A politician pandering to renters. It's also an art form in NYC;
Mayor Bill de Blasio called for a freeze in rent-stabilized rents Monday as the city's Rent Guidelines Board prepared to decide the matter Monday.
The board, with a majority of members appointed by Mr. de Blasio, will consider a range of options ....
"Landlords have not been asked for the kind of increases they should have, given what their actual costs were," Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference. "Tenants have been asked to pay too much in recent years. For that reason, I am encouraging all of the members of the Rent Guidelines Board to vote for a freeze"One of the reasons rents are so high in NYC, is, in fact, the existence--instituted as a temporary wartime emergency in the early 1940s--of a politically controlled (rent-stabilized) market in housing. Over the decades that has led to much less housing/apartments being built, than otherwise would have. The way housing supply was allowed to rise to meet increasing demand all over the rest of the USA.
Of course, it could worse. It could be San Francisco.
Nor are the poor safe from the depredations of politicians even if they move often;
Stemilt Hill [Yakima WA] cherry grower Robert Brown has allowed workers to camp at his orchard for many a season. But last year [1998], he kept the camp shut.
....Brown was licensed through 1998, but said he didn't end up opening the camp last season because he was not able to meet a new [state] requirement to provide a dust-free, covered food preparation area. He points out that there's dust everywhere, even in his house.
He considered it not worth the risk of opening the camp and being sued by farmworker advocates or fined by regulators. "The legal risks are so huge, we just said it's not worth it. We're not making enough on the cherry orchard to risk losing our small farm and personal house."The government imposes onerous regulations on (temporary) housing...that housing gets taken off the market, or not built.
Who's out in the cold? Not the politicians and the regulators.
Asking for rent to occupy an apartment is the definition of rent-seeking. This injustice must end. The wimp DeBlasio is too right-wing. The apartments of New York were built to house the renters, so they should be given to the renters. Take away the ill-gotten capital of the rentier class. It is time to remove the barriers between renters and the capital they depend on.
ReplyDeleteSorry, that was a short mind-vacation. Thinking like a leftist is lots of fun and clears out the cobwebs. It is so much fun to take a position and say anything and everything in support regardless of causation or meaning. All better now. Back to boring reality.