New York City landlords must now register the names of all individuals with 25 percent or greater ownership stakes in the corporations that own their residential buildings, according to new legislation passed unanimously by the City Council yesterday. They will also have to register a brick-and-mortar office location with the city, as opposed to providing an address of a mail handling facility. The new law is intended to crack down on so-called “phantom landlords,” who hide behind corporate entities and make it difficult for their tenants to track them down, Crain’s reported. Tenants in many rundown equity-owned buildings have in recent years “struggled to get negligent landlords to make necessary repairs and provide essential services,” said David Hanzel, the deputy director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, in a statement. But the new law will give such tenants “access to the names and contact information of the principal partners of these corporate entities that are increasingly the owners of our city’s residential buildings,” Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito said. [Crain's]

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The 30-year rent caps on close to 170,000 publicly subsidized rental units will expire by 2037, opening the door for landlords to start charging market rents, according to a new report from the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, a non-profit tenant advocacy group. The news comes on the heels of the Bloomberg administration’s announcement that it has reached the 100,000 milestone in affordable units created or preserved since 2003. “The mayor is saying they’re making impressive gains; however, by 2037, an equal number of units will have been washed away by their lack of foresight,” Benjamin Dulchin, executive director of the organization, told the New York Times. [more]

New York City’s affordable housing crisis can be linked to a pandemic of predatory equity investors in the region, according to a recent report (see full report after the jump) compiled by the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, a non-profit advocacy organization. These investors have snatched up around 100,000 units of affordable or rent-regulated housing in the past four years, a figure that represents around 10 percent of the affordable or rent-regulated housing in the city, bringing with them pressure to turn over profits on the buildings — sometimes by as much as a 14 to 20 percent annual rate of return, the report says. Additionally, the report found that many of these equity loans earn just 55 cents on each dollar of debt, a level which is considered predatory, Crain’s reported. Much like Tishman Speyer, the developer at Stuyvesant Town that recently lost a landmark deregulation case, these private investors often try illegal deregulation tactics, and sometimes even intimidation, to drive out tenants. “Neighborhoods around New York City have seen a dramatic rise in the harassment of tenants as landlords tried to illegally remove low- and moderate-income families so they could raise the rent,” the report says. “This increase in harassment stemmed in large part from the rise of a new type of buyer of New York City real estate.” The report named 11 neighborhoods in the city, including the Lower East Side, North-Central Bronx and Washington Heights, as particular breeding grounds for predatory equity deals on affordable housing. TRD [more]

New York State housing czar Priscilla Almodovar resigned from her
post this afternoon, after less than three years in the position.
Almodovar, president and CEO of the Housing Finance Agency, has been
widely credited as one of the state government’s most effective
members, with the state’s inventory of affordable housing units more
than double its level when she took office. Industry experts say she
was particularly deft at redistributing funds from ineffective
programs into more efficacious ones. “Priscilla really took the
state’s bonding resources and used them in a way to produce affordable
housing in reasonably large quantities and in places where it wouldn’t
usually happen,” Benjamin Dulchin, executive director of the
Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, said. “She took
some messed-up crony programs and thought them through and made them
really effective.” Almodovar plans to transition into the private
sector, according to a statement from her spokesperson.

The number of residential evictions in Queens rose by more than a
quarter last year while the volume was flat or decreased in other
boroughs, according to the most current city data obtained by The Real Deal. In Queens, 4,401 households were evicted in 2008, a 27 percent increase
from a year earlier when there were 3,467, data from the city
Department of Investigation reveals. By evictions, The Real Deal is
including what are technically called “evictions” as well as “legal
possessions.” The Department of Investigation uses both terms to describe the return
of the property to the control of the landlord, although both are what
are commonly understood to be an eviction.
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