Silver releases report on the rent-regulation “emergency”

With New York’s rent-regulation laws set to expire June 15, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has released a new report that supports their extension. Entitled, “The New Housing Emergency,” the report (in full below) says loopholes in the city’s current rent-stabilization rules — like vacancy decontrol and rent increases due to renovations — result in the loss of more than 10,000 rent-regulated apartments per year. The median income for tenants of the 1.02 million rent-regulated apartments in New York City is $38,000, according to the report. “Merely continuing the current laws is not enough,” said Silver, who released the report alongside Assembly Housing Committee Chairman Vito Lopez and Community Service Society of New York President David Jones, also the report’s author. “We must close the loopholes identified in this report that cost our neighborhoods thousands of affordable homes each year and which threaten to turn New York into a city without a middle-class.” To do that, the Assembly has put forth a bill that would repeal vacancy decontrol and increase high income and high rent deregulation thresholds to $300,000 and $3,000, respectively, among other expansions of the current laws. TRD