Virtual Town Hall - April 12, 2022 at 6:30 PM

Virtual Town Hall on Ending Apartment Warehousing

Tuesday, April 12 at 6:30pm

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Join us for an educational forum on how apartment warehousing causes tenant displacement and the loss of affordable housing, and endangers tenants.
 

Learn about:

• the effects of apartment warehousing
• why landlords warehouse apartments
• the tenant experience of warehousing
• current legislation
• what you can do!

Speakers will include:

• tenants
• organizers
• and local elected officials including New York Assembly Member Linda B. Rosenthal and New York City Council Member Gale Brewer (full speaker list in development).

This Town Hall will be held on Zoom, with no registration necessary.

Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83569891685
By phone: 646 558 8656 (meeting ID: 83569891685#)

For more information about this event, contact the Coalition to End Apartment Warehousing. 

CLICK HERE FOR A FLYER. 

 

Learn more about how apartment warehousing endangers tenants and affordable housing with this factsheet:

Apartment Warehousing Factsheet (English) Almacenamiento de apartamentos hoja de hechos (Español)

Town Hall - Tues., April 12, 2022 at 6:30 PM

Join our coalition, tenants, Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, Council Member Gale Brewer, and other elected officials, for a

Town Hall on Zoom

Tues.April 12, 2022

at 6:30 PM.

 

 

 CLICK HERE FOR A COPY OF THE FLYER.

The NY Times article linked below misses one important point: rents are high in part because even just before the pandemic, landlords were refusing to rent out over 70,000 vacant rent stabilized apartments.  That is still the case - and probably the number is even higher. 

Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal has a great state bill to discourage warehousing, and Council Member Gale Brewer has agreed to sponsor a city bill to figure out the number of such vacant units and ensure the safety of tenants who live near them (some of the empty apartments become fire hazards or harbor vermin, mold, and worse).  Let Linda Rosenthal and Gale Brewer and your other representatives know we're grateful and we need those laws NOW! 

Rents Are Roaring Back in New York City

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/nyregion/nyc-rent-surge.html

We're Planning a Town Hall on Ending Apartment Warehousing

Virtual Town Hall on Ending Apartment Warehousing

Join us for an educational forum on how apartment warehousing causes tenant displacement, the loss of affordable housing, and endangers tenants.   Hear about: the effects of apartment warehousing why landlords warehouse apartments the tenant experience of warehousing current legislation what you can do! Speakers will include tenants, organizers, and local elected officials including New York Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal (full speaker list in development). For more information about this event, contact the Coalition to End Apartment Warehousing.

Learn more about how apartment warehousing endangers tenants and affordable housing with this factsheet in English and Spanish:

Apartment Warehousing Factsheet (English) Almacenamiento de apartamentos hoja de hechos (Español)

Panel on Warehousing, Sat., 12/4/2021 at 11 AM

 Join Saturday's panel on warehousing, 11 AM.

Brick Underground: First Rents of Combined Stabilized Units

 Brick Underground

First Rent: How landlords of rent-stabilized apartments can hike the rent on a newly combined place

by Emily Myers | Nov. 8, 2021

EXCERPT:

If you find a large apartment—the result of combining two rent-stabilized apartments—you may notice the rent for the combination apartment is proportionally higher than other units in the building.

That's because the landlord has set a "first rent," which refers to the amount a landlord can charge for a newly combined apartment that has never been on the market before. 

Combining or changing the configuration of units is a way for landlords with rent-stabilized apartments to increase the rent they can generate from a building—it's one of the few routes that remain thanks to changes in the housing laws.

After the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, it became more difficult for landlords to cycle affordable apartments out of the program. Now there are fewer incentives for landlords to offer tenants a buyout in order to turn a rent-stabilized apartment into a market-rate apartment.

Is your landlord creating "Frankensteined" apartments?

It's time to close the "Frankenstein" loophole in the 2019 rent laws!

Landlords love to warehouse vacant rent stabilized apartments in the hopes of combining it with a neighboring apartment or otherwise changing the perimeter - to create a new, "Frankensteined"*  unit that will have a new rent history and possibly a new, much higher base rent. 

This is a big loophole in the bar on deregulating apartments in the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Law.  It's not clear what the base rent stabilized rent for the new unit will be since it has no history and there's no legislation (or even DHCR regulation) about it.  

So this loophole is an incentive for landlords to harass neighboring tenants out.  

Help us close the loophole!  Join the End Apartment Warehousing Coalition, and contact your state legislator and Governor Hochul. 

*Frankensteining requires making one or more vacant apartments into a completely different new unit with a different perimeter, generally including a different entry location.  So just adding dividers or knocking down a wall between kitchen and living room won't do create a new unit.