City looks at warehousing, Mayor has proposed "Unlocking Doors"

Mayor Adams is responding to the crisis of tens of thousands of people who need apartments while tens of thousands of apartments are being warehoused.  Is subsidizing landlords who might (illegally) refuse to rent to voucher holders, and whose apartments may need updates due to negligence the way to go? 

https://citylimits.org/2023/04/19/city-will-rehab-400-chronically-vacant-rent-stabilized-apartments-to-house-homeless

City to Rehab 'Chronically Vacant' Rent-Stabilized Apartments for Tenants with Vouchers

The initiative will invest $10 million to repair up to 400 stabilized units that have sat empty, and turn them over to tenants with rental assistance vouchers—what the administration described as a “creative way” to boost the city’s affordable housing stock and increase options for voucher holders, who often facing discrimination from landlords and brokers. Read the story.

Tenants Demand an End to Warehousing & Frankensteining!

Tenants rallied against Frankensteining on March 9, 2023 on the Lower East Side and March 23 in Brooklyn.

TAKE ACTION: Ask Sen. Brian Kavanagh to get his bill, S.2980 passed to end Frankensteining. 

TAKE ACTION: Let's get City Council Intro. 195 passed.  Contact your City Council member today!  (Thanks to all those who are supporting it already.)

Thanks to St. Nick's Alliance for the top and bottom right photos and to the Cooper Square Committee for the bottom left photo.  All photos used with authorization. 

Rent-stabilized Harlem tenants sue after "Frankensteining"

 The Gothamist: "Rent-stabilized Harlem tenants sue after 'Frankenstein" renovations carve up apartments."

EXCERPT:

Tenants in two Harlem buildings are joining a lawsuit to stop what they, along with other renters in Brooklyn, say are illegal modifications to their rent-stabilized apartments. 

A dozen families were forced to temporarily move out of their apartments last year because the city deemed the buildings unsafe after they racked up nearly 200 violations. But in the months since, the families are learning that their homes are being transformed — a growing practice that threatens to displace long-time tenants, their lawyers say.

Almost 65K vacant rent-stabilized apartments, DHCR reports

https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/median-rent-new-york-stabilized-apartments-roughly-1500-report-says

Crain's New York Business

January 03, 2023 01:17 PM

65K vacant rent-stabilized apartments 'above the historical norm,' report says

EDDIE SMALL   

EXCERPT:

Almost 65,000 of these apartments were registered as vacant in 2021, according to the report. Division of Homes and Community Renewal Commissioner RutheAnne Visnauskas wrote that this was "above the historical norm" and cited New Yorkers leaving the city during the height of the pandemic as the likely factor. Preliminary data for the 2022 cycle indicates that the surge has receded, the report says.

116,000 rent-stabilized units have vanished since 2019

 https://therealdeal.com/2022/12/23/how-did-116000-rent-stabilized-units-vanish/

How did 116,000 rent-stabilized units vanish?

Deregulation severely limited by 2019 law, but may have happened anyway

New York /

December 23, 2022 10:17 AM

TRD Staff

EXCERPT: 

There were 858,000 rent-regulated units registered with the state’s Division of Housing and Community Renewal as of November, down from 974,000 when the seminal Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act was passed in 2019, The City reported.

The drop came despite the law being designed to prevent landlords from deregulating vacant apartments after rents reached $2,774 a month — a common occurrence previously.

“There’s no reasonable explanation for why that should be happening within the law,” Edward Josephson, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, told the publication.

One possibility is that landlords stopped re-renting unprofitable units as they became vacant because the 2019 law forbid substantial rent increases to pay for renovations and also cut off paths to deregulation.

....Witnick [Real Estate] declined to comment for the story. Across the landlord’s 36 Brooklyn and Manhattan buildings, 226 rent stabilized units — about 40% of its portfolio — have been deregulated since 2007, the publication noted.

....

Taking all those possibilities into consideration, however, still leaves tens of thousands of units missing since 2019. It may be that landlords simply aren’t reporting rent-regulated units. The City noted that landlords can register rent-stabilized apartments years late. But that was also true before the 2019 law passed.

Crowdsourcing the location of vacant apartments

 City Watch:  Live Next to a Vacant Apartment? This Housing Group Wants to Know

by David Brand, November 28, 2022.

In the absence of specific data, the housing organization Open New York has launched a project asking everyday residents to crowdsource the locations of vacant apartments - rent-stabilized and unregulated units alike - to paint a more complete picture

EXCERPT:

In the absence of specific data, the housing organization Open New York has launched a project asking everyday residents to crowdsource the locations of vacant apartments—rent-stabilized and unregulated units alike—to paint a more complete picture. A similar initiative is underway from the Coalition to End Apartment Warehousing, which has honed in on regulated units.

Warehousing NOT caused by 2019 law - CityLimits article

 CityLimits

Empty Rent-Stabilized units in NYC Decreased This Year, as 'Warehousing' Debate Rages.

The latest vacancy data now mirrors pre-COVID figures following a "pandemic-height outlier," according to New York State's affordable housing agency. The number of empty apartments also matches the vacancy rate prior to landmark 2019 tenant protections that landlords blamed for the spike in empty units last year. 

by David Brand, published November 17, 2022.

EXCERPT: "With hundreds of thousands of low-income New Yorkers in need of an affordable home, even one warehoused unit is one too many,” said [Larry] Wood, of Goddard Riverside. 

Click on "Read More" for additional excerpts.