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.  

Hear Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal talk about her bill

We'll talk about warehousing in the THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2021 meeting of the West Side Neighborhood Alliance / Housing Conservation Coordinators.  

6-8 PM.  REGISTER HERE. 

The Cooper Square Committee will talk about protecting ourselves from lead. Then 

Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal will present her bill, A598, (still being revised) to end the warehousing of rent-regulated apartments.  Sue Susman and Roberto Rodriguez of our coalition will talk about the coalition itself and what we do, starting at  7:15 PM.  All are welcome.  

REGISTER HERE. 

Anti-Warehousing Wednesdays - Share our messages!

The landlord group CHIP calculated its members are holding  70,000 rent stabilized apartments off the market.  

Tweet our message to the candidates for NYC mayor.

@AndrewYang @Dianne4NYC @ericadamsfornyc @kgfornyc @MayaWiley @RayforMayor @ShaunDonovanNYC @ScottMStringer

Vacant affordable housing sits moldering in a housing and homelessness crisis and a pandemic! What's your plan?

Listen to the Town Hall Recording

Some 70 people attended our town hall on ending the warehousing of affordable (rent regulated) apartments. 

You can listen here and use this passcode: Q@.up?54.

And if you agree with our mission statement, your group can join our coalition!  Contact us. 

Join our March 24 Town Hall on Warehoused Apartments

Join Citizen Action NY, Communities Resist, Cooper Square Committee, Los Sures, Los Sures LUCHA, St. Nicks Alliance, Stellar Tenants for Affordable Housing, Tenants Taking Control, and the West Side Neighborhood Alliance (list in formation), along with State Assembly Members Linda Rosenthal and Emily Gallagher, State Senators Julia Salazar and Brian Benjamin, and others as we talk about the warehousing of vacant regulated apartments and how to stop it.    

The event will be bilingual, English and Spanish. Click here for a flyer in English, and here for one in Spanish. 

Register for the Zoom Meeting. Join by phone: 646-558-8656 (from NYC), and use the Meeting ID. Meeting ID 963, 8674 1055.  

Nov. 18, 2020 Rally and Banner Drops a Success!

 

The November 18, 2020 End Warehousing rally and banner drops told New York that vacant affordable apartments should be homes for those who need them! 

Demonstrators at a recent Williamsburg rally called on landlords to stop keeping apartments vacant for years in order to bypass rent regulations.

One advocate decried the practice — known as “warehousing” — as especially cruel at a time of record vacancy rates during which more and more New Yorkers are becoming homeless.

“I find it inhumane that we are denying housing to these people,” said Yadira Dúmet, an organizer with the local community development non-profit St. Nicks Alliance, at a protest on Hooper Street on Nov. 18.

The End Warehousing Coalition, which includes St. Nicks Alliance and several other advocacy organizations, hung banners and demonstrated outside of two apartment blocks at 293 and 301 Hooper St., near Broadway, where residents say the landlord has kept 11 units vacant for years.

https://www.brooklynpaper.com/housing-activists-call-on-landlords-to-end-warehousing-empty-apartments/

Many groups participated in the main Brooklyn rally, including the members of the End Warehousing Coalition(St. Nick's Alliance, Los Sures, Los Sures LUCHA, Communities Resist, Stellar Tenants for Affordable Housing, Tenants Taking Control, United Neighbors Organization (UNO)), and Picture the Homeless and the Homeless Can't Stay Home.  Thanks to elected officials including State Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, Senator Julia Salazar, Assembly Member-elect Emily Gallagher, District Leaders Kristina Naplatarski and Samy Nevir-Olivares, and aides: Jennifer from Council Member Reynoso's office and Ramon from Senator Salazar's office who attended the Brooklyn rally.  Thanks  to Neil Douglas Reilly of State Senator Brian Benjamin's office and Larry Wood of Goddard Riverside Community Center for participating in the Manhattan companion rally. And thanks to Jim Markowich of Tenants Taking Control and Council Members Helen Rosenthal and Mark Levine for their press quotes. 

Above photo by Frank Leonardo (c) 2020, used with permission. 

Left photo (c) 2020 by John Rodriguez, used with permission.

Photo by Frank Leonardo, (c) 2020, used with permission.