| Releases & Statements
Thank you for allowing me this opportunity
to testify.
I am here today because affordable
housing is one of the most important issues facing this city.
Hard-working families are already paying more for everything from
a gallon of milk to a gallon of gas. Incomes are not keeping up
with inflation. We cannot control these factors on the local level,
but we can control the cost of housing.
The fact is countless New Yorkers
are being priced out of their homes. According to the latest available
data, more than a quarter of tenant households devote more than
50% of their income to rent. For low-income tenants living in
rent-regulated apartments, the news is far worse: nearly 75% pay
at least half their income in rent.
In my judgment, this is a crisis.
With each passing year, working New Yorkers get stuck deeper in
the mud: their income remains static while their rent rises, leaving
them with no opportunity to get ahead. If this trend continues
New York will become what the cynics say it already is—an
exclusive club for the idle rich.
The only way to stop this downward
spiral is to make the well-being of tenants at least as high a
priority as the profit margins of landlords. We have somehow gotten
to a point where a substantial rent increase every year is considered
a matter of course. It’s time to remind ourselves that,
while tenants are struggling to keep their heads above water,
landlords are profiting. The extent to which they are profiting
certainly varies from year to year, but no landlord will have
to cut back on groceries or prescription drugs if rents do not
go up. On the other hand, thousands of tenants will face just
such hardships if the proposed increases are approved.
Take, for example, the case of George
in the Bronx. George is a Russian immigrant supporting a wife,
daughter, and mother-in-law. His daughter is starting college
at Columbia in the fall. His wife, having just graduated from
college, has $45,000 in loans to pay off. George is legally blind
and unable to work as a result of an injury suffered three years
ago. He receives $680 a month from social security, but his rent
is nearly $900 a month. At times, his apartment has no heat, but
no one ever comes to fix the problem.
Families like George’s are doing everything they can to
improve their situations and contribute to the economic life of
this city. But for every step they take up the ladder of success,
we add another rung.
Seniors on fixed incomes are also
hit hard by rent hikes because they can’t keep up as their
expenses increase. I just came from Washington Heights, where
an elderly gentleman told me that his 73-year-old wife is still
working so that they can make ends meet. When retirement starts
to seem like an unrealistic ambition, the cost of housing has
gotten out of control.
I am not insensitive to the concerns
of landlords. I know that operating costs have risen as a result
of 2003’s steep property tax hike and the ever-escalating
cost of fuel. But landlords have been compensated with dramatic
rent increases the past two years. They continue to benefit from
remarkably advantageous mortgage rates, and there is reason to
believe that operating costs are stabilizing. The conditions will
never be better for prioritizing affordability. The time to freeze
rents is now.
In addition, I urge the Board to once
again vote down the most regressive measures proposed by landlords:
the
so-called “longevity tax,” which punishes tenants,
especially senior citizens, for maintaining a stable home; the
“low-rent” surcharge, which is a barely disguised
poor tax; and the three-percentage-point spread between one- and
two-year leases, which, like the “longevity tax,”
amounts to an additional rent increase on long-term tenants.
In a city where home ownership is
an unattainable dream for so many, these proposals just rub salt
in tenants’ wounds. We should be encouraging families to
stay in one place, helping them create a nest egg, not penalizing
them for their aspirations.
This is a critical moment in New York
City’s history. It is a truism that if you can make it here
you can make it anywhere. But if it becomes impossible for working
families to make it here, New York will lose its status as a world-class
city where people of all backgrounds come together. The Rent Guidelines
Board must do its part to keep the dream alive. It has responsibility
not just to landlords, but to all New Yorkers, present and future.
Thank you.
|
