Hattie Kolp is a big believer in rent control. Why wouldn’t she be?
Kolp lives in a 1,500-square-foot apartment on the Upper West Side, one of Manhattan’s most coveted neighborhoods. Its two bedrooms are huge and its living area spacious. A hallway is 30 feet long. There are two fireplaces, four chandeliers, a foyer and a butler’s pantry.
Her rent is $1,334.
She has been there for 22 years, since she was 10. The previous tenant, a family friend, recommended the Kolps to the landlord. Chances are the unit was never listed. No housing lottery is held for rent-stabilized units, because technically they are not affordable housing.
Kolp’s parents moved out in 2018 and bequeathed her the lease. That’s how rent stabilization works in New York.
As of this week, millions of people know Kolp’s story, thanks to a video by Interior Porn that went viral. In its first 24 hours it racked up 9 million views on X alone.
Kolp has shown off her apartment previously to CNBC, with 430,000 views on YouTube, and to Homeworthy, which drew 310,000. The videos help promote Kolp’s side business as an interior designer and Instagram blogger.
For whatever reason, the Interior Porn post took off, spawning the usual debate — replete with snide remarks — in the comments about rent control. That always happens with videos of people showing off incredible Manhattan apartments with 1980s rents.
Critics of rent stabilization typically mention that it’s not means-tested. People with high incomes and bulging bank accounts have as much right as anyone to apartments like Hattie Kolp’s.
More than 1 in 5 households in rent-stabilized units earns over $100,000 a year, and more would do so if landlords had reason (or revenue) to keep improving them. Kolp’s apartment doesn’t even have circuit breakers; instead, there’s a fuse box.
But Kolp is a special education teacher and not an example of a wealthy person getting a deal, as she notes in the video by CNBC’s #Unlocked.
“I’m endlessly grateful that I have this,” she says. “It’s the hugest blessing in my life because I would not be able to afford an apartment of this size on a teacher’s salary.”
However, she is an example of the horrendous housing mismatch that rent stabilization has saddled New York with for half a century. Instead of moving out when her parents did and renting a studio or one-bedroom in a less expensive area, Kolp stayed put because of the permanently low rent.
Anyone would have done the same. An unwritten rule in New York is to never give up a dirt-cheap, rent-stabilized unit, even if you move and must pretend it’s still your primary residence.
But Kolp’s decision meant a family couldn’t move in. Renewal rights allow her to stay indefinitely. It could be 50 years or more before the apartment becomes available again.
It’s obviously impossible to right-size every home in the city — to put single people in small units and families in big ones, or elderly people in elevator buildings. But a lot of that would happen naturally if the state allowed market forces in what are now regulated rentals.
Read more
Politics
New York
Argentina ditched rent control. What if NYC did too?
Politics
New York
The Daily Dirt: Why this tiny deal story went viral
Commercial
New York
“Not even distressed” rent-stabilized property sells for peanuts
Not only would the market steer people into appropriately sized housing, but the vacancy rate would rise from its record low of 1.4 percent, making it easier to find an apartment.
Instead, some lucky New Yorkers rattle around in apartments built for families — while thousands of families cram into units designed for singles like Hattie Kolp.