It’s looking like a conspiracy to destroy the city’s housing market

It’s starting to look like a conspiracy to destroy New York City’s housing market, from the state’s expansion of the rent laws’ reach to Mayor de Blasio’s manipulation of the Rent Guidelines Board to drastically cap rent hikes.

On Tuesday, the board (whose nine members are all picked by the mayor) voted to limit rent hikes on nearly 1 million regulated apartments to 1.5 percent for one-year leases and 2.5 percent for two-year leases.

That continues a trend under de Blasio of keeping rent upticks for one-year leases to less than 2 percent, something the board had never done in its entire 50-year history — until he took office.

Indeed, through this year, Hizzoner’s board has OK’d hikes averaging less than 1 percent for annual leases, including two years when it just froze rents altogether.

Click Here: bape jacket cheap

Notably, this year’s caps were far below the board’s own estimate of the rising cost of operating rent-regulated buildings: Its staff report found that “core building costs” shot up 4.9 percent this year. So how are landlords supposed to cover their outlays with just 1.5 percent rent hikes?

Board Chairman David Reiss tried to justify the decision by arguing that tenants have to devote a large share of their own earnings to cover their monthly rent. True or not, that’s a poor excuse for denying building owners the chance to cover their expenses.

Indeed, the board also notes that landlords at rent-regulated buildings were barely covering their bills as of 2017. That meant they had nothing at all left over for reserves.

Before de Blasio became mayor, a 2 percent minimum yearly hike was a tradition, letting landlords sock away at least some rainy-day revenue, notes Vito Signorile of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents owners. That, he adds, is likely why the board’s staff recommended hikes in 1-year leases of at least 3 percent this year.

Meanwhile, the Legislature pushed through drastic “reforms” to the city’s rent laws that will further cut off sources of revenue for owners.

No longer can they hope that their units, including even those occupied by wealthy tenants, will ever be deregulated and start bringing in a market-rate income. Gone, too, is the bonus for vacated apartments. Landlords also lost the right to offset much of the cost of improvements to their buildings and individual units via rent hikes.

All of this is sure to mean less investment in buildings — i.e., fewer upgrades and fewer new apartments built. Small mom-and-pop owners will have trouble making ends meet. Expect a serious decay of the city’s housing stock and a worsening of the housing shortage.

The bottom-line irony: All the moves against landlords are supposedly meant to protect tenants. Yet those tenants will surely suffer if their buildings fall to rot — or, worse, if they can’t find an apartment in the first place.