Private equity vs. NYC rent control laws
The New York Times notes that in the last four years, developers owned by private equity firms have bought almost 75,000 rent-regulated apartments in New York City. That's 6 percent of the city's 1.2 million such units. The big players are Vantage Properties, in partnership with Apollo Real Estate Advisors; the Pinnacle Group, a unit of Praedium Capital; and Normandy Real Estate Partners. Their growth strategy depends on higher rents. Now, some tenants have told the New York Times that they sense a strategy of harassment to get them to leave. The main tactic seems to be suits filed in housing court for various offenses. This is an interesting case of raw capitalism vs. municipal policies. Going to the media may prove to be a good move. We'll see.
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By Anonymous | Posted 1:19pm | May 9, 2008
The systemic and organized harrassment of rent controlled and stabilized tenants is not new. Slumlords have been doing it for years. The only differences now are that 1. that the faces of the harrassers have changed...not the methodology and 2. harrassment has become institutionalized. Prior to his rise as Governor, Eliot Spitzer as AG of NYC was amassing documentation of such harrassment and unfortunately, he just let the ball drop completely -- so somewhere in the NYC AG's office is an enormous set of files on just this subject. Maybe the press, particularly the New York Times, can apply some pressure to pick up this egregious abuse of tenants' rights.