Press Release: Closing the Loopholes

Press Release May 13, 2019 CONTACT Jeff Jones Community Service Society (212) 614-5468 (office) (347) 899-1856 (cell) jjones@cssny.org

Findings from New CSS Reports Detail How Loopholes in State Rent Laws Leave Renters with Fewer Affordable Housing Alternatives

New York, NY – With the legislative session coming to a close next month, the future of rent regulation– which protects over a million renter households in New York City and Westchester, Nassau, and Rockland counties–is being decided as state lawmakers consider reforms to rent laws that will determine the next generation of housing policy in New York.

To help inform the debate, the Community Service Society is releasing two reports that document in stark terms the potential ways landlords can abuse loopholes in the rent laws, making apartments unaffordable for many low-income tenants who are already at a disadvantage when it comes to searching for affordable housing in a city with few such options.

Closing The Loopholes (www.cssny.org/loopholes) uses real tenant rent histories to illustrate how the vacancy bonus, Major Capital Improvements (MCI), Individual Apartment Improvements (IAIs), preferential rents, and vacancy decontrol work in tandem to push out low-income tenants and undermine neighborhood-level stability. This report’s six examples from actual renters in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn visualize how these loopholes can leave tenants functionally unprotected from the laws that are meant to ensure a stable living situation.

“Over the past 25 years, legislative decisions by the city and state have weakened rent regulation, encouraging tenant harassment and allowing for sudden and permanent rent hikes,” said David. R. Jones, CSS President and CEO. “The evidence is overwhelming. We need to close the loopholes in the rent laws.”

Where Have All The Affordable Rentals Gone? (www.cssny.org/affordablerentals) examines rents, incomes, and rent burdens in stabilized and unregulated housing. We find that the typical rent stabilized household was earning the same inflation adjusted amount in 2016 as in 2001, while typical rents climbed by 30 percent above inflation.

In addition, the report shows that the share of unassisted low-rent apartments fell from 21 percent to 14 percent between 2011 and 2017. This drop was driven both by the destructive impact of rent law loopholes on the stabilized housing stock as well as the loss of unregulated low-rent units, where tenants are completely unprotected.

The author of the reports, CSS Housing Analyst Oksana Mironova, said: ” New York City’s low-income tenants are squeezed between a rock and a hard place: sever rent burdens at home and no easily accessible alternatives on the market. The end result for many is displacement.”

Both reports provide recommendations on how the legislature can address these issues this session, including repealing the loopholes in the law (vacancy bonuses, Major Capital Improvements, Individual Apartment Improvements), fixing the preferential rent system, removing geographic restrictions in the Emergency Tenant Protection Act (ETPA), and passing good cause eviction protection.

For more 175 years, the Community Service Society of New York has been the leading voice on behalf of low-income New Yorkers and continues to advocate for the economic security of the working poor in the nation’s largest city. We respond to urgent, contemporary challenges with applied research, advocacy, litigation and innovative program models that help the working poor achieve a better quality of life and promote a more prosperous city. Visit us at www.cssny.org