unnecessary debacle that I can’t sit idly by and not call attention to some things.

Yesterday, Mayor de Blasio - himself a millionaire landlord and facilitator of citywide hotel-shelter slumlordship - decided to tell the owner of Neir’s that greedy building owners are awful. Where the hell was he when the LPC denied the landmarking bid for it back in 2016? A lot of the worry over the bar's fate could have been avoided if the LPC stopped doing what it always does to Queens history. And he can request that the “new” LPC (minus Meenakshi Srinivasan) take a second look at it.

Now, Loycent Gordon is not only an immigrant but also the black owner of a small business. This is EXACTLY the type of entrepreneur that fauxgressives want to be seen helping. But perhaps because Loy is also a lover of Queens history, and therefore a threat to development, he was totally disregarded for years. Except, that is, after he became so desperate that he felt forced to plead with the mayor on his radio program. How utterly sickening.

How the hell did we as a society get to this point?

And another question for those of you out there in Crapland… did you hear those January crickets yesterday? That sound was coming from every borough president candidate out there as an establishment dating back to 1829 almost went dark.

And why did the owner really have a change of heart? The NY Times explains:

Mr. Holden, a Democrat who represents the area, said the negotiations were tense until it became clear that a major problem for Mr. Shi was that he could not get a mortgage because the building lacked a proper certificate of occupancy and did not meet current zoning rules.

Mr. Holden said an agreement was reached under which his office would work to ensure that the building met all requirements; the city would make a small business grant available to improve the property; and Mr. Shi would raise the rent much less than he had proposed.

So while we can all celebrate that a piece of Queens history has been temporarily spared, keep in mind that the lease is only for 5 years and in 2026 this might happen all over again. And in the meantime, it's very likely that the next piece of Queens history that gets threatened won't have the stars align for it the way this one did. Because we keep electing the same lame tweeders over and over and over again and the rare ones who actually give a damn like Holden will be gone. (Why the hell did Michael Gianaris show up to the victory party when he did absolutely nothing?)

A big thank you and shout out to the media who realized the significance of this story and what it would have meant to lose Neir's and used the power of the press to call attention to it. All of the stories were pretty good (and I read or watched them all), but 2 really stood out to me: Corey Kilgannon's original NY Times piece and PIX11's story. Check out the reaction of the news anchor at the end. He totally gets it.



It's 2020, people. Wake up already, heh?

- QC

I like to add (again) that de Blasio's Landmark Preservation Committee refused to give Loycent and Neir's landmark status because they felt that a bar that has existed 190 years was not historically significant enough.

Congratulations to Mr. Gordon and the staff at Neir's and a great job done by Councilmember Holden and Assemblyman Miller (leave it to de Blasio to try to bigfoot credit for it). Here's to five more years, hopefully there will be better and moral officials running this city in the future.  

JQ LLC

The rent just got too damn higher

 

NY Daily News

Rent reform advocates may have notched a big win in Albany this month, but they couldn’t stop the Rent Guidelines Board from raising the rent on stabilized apartments for the third year in a row.

The nine-member board voted 5-4 Tuesday to increase rents by 1.5 % for one-year leases and 2.5 % for two-year leases during a raucous meeting at Cooper Union where protesters often drowned out statements from the panel.

The hike comes days after the state legislature passed a sweeping rent reform package that included lowering the cap on monthly rent increases for major capital improvements to 2% a year from 6%.

“Small building owners are struggling due to high operating costs,” said David Riess, the board’s chair, who introduced the rent hike.

The hike was comparable to 2018′s increase, which saw a 1.5 % hike for one-year leases and a 2.4 % hike for two-year leases.

 Rent advocates and the Legal Aid Society blasted the vote Tuesday night.

“People making minimum wage and with big families can’t take rent increases and pay bills. All this money is going in the landlords’ pockets," said Randy Dillard, 63, a member of Community Action for Safe Apartments.

Legal Aid’s Adriene Holder, who once sat on the board, said the “panel chose to heed the fear-mongering of landlords.”

Hedge fund landlords are tripping balls capitalizing on home foreclosures

CBC


A new documentary argues that housing has become a commodity much like gold, to be bought and sold on the stock market in bulk — and that the practice is driving up rents globally.
Fredrik Gertten, director of Push, says that hedge funds can snap up real estate quickly and forcefully.

 

"They have more money than a normal landlord, so it's kind of almost like a landlord on speed," he told The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti.

The result is often an owner who lives very far away from the property, he said.
"
You can't knock on his door and talk to him about your problems because your landlord is now a hedge fund ... somewhere [in a] totally different part of the world, maybe."


Leilani Farha, the United Nations' special rapporteur on adequate housing, explained that private equity firms and asset management firms "survey landscapes all around the world looking for what they call undervalued properties."

"When they find them, they buy them up with their liquid capital — backed by banks — and their model is to then refurbish the units and increase the rents, forcing people out," Farha, who is featured in Push, told Tremonti.


She said the business model isn't just gentrification, but a financialization of housing, driven by an "unprecedented amount of wealth."

"This is on a totally different scale. They're buying thousands of units at a time," she said.

Landlords continue to inflate rents based on dubious reconstruction costs and city loopholes

Crain's New York

In the fall of 2013, when apartment 1E at 171 W. 81st St. was vacated, the owner did what landlords have done with tens of thousands of other rent-regulated units in the city. Stellar Management claimed it had spent a bundle on renovations, which—combined with the 20% rent increase permitted when a tenant leaves—allowed it to push the $647 regulated monthly rent above $2,500—to the threshold at the time to make it a market-rate unit. A few months later Stellar rented the Upper West Side pad to massage therapist Jonathan Saballos for $3,300 a month.


It seemed like a routine example of the steady exodus of such units from the city's pool of about 900,000 rent-regulated apartments. Except that in January, after Saballos lost his roommate and then his job and was taken to housing court by Stellar for failing to pay rent, a judge ruled that apartment 1E shouldn't have been deregulated at all.

In the written ruling, Judge Sabrina Kraus of Manhattan Civil Court determined that Stellar had inflated its renovation costs of more than $71,600 by almost $45,000—including $3,500 for a bathtub that was never installed—and had overcharged Saballos at least $41,193. The judge ordered the owner of the 20-unit building to pay triple damages—$123,578—and place the apartment back into regulation with a monthly rent of $1,524.

Housing advocates say such episodes are common in a system where loopholes and lax oversight practically invite owners to pull units out of regulation. A review of several lawsuits against Stellar reveals how expensive or dubious renovations enabled the owner to convert rents to market-rate.

"The city or the state doesn't even know how many illegally deregulated apartments are out there, because they're only really examined when cases like this come up in court," said Mark Hess, an attorney who represented Saballos in the eviction proceeding. "Stellar thought it was going to be business as usual and they were going to throw my client out of his apartment. Instead we called them out."

Stellar is appealing and will not comment on ongoing litigation, said a spokeswoman for the company, which owns roughly 100 buildings, most of which are in the city.

Allegations of abuses by landlords are not new. In one high-profile case last year, the Associated Press reported, the family business of White House adviser Jared Kushner failed to disclose rent-regulated units in buildings it owned, then began disruptive renovations that some of those tenants saw as an effort to push them out. Kushner Cos. blamed a third-party document preparer for the erroneous filing and said its renovations were proper, but the episode led to a fine, a lawsuit by tenants and City Council legislation to deter harassment by construction.

Less focus, however, has been given to the method used in Saballos' case, which may have allowed landlords to improperly deregulate tens of thousands of city apartments—and even more of them legally.

 

Fresh Meadows landlords slapped with lawsuit by AG

From The Real Deal:

A pair of Queens landlords spent years cheating the state out of almost $500,000 in property taxes by manipulating the 421a program, according to a lawsuit from the New York State Attorney General’s Office.

The lawsuit seeks to ban Queens landlords Ram Cohen, Eldad Cohen and their company ERC Holding, LLC from participating in New York’s real estate industry. It also aims to force them to repay the property taxes they dodged, along with the profits they made from selling their building at 71-44 160th Street in Fresh Meadows.

The brothers finished building the 10-unit building in 2009 and applied for a tax exemption with the city under the 421a law, according to New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood. The exemption requires the Cohens to abide by rent stabilization laws, but the suit alleges that they stuck tenants with unregulated leases instead. The attorney general’s office previously ordered the Cohens to start treating their tenants as rent-stabilized in 2014, but they did not do so, the lawsuit says.

The Cohens also tried to make their building appear more valuable than it actually was by listing inflated rents on all of their leases and giving tenants separate riders where they would agree to pay lower rents, the suit says. They kept these riders secret from banks, regulatory agencies and a prospective buyer to make the building appear more valuable than it really was and sold it in 2016 for $3.75 million, according to Underwood.

Cluster apartments cannot be rented by homeless

From Crains:

As the city phases out a controversial program that placed homeless people in often subpar private housing, a crucial question found its way to state Supreme Court in Brooklyn: Once the de Blasio administration stops paying rent for an apartment, are its residents entitled to lease it themselves?

Wednesday a state judge said no.

The jurist found that participants in the cluster-site program were not tenants in the apartments they occupied and thus have no right to a rent-regulated lease.

Unless the decision is overturned by a higher court, the ruling is likely to discourage future lawsuits by homeless people and to bolster the position of landlords, who did not want to be forced into an agreement with tenants who might have trouble paying rent.

City files lawsuit against AirBnB landlord

From AMNY:

One of the city’s “worst landlords” is accused of turning rent-stabilized apartments in Hell’s Kitchen into illegal hotel rooms and listing them on websites like Airbnb.

The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement (MOSE) announced a lawsuit Wednesday against Big Apple Management LLC for allegedly converting seven buildings on 47th Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues, into illegal hotels despite years of complaints, violations and fines.

Based on the city’s inspections, at least seven of the unlawful hotel rooms had been rent-stabilized units before 2009.