To the poster whining about Harvard Square's loss of personality that has come with the loss of rent control: I agree with you, but what you and I call "personality" may, in fact, not be very desirable to the masses. Personality is in the eye of the beholder. If the masses want chains and an outdoor mall, then that is what they will get without regulation. If the new "outdoor mall" approach to these areas wasn't profitable, the landlords would rent to different retail establishments. But that is profitable, and that is what people want. If they didn't want those types of retailers, they'd vote with their feet and go somewhere else.
As for New York, I lived through the transformation of Times Square from Peep Show to Disneyland, and while it is sociologically now a less interesting space, again, the masses have voted. Before the troubles of the 1970s, Times Square was once teeming with the middle classes, and now it has been returned to its original state: a place for the masses to go.
But rent control for residences in NY is a different matter: unlike Boston, where the rent control system was draconian in its limitations of rent increases and the removal of rental stock, NY's rent regulations are flexible: apartments occupied by the rich get decontrolled, apartments improved dramatically by the landlord and frequently vacated can also have their rents raised to the point of decontrol.
As a result, there is plenty of investment in market-rate housing in NYC. The market rate rents are high enough to support the construction of thousands of new residential units, year in and year out, for the last decade.
These two systems live side-by-side: market rate new luxury apartments for the wealthy, and terribly-maintained, small, dilapidated rent-stabilized units for everyone else.
Have any of you ever lived in a rent-stabilized NYC apartment? I have. Mine, like most others I have ever been in, were terrible. The appliances were old, the lights disgusting, the bathrooms leaky and falling apartment, the closets tiny, the heating noisy and inconsistent, the hot water erratic.
Does anyone think that the renters living in these conditions would be able to suddenly pay multiples of this rent, or would be willing to do so for such conditions? Those who can afford to pay $2,500 a month for a 1 bdrm apartment are likely to refuse to live in such an apartment unless dramatic improvements to the unit are made.
To the poster whining about Harvard Square's loss of personality that has come with the loss of rent control: I agree with you, but what you and I call "personality" may, in fact, not be very desirable to the masses. Personality is in the eye of the beholder. If the masses want chains and an outdoor mall, then that is what they will get without regulation. If the new "outdoor mall" approach to these areas wasn't profitable, the landlords would rent to different retail establishments. But that is profitable, and that is what people want. If they didn't want those types of retailers, they'd vote with their feet and go somewhere else.
As for New York, I lived through the transformation of Times Square from Peep Show to Disneyland, and while it is sociologically now a less interesting space, again, the masses have voted. Before the troubles of the 1970s, Times Square was once teeming with the middle classes, and now it has been returned to its original state: a place for the masses to go.
But rent control for residences in NY is a different matter: unlike Boston, where the rent control system was draconian in its limitations of rent increases and the removal of rental stock, NY's rent regulations are flexible: apartments occupied by the rich get decontrolled, apartments improved dramatically by the landlord and frequently vacated can also have their rents raised to the point of decontrol.
As a result, there is plenty of investment in market-rate housing in NYC. The market rate rents are high enough to support the construction of thousands of new residential units, year in and year out, for the last decade.
These two systems live side-by-side: market rate new luxury apartments for the wealthy, and terribly-maintained, small, dilapidated rent-stabilized units for everyone else.
Have any of you ever lived in a rent-stabilized NYC apartment? I have. Mine, like most others I have ever been in, were terrible. The appliances were old, the lights disgusting, the bathrooms leaky and falling apartment, the closets tiny, the heating noisy and inconsistent, the hot water erratic.
Does anyone think that the renters living in these conditions would be able to suddenly pay multiples of this rent, or would be willing to do so for such conditions? Those who can afford to pay $2,500 a month for a 1 bdrm apartment are likely to refuse to live in such an apartment unless dramatic improvements to the unit are made.