CWA 1180 - Political Action

"Affordable housing" is becoming an oxymoron in NYC; time to fight to change that
April 2002

WHAT YOU CAN DO

1. Call Governor Pataki's office and demand that he take a stand in favor of strengthening our rent laws. The numbers are 212-6811-4580 or 212-681-4563. So far he has been silent, and while the State Assembly has passed the bills, the State Senate will not act until it gets a clear signal from the governor. So pressure on Pataki is the key!

2. Put up more posters! If you haven't already, get a copy of the "Stronger Rent Laws Now" poster being distributed by the Rent 2002 campaign and hang it in your window; call the 1180 office at 212-226-6565 to get one.

3. Get others in your shop, your apartment building, your church and your community to hang posters in their windows, too.

They say that there are two things that are certain in life: death and taxes. For working-class New Yorkers, there is also a third: that finding a place to live in New York City is a nightmare. A decent apartment in a decent neighborhood with an affordable rent is almost impossible to find, and Local 1180 members and other average New Yorkers don't need economists to tell them that we have a serious housing crisis in our city.

The crisis can be documented in a number of ways. First of all, housing supply has simply not kept up with demand. From 1981 to 1995, the city grew by 350,000 people, but only added 42,000 new rental apartments. As a result, the rental vacancy rate keeps falling and is critically low (3.19% in 1999). These forces create upward pressure on rents, as landlords have the upper hand in a market like this. A significant additional problem is that the stock of rent-regulated housing is dwindling—meaning that the hopes of working New Yorkers of finding an affordable apartment are even further diminished. It's estimated that the the past 10 years the city has lost bout 150,000 units of rent-regulated housing, mostly through what is called "vacancy decontrol" (see below). The stock of apartments renting for less than $500 a month has shrunk by over 55% in the last decade. While median renter income has increased by 3% since 1975, median rent has increased by a whopping 33% in that same time. An estimated 24% of households in New York City spend more than 50% of their income on rent.

Enough is enough

What these numbers add up to is an unacceptable situation in which working people are increasingly no longer able to live in New York City. And this year, tenant, union and ommunity leaders have decided enough is enough and are organizing to reverse the decline in affordable housing.

The Rent 2002 campaign has picked this year to make a major effort to renew rent regulations and to strengthen rent laws because it's an election year. Politicians rely on wealthy contributors—like landlords—and are susceptible to pressure from them, but they also rely on voters to get elected, and they know that the working-class voters they need to stay in office support rent regulations. So in an election year like 2002, when the governor and both houses in the state legislature are up for election, tenants have a better chance to get politicians to pay attention to their needs.

There are two parts to the Rent 2002 campaign. The first is renewal of rent-control and rent-stabilization laws. These laws will expire in 2003. For rent regulation to continue, these laws must be renewed by the City Council and mayor and the state legislature and governor before their expiration dates. To make sure they are renewed without weakening amendments, the campaign is pushing to get them renewed this year, when politicians know voters will be holding them accountable at the polls. A bill to renew the laws has already passed the State Assembly (A.11010), but the tougher part will be getting it through the Republican-controlled State Senate.

Repeal vacancy decontrol

The second part of the campaign is repeal of vacancy decontrol. Here, too, an Assembly bill has been passed (A.11011) and the crucial battle will be in the Senate. The vacancy decontrol legislation would eliminate the provision of the law that removes apartments going for $2,000 or more from rent regulation when they are vacated. Repeal of vacancy decontrol is crucial to the preservation of affordable housing in New York City, because it's vacancy decontrol that is the main culprit in continued erosion of the rent-regulated housing stock, and it's rent regulation that makes housing affordable.

Local 1180 has been active in the Rent 2002 campaign from the beginning because 1180 members and the families are affected by the housing crisis.

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