This Manhattan Landlord Has Had Enough of the Rent Stabilization Law
With its long-running rent stabilization law, New York City can be tough on landlords. Certainly the real estate prices there are sky-high, but there’s just no more NYC to be build on. And if it weren’t for rent stabilization laws, the city’s middle- and low-income citizens—who wait on tables, pick up trash, work in hotels and sell tickets to Broadway shows—would be priced out of the city.
But one landlord says his tenants can afford to pay market rent—and he’s taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. His five-story brownstone on the upper West Side of Manhattan houses six tenants—and three of them pay 59% below market value in rent. He says the rent stabilization law is a “racket.”
The landlord inherited the building from his parents in 1994; they had purchased it from his grandfather 20 years before the rent law went into effect. He says his family has “carried [this] burden for 40 years, and enough is enough.”
The three rent-stabilized tenants have been living there 30 years each. One owns a house on Long Island and pays $951 per month in rent.
The issue, says the landlord, James Harmon—who is a lawyer—is whether the U.S. Constitution allows the government to force landlords to subsidize strangers for the rest of their lives.
The case has been refused by a district court and the state Supreme Court. If the U.S. Supreme Court hears the case and ultimately ruled in the landlord’s favor, it could dismantle the subsidized rent law that governs 1 million people in New York City.
January 24th, 2012 at
[...] in December, we reported on a Manhattan landlord who has had enough of New York City’s rent stabilization laws, which prevented him from raising [...]
April 24th, 2012 at
[...] regarding New York City’s tough rent stabilization laws. We’ve been watching this case since December. That’s when the landlord—who claimed that his tenants could afford to pay market rent but he [...]