New York has recorded 76,000 eviction filings since March 2020, Princeton University’s Eviction Lab reports, and the coming end of pandemic moratoria will bring many more. Not all are for nonpayment of rent, with causes including criminal activity and other bad behavior. And some tenants will eventually get long-delayed help from the mismanaged federal rental-assistance program. But these factors do not detract from the return of the city’s perennia📖l housing wars and a likely low vacancy rate.
Advocates will pressure Mayor-elect Eric Adams ꦐto respond by promising to subsidize yet more costly-to-build, cheap-to-rent “affordable” housing. Let’s hope he resists.
The underlying problem remains the fundamental distortion c♋aused by the city’s entrenched rent-stabili𓂃zation system, which applies to over half of all rental units, more than 1 million apartments.
The core problem is this: Tenants in rent-stabilized units have no incentive to move out, even when they no longer need as large an apartment as they occupy. If they’ve retired, they’re insulated from the housing costs that lead their suburban-homeowner counterparts to downsize and makeꦓ way for younger families.
The turnover story is starkly told in data from New Yo🌞rk University’s Furmanꦰ Center for Real Estate. Some 23 percent of rent-stabilized tenants first moved in more than 20 years ago; for market-rate tenants, it’s just 7.1 percent. In core Manhattan, more than 35 percent of rent-stabilized tenants moved in more than two decades ago. Market-rate units are more crowded, with 16 percent more occupants. And twice as many rent-stabilized tenants are over 65.
The demographics are notable: The largest percentage of rent-stabiliz꧋ed tenants are not only older but white: 67 percent in core Manhattan. Asians, in contrast, are under-represented compared with their growing share of the population — and are famously overcrowded.
Rent stabilization, in other words, can well be seen as a system to protect retired white people, especially in otherwise high-rent parts of Manhatꦺtan.
This is not to argue New York should force older, rent-protected tenants to skedaddle. But neither should we artificially incentivize 🔯them t🐻o stay — and overconsume housing that younger, newcomer households want. Remember the time-honored housing economist’s term: filtering. When one sector of the housing market loosens up, units become available elsewhere, too. Rent regulation keeps the noose on — and strangles availability.
The numbers tell the tale: New York — famous as the city where outlanders come to make it big — actually♋ has the second-lowest housing turnover rate of any major city, only slightly trailing Pittsburgh. We see far less hous꧟ing “churn” than the less-regulated markets of the Sunbelt, such as Phoenix and Las Vegas, according to the mortgage firm
It’s housing musical chairs — the childhood game where there are not enough places♕ to sit down when the music stops.
The city’s better housing future lies in housing deregulation — and that includes zoꦗning reform as well, to spur private construction. Spending billions in local funds, through the bloated Department of Housing Preservation and Development, helps only a lucky few who get an ꩵ“affordable” unit for life. The billion-dollar annual HPD budget siphons funds from the purposes saner cities emphasize: safe streets, clean parks, updated infrastructure.
There’s no doubt that phasing out rent regulation would be a heavy political lift. Indeed, the state Legislature moved the goalposts in its Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, makin💯g it more difficult for buildings to be deregulated while limiting owners’ ability to raise rents based on building improvements. It’s a recipe for both scarcity and shabbiness.
This wall of regulation could be at least partially breached, however, through court action. The Rent Stabilization Association and Community Housing Improvement Program have mounted a legal challenge to the 2019 law as a bridge too far that effectively constitutes a legal taking of property. Recent Supreme Court r🏅ulings suggest the high court might be sy♔mpathetic.
It would take courage for Eric Adams to speak such truths to the power of organized tenants. 💧But it would be a first step in ending the city’s endless housing war.
Howard Husock is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the new book “.”
