rent-stabilization

City Room has a Q-and-A thread going on rent-stabilization with housing lawyer Joel E. Abramson. Wonder why.

Conservative watchdog the National Legal and Policy Center has called on the Federal Election Commission to investigate Congressman Charles Rangel's rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem, including one used as a campaign office.

Release on the FEC complaint here. More on the Rangel imbroglio in The Observer here and here. (Hat tip: Curbed).

In his colorful response today to a Times story on the four rent-stabilized apartments he rents, Representative Charles Rangel said repeatedly (as captured in video by The Observer’s Azi Paybarah) that the below-market-rate apartments are not a gift (which would need to be reported per campaign finance law).

“If you’re paying the legal rent, and without the law, the rent could be higher, just what school did you go to that you could misinterpret that as a gift,” he said to the Times’ Jeremy Peters. “They didn’t give me anything, I’m paying the highest legal rent I can.”

Maybe.

Unanswered questions in this Rangel rent-stabilization saga-to-be are many, but based on New York’s arcane, sometimes-twisted rent-stabilization laws, here’s one thought of how the apartments could be construed as a gift:

Mr.  read more »

Rent stabilization is one of the nation's most successful affordable-housing initiatives since World War II, but it's increasingly harder to defend thanks to the sorts of performances today by Representative Charles Rangel of Harlem.

As The Times' City Room blog notes, Mr. Rangel was recalcitrant, rude and vulgar in his defense of renting four stabilized apartments in Harlem's Lenox Terrace complex at West 135th Street. Here he is responding to a question from Times reporter David Kocieniewski:

“I have decided unilaterally that you have asked more than your share.” He added, when Mr. Kocieniewski tried to press him, “Hell no, I’m not going to respond to you.  read more »

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Hat tip: Politicker.

The Times' Sewell Chan has a run-down on Representative Charles Rangel's public defense today of his four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem. Mr. Rangel, who entered Congress in 1970, a year after the state introduced rent-stabilization in New York City, seems rather flustered by all the attention:

Toward the end of his news conference, Mr. Rangel suggested that it was absurd that he should be criticized, asking rhetorically whether he should place an ad in a newspaper asking, “Is there any place I can get this at a higher price because there’s some crazy reporter who thinks I have a good deal?”

The New York Sun reported today that Governor Paterson pays $1,250 to live in a rent-stabilized apartment in Central Harlem. This reality, given that the governor has a second home as well as a third (the Governor’s Mansion in Albany), has reawakened the monster question surrounding New York City rents: What if we just got rid of stabilization? Wouldn’t the fresh supply of market-rate apartments drive rents down? And wouldn’t the rich forever be forbidden from freeloading off the stabilization laws?

Luckily, we have Cambridge, Mass., to answer these questions.  read more »

New York City lost an estimated 6,022 rent-stabilized apartments in 2006, according to a new report from the city's Rent Guidelines Board. Still, this represented 18 percent fewer rent-stabilized apartments than were lost in 2005.

The city now has roughly 1,043,000 rent-stabilized apartments, and 43,000 rent-controlled ones. Also, another 308,000 apartments fall under some other sort of regulation, and about 697,000 apartments are market-rate.  read more »