City Leaders Getting Worried On Rent Regulation Laws

While the owners of thousands of the the city’s renters have been quiet. But this summer, if state government fails to act, their lives could become just as nightmarish and stressful as the homeowners whose tax assessments have been driven upward in recent months.

Rent regulation protections, currently set to expire on June 15, are what prevent landlords from raising rents on long-term tenants, and help keep affordable housing units in place when demographic changes occur in neighborhoods across the city.

The regulations were originally put in place in 1974.

Currently, members of the state Senate and Assembly are pushing to renew the laws before they expire in June. Assembly bill-2674A, the renewal bill, passed on April 11. It’s state Senate companion bill remains in committee.

State Sen. Joe Addabbo, D-South Ozone Park, who also serves parts of Forest Hills, said he and his colleagues are working night and day to try and make sure the bill moves quickly.

“Raising rents on middle class and working poor families that are already reeling in this tough economy is like burdening them with a crushing tax that will drive New Yorkers from their homes,” Addabbo said last month. “That’s why I support this legislation strengthening rent control and other crucial regulations that protect tenants and stabilize communities across New York. We must protect seniors, veterans, and the disabled from losing the very roofs over their heads.”

City lawmakers, who are powerless to enact legislation pertaining to rental rates and protections, have grown worried in recent months while Albany has been quiet.

“These laws are the only thing standing between our city and the largest affordable housing crisis in this country’s history. If we don’t act here and now, hundreds of thousands of working and middle class families could lose their homes,” Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said. “We must live up to our historic responsibility to keep the more than one million apartments under threat affordable.”

, D-Forest Hills, is also deeply concerned that the state has yet to renew rent regulations.

“It is extremely important that Albany renews rent regulations, which have helped to build and keep the middle class in New York City,” Koslowitz said, adding that she would like to see the Urstadt laws — which give the state ultimate control over local rent regulations — rescinded. “The recent ruling by the Court of Appeals allowing increases on long term tenants, coupled with the general high cost of living in the city, makes it even more crucial that rent laws are renewed.”

Until the regulations are renewed on the state level, renters across the city will be forced to wait and hope that their homes — temporary or long term — aren’t yanked out from under them.