RENTAL DILEMMA

So it's time for stabilized rents to be considered again. Landlords, pointing to rising fuel and utility costs, are asking for a whopping, inflationary 10-15% hike.

I can understand landlord concern over expenses such as fuel, but I can't help but wince at the giant-sized rent increase they're requesting. Having tracked rent hikes over the years, I believe that the landlords have gotten increases above the inflation rate every year since rent stabilization was instituted. If that's so, tenants have never gotten a break. It's always the landlords who have been favored. So it should come as no surprise that New York City remains one of the most expensive rental markets in the country, and, as Representative Anthony Weiner has pointed out, a large and increasing number of New Yorkers apply something in the vicinity of 50% of their incomes in rent. "Nearly 530,000 renters in the city are spending 50 percent or more of their income on housing, a 14.9 percent jump from 1999, according to data released yesterday by Rep. Anthony Weiner," says an article in Metro New York.

So yeah, fuel costs and utility costs are going up. So are food costs and other costs. All New Yorkers—tenants as well as landlords—are going to have to find ways to get by. The thing about landlords is that they've been getting rent increases beyond the inflation rate for years. They've had plenty of time to sock away funds for the proverbial rainy day (they even get to skim interest off the security deposits of their tenants), and they've even had time to re-engineer their properties to make them more fuel-efficient. The landlords, who have often pointed to rising fuel prices in arguing for sizable rent increases, still have time to make their properties more fuel-efficient.

That is why I don't feel especially sorry for the landlords this year. They've had it pretty good for years. They really don't seem to be in that much trouble as a whole. So I don't think they should get any special treatment this time around. They claim that about 10% of rent-stabilized buildings operate in the red, but I don't see why such figures (which could probably use close scrutiny) should be the basis for a blanket policy that affects 100% of the buildings, perhaps ignoring the percentage of tenants who themselves may be "operating in the red." It's about time that tenants —who vastly outnumber the landlords—will get fresh consideration and the type of sympathy that the landlords seem to have been getting for decades from the Rent Guidelines Board.

Representative Weiner's plan for remedying the rent crisis includes restoring cuts to Section 8 housing, reviving senior housing programs, fully funding public housing, increasing federal bonds for private builders, and cracking down on bad landlords. But why not also look into ways to spare tenants giant rent increases and encourage landlords to embark on alternatives such as making their buildings more energy efficient, since rising fuel costs has is such a chronic problem? Perhaps landlords had more of a case for super-inflationary rent hikes when stabilization was first instituted, but if there were ever such a period I get the feeling that it's long gone. As for that 10% "in the red," maybe a program could be developed to determine whether they should qualify for special treatment.