The man who ran for governor because the “Rent is Too Damn High” claims he’s being kicked out of his Manhattan apartment — because the rent is too damn low!
Jimmy McMillan says he pays $872.96 for a rent-controlled ground-floor apartment on St. Marks Place in the East Village — which he’s had since the late-1970s, when the rent was around $275.
But the man who founded the tenants-rights party says his landlords are giving him the boot so they can pull in way more dough.
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Hmm maybe now he’ll turn pyro and become “The Roof is on Fire” guy…
I’ve only seen this guy on Sat Night Live. I actually “like” his beard which only reinforces my dumbfoundness as to why women put up with us at all. Must be the money? (((Darwin- – – blah, blah, blah==but I think more of it than we like is true!)))
Rent control has always struck me as weird–even as my current landlord jacks the rent 4-6 % per year in a declining market. Whassupwiddat?
why can’t laws be “Goldilocks right?” instead of wrong one way or the other that we always see? OTOH–why not let the free market reign? Housing seems like a good candidate for the quiet hand.
Pro’s and Con’s to all we do.
But the man who founded the tenants-rights party says his landlords are giving him the boot so they can pull in way more dough.
Got that right.
CBGB’s was forced to close for that reason too. The landlord jacked up the rent, quintupling it.
The East Village has been gentrifying something fierce over the past decade.
When I first got to New York, I used to know some people who lived there because it was cheap as dirt, if you didn’t mind your neighbors being other musicians, hookers, pimps, junkies, dealers and dead-enders. (I still know some classically trained musicians who live [semi-legally, {there are bathrooms, a few with “decontamination shower, just no baths,}] in a big industrial space in Newark NJ.)
Then the yuppies moved in…
Harrison NJ is the next closest domino that’s going down. There are some huge abandoned Hartz Mountain warehouses and factories on property next to the train tracks.
All of the neighborhoods along the NY/NJ PATH line are being gentrified because NYC is insanely expensive.
Hoboken’s been only outrageously expensive for decades.
The pieces of land along the Hudson River (Paulus Hook and so on,) are prohibitively expensive.
Downtown Jersey City went became extremely the ’90s (a turn of the century brownstone that used to cost $50k went for $1.2mil with reno/upgrade costs.)
Journal Square in Jersey City is halfway done but there are some condos there that cost you an arm and a leg. (It was a construction site for a while and it still is to some extent, but they’ve already used the cops to chase all of the merely poor and the homeless away.)
In #2, bobbo said: OTOH–why not let the free market reign?
The free market is not the answer to everything.
Real estate is called real estate for a reason. When all is said and done, it remains and doesn’t care what you think of it (which is at the heart of valuation.)
When the volcano of Santa Crus de la Palma in Tenerife finally blows and half of the mountain slides into the ocean causing a tsunami that will wash away everything lower than 30 feet on the eastern seaboard of the United States, NYC and Hoboken real estate won’t be worth squat.
Meanwhile.. U.S. is downgraded from AAA to AA+.
I live a few blocks away from him. I just don’t understand why people feel so entitled to live in Manhattan. Earn your keep, or move to Brooklyn.
78 square feet for $800 month. 7 minute video. Its a free market choice.
http://mnn.com/your-home/at-home/blogs/every-inch-counts-manhattan-architect-downsizes-to-78-square-foot-apartment
If the New York City real estate is too damn expensive to live in, move somewhere cheaper, like anywhere in the rest of the country. Let the the New York City landowners eat the costs.
Historically, rent controls have resulted in decreases in the stock of available housing. When the prices paid by tenants are lower than the cost of the landlord to maintain the building, they landlords will, and have, just walk away from the building and let it deteriorate. Building abandonment because of rent control policies was a large problem for NYC in the late 70’s early 80’s.
The “better” solution would be to allow landlords to collect market prices, but provide subsidies to lower income tenants; although this also has the consequence of increasing demand and thus raising market prices even further.
Bobbo, I lives in Joyzee City, on the other side of the Hudson river.
steve I used to live in Brooklyn and then in Manhattan proper.
I’ve also put a nail in the wall in Kansas City, Missouri, Ottawa, Ontario, Lachine, Montreal and Ville LaSalle Québec, Tualatin Oregon and lived out of suitcases on both sides of the Atlantic. Where ever clients needed some Smalltalk/object-oriented expertise.
Its been a fun life…
In #10 Sea Lawyer said: The “better” solution would be to allow landlords to collect market prices, but provide subsidies to lower income tenants; although this also has the consequence of increasing demand and thus raising market prices even further.
That’s called section 8 housing and that also has some major drawbacks (no sense of ownership of a situation leads to tenant neglect.)
One alternative is to be found in the township system in South Africa.
That also means a daily two hour commute on a poorly maintained, un-air-conditioned, over crowded train.
Of course the agrarian option (living in rural squalor on a farm in small towns,) is still available, and still just as economically desperate because we pay farmer squat while paying top bucks to some big agribusiness to get shit to market (usually a processing plant. which piles on more cost before it reaches a supermarket and then you have to go and pay way too much to pick it up.)
There is no happy solution.
“no sense of ownership of a situation leads to tenant neglect.”
heh, that is a common problem for rentals in general.
What are you two talking about? If you can’t afford to live in an area===you don’t live there!!! This causes a labor shortage and cost for labor goes up (sic). Section 8 housing is welfare. Rent Control is a different “equity interest.”
Peapod==you still haven’t said what is wrong with allowing the free market to rule in housing/rental costs.
Sea Lawyer==why do taxpayers have any interest at all in subsidizes housing for people who can’t afford it? Why shouldn’t they move?
Food, shelter, clothing, medical care==all appropriate for action at the state level==not neighborhood, bouroughs, and cities.
I guess you didn’t notice the scare quotes I put around “better.” My point is that if the government is going to be a do-gooder, then there are less destructive alternatives than to use rent controls.
SL–putting words in quotes has no definite meaning. It emphasizes and draws attention to the word but has no consistent meaning at all. Did I notice your use of them? No.
Your “expanded” explanation is no better, no more clear, than your sarcastic one, and my question remains valid. Why not the free market? Or would you prefer: “Why not the “free” market?
You people don’t get it. If an apartment or business/storefront is too expensive for someone to occupy, it’s a clue that it’s time for the tenant to move out and let the landlord keep demanding too much for his overpriced real estate. which is an expensive clue stick.
If the real estate’s still too expensive, it will stay empty. If the price is right, someone will move in.
Well bobbo, you’ll certainly get no argument from me advocating something other than a market approach to housing allocation. Unfortunately the popular opinion of the electorate, and not economic theorizing, is often what steers the direction of policy making. So when the government has made the decision to intervene in the market produce a more politically desirable result, the analysis needs to shift to which is the least disruptive intervention, and not simply to stick your fingers in your ears and chant “let the free market decide.”
More to the point of housing through, there is much more involved here. There are many areas of the country with housing shortages because the local governments have deliberately created zoning to minimize new construction. Areas in California are notorious examples where the existing residents have restricted new housing construction is efforts to keep their “open spaces,” housing is unable to meet demand, and the prices increase to the stratosphere. So one government intervention causes havoc, which may be further compounded if they later decide to also intervene and place price ceilings on rents.
Letting the market decide, when it is already being distorted through other interventions, is hardly a position that can be taken at face value.
Rent is too high? Sheesh, try buying some property in Detroit; you can pay for a house with two or three months worth of NYC rent. KwitcherBitchin!
SL–I suspect we are together philosophically but could exchange posts for hours?
I think the government does have a role in providing housing for the poor==but it doesn’t include Manhattan Island. The business capital of the world doesn’t need retirees from the 50’s occupying space that could be rented for far more. I’ll follow your lead and note how greatly central park distorts all the local land values?
Everything in its proper role: all for the greater good. Very few things taken at face value.