Open letter to NYC Comptroller Mark Levine

The Coalition to End Apartment Warehousing was disappointed at the "six figure price tag" you are quoted as saying in a recent NY Post article:

“Why would a landlord leave an apartment vacant? Well, unfortunately, the law is very difficult. When an apartment becomes vacant and they need very expensive renovations, sometimes a six figure price tag, the owners of the buildings are not able to raise their rent enough to cover the cost of that renovation. And so, many of these apartments remain vacant,” he told host John Catsimatidis. He continued, “This has got to be fixed. We’ve got to activate these homes so that they go back on the market. It can be done in a way that preserves affordability, but allows for more flexibilities for landlords to be able to pay for the renovations … We probably have a shortage of 500,000 apartments.”

It's good you qualified the statement with "when they need very expensive renovations, sometimes a six figure price tag." But that is the exception, not the norm. As your predecessor found, only about 3,000 of the 26,000 vacant units (or 57,000 per DHCR) need a great deal of work to be habitable.  So there's no need to focus on the outlying number and underscore landlord talking points. 

Our Coalition to End Apartment Warehousing reported in April 2026 that repair costs are generally much lower than six figures.  In Park West Village -- part of your old City Council bailiwick -- the owners warehoused 60 rent stabilized apartments for a few years until they thought they had a deal to rent them out to hospital employees.  So the owners rehabbed all 60 within a couple of months, with a few days spent on each.  When the deal fell through, the newly-renovated apartments stayed empty.  The former tenant association president there reported that more recently when Stellar took over the management from the bankrupt Chetrit, some of those apartments are now being rented out.  But Stellar is not doing that at 50 West 97th Street.  There are close to 20 warehoused apartments (the number unfortunately goes up as more of the older tenants die).  There are two on the 15th floor, for example, and the one next door just needs a coat of paint and new appliances (possibly flooring over the old tile).  The Coalition's 2026 Supplement includes those costs.  

A real reason for warehousing came out on the Brian Lehrer Show on July 1, 2026 when a landlord caller said he didn't want to rent out vacant apartments in part because that would keep those apartments rent stabilized forever - and that he didn't want to keep getting ONLY the low rent.   Why not apply to DHCR for a hardship increase?  He clearly didn't think that a guaranteed return of roughly 6% on his investment was adequate.  And Unlocking Doors probably wouldn't suit his image of the right kind of tenant.  One might respond: too bad. 

The state legislature increased IAIs in 2024 to accommodate the cost of rehabilitating apartments in old buildings. But we don't need more taxpayer support so landlords can make a higher rate of return.  You've been a staunch ally of tenants for decades. Please stand up for us now, and don't repeat feeble landlord talking points.