3 ms·

> They don't have to bother with that, they just don't renew your lease They are required to renew the leases of stabilized tenants. > or use the court to evi

> They don't have to bother with that, they just don't renew your lease They are required to renew the leases of stabilized tenants. > or use the court to evict you and the apartment automatically becomes unregulated. Nope, the apartment is still regulated even if they re-rent it. They have to go through the deregulation process through the courts if they want to take it off rent regulations.

busterarm 8y ago
> They are required to renew the leases of stabilized tenants. Most public benefit programs in NYC require you keep on-file a current lease agreement. Withholding a paper lease is a deliberate tactic to make people choose between keeping their apartment and keeping their benefits. I mean, we can keep doing this back and forth about where we agree on how things should work and I'll agree with you, but then I can tell you about how my family or I have been going to court with our landlord at least every other year since the late 80s. I am a rent controlled tenant in a 95% rent stabilized building and the landlord does incredibly shady shit to try and get myself and others out. In fact we're going through the regular "didn't pay rent" routine right now that will bring me to court again probably this August or September -- the bank checks that I send certified mail every month are being refused delivery by the management company again.
- namibj 8y ago
  The European way of paying rent, e.g. recurring wires, has the benefit that the recipient can't just refuse the physical object. And for legally binding documents the tenant has to deliver within a deadline, he can, if it's that bad (at least in Germany), pay a court bailiff to deliver the document and certify this delivery. That is legally binding on the date it is put in the mailbox.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    I agree wholeheartedly and it seems like it would be nice to live in a civilized part of the world like Germany instead of my city and country of origin.
    - namibj 8y ago
      Move here. It's not that difficult if you want it, and have the skill needed to find someone to marry. The legal system here is (almost) still 'rule of law', and the constitutional court has a history of voiding the police state laws that crop up. Well, unless you are in Bavaria. I'd advise against setting foot on that state. The arrest laws there are about as bad as civil forfeiture, except that they can at worst lock up what you have on you, instead of being able to turn it into funds. Also you, once you are a citizen, don't have to worry about your employer firing you or so, if you can sit that out in a frugal lifestyle. Landlords here actually like non-agressive social-benefits tenants, as the rent get's wired directly by the state and the benefits won't pay for an apartment in an expensive area anyway, which, combined with the apparently rather liberal zoning, as far as high-rise buildings are concerned, makes the situation rather bearable.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > And for legally binding documents the tenant has to deliver within a deadline, he can, if it's that bad (at least in Germany), pay a court bailiff to deliver the document and certify this delivery. That's true in the US as well, but again, the point is that a landlord who wants to make your life hell and drag you through the court system has plenty of opportunities to do so.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > I mean, we can keep doing this back and forth about where we agree on how things should work and I'll agree with you, but then I can tell you about how my family or I have been going to court with our landlord at least every other year since the late 80s We could keep doing this back and forth, and I'd encourage you to do so, because you're just proving mu original point: rent control and rent stabilization are terrible at serving their stated purpose of providing affordable rent for people of modest means.
  - wahern 8y ago
    I think the debate about rent control has been sadly twisted and misdirected. I don't think rent control was ever originally about affordable rent. That's just the modern narrative. Affordability is an artifact that happens years later, and as you say it's inconsistent and haphazard. Rent control is about providing stability. I think 80%+ of home mortgages in the U.S. are fixed-rate. People pay a premium because stability in housing expenditure is extremely important to individuals, couples, and especially families. It provides an anchor point with which to organize their economic life, but mostly I think its human nature to prefer and need that stability. As a practical matter, though, there's no such thing as a 30-year, fixed-rate, residential lease. (Or more similar, a fixed-rate life estate as after paying off a mortgage nobody can kick you out.) It's possible but for historic reasons it's simply uncommon, and because such terms lack the ubiquity of the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, you'd doubtless be paying a huge premium. Ultimately, providing this stability to renters is a collective action problem. In order to the minimize the cost (and obviously there is a significant cost to property owners that should be fairly internalized by renters) you want a way to quickly channel a large segment of the market into using something like a fixed-rate perpetual lease. Ergo, rent control. Affordability for low-income renters (or any renter) is a different matter and it's a shame that we've conflated these things. But we live in exceptionally conservative times such that the only way to publicly justify any manner of government regulation--even in liberal cities--is to sell it as a way to improve the lot of the most impoverished. The working- and middle-class have been utterly relegated to the vicissitudes of private markets and we no longer even have a vocabulary to discuss public policies targeting the larger population.

busterarm 8y ago

> They are required to renew the leases of stabilized tenants. Most public benefit programs in NYC require you keep on-file a current lease agreement. Withholding a paper lease is a deliberate tactic to make people choose between keeping their apartment and keeping their benefits. I mean, we can keep doing this back and forth about where we agree on how things should work and I'll agree with you, but then I can tell you about how my family or I have been going to court with our landlord at least every other year since the late 80s. I am a rent controlled tenant in a 95% rent stabilized building and the landlord does incredibly shady shit to try and get myself and others out. In fact we're going through the regular "didn't pay rent" routine right now that will bring me to court again probably this August or September -- the bank checks that I send certified mail every month are being refused delivery by the management company again.

namibj 8y ago
The European way of paying rent, e.g. recurring wires, has the benefit that the recipient can't just refuse the physical object. And for legally binding documents the tenant has to deliver within a deadline, he can, if it's that bad (at least in Germany), pay a court bailiff to deliver the document and certify this delivery. That is legally binding on the date it is put in the mailbox.
- busterarm 8y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly and it seems like it would be nice to live in a civilized part of the world like Germany instead of my city and country of origin.
  - namibj 8y ago
    Move here. It's not that difficult if you want it, and have the skill needed to find someone to marry. The legal system here is (almost) still 'rule of law', and the constitutional court has a history of voiding the police state laws that crop up. Well, unless you are in Bavaria. I'd advise against setting foot on that state. The arrest laws there are about as bad as civil forfeiture, except that they can at worst lock up what you have on you, instead of being able to turn it into funds. Also you, once you are a citizen, don't have to worry about your employer firing you or so, if you can sit that out in a frugal lifestyle. Landlords here actually like non-agressive social-benefits tenants, as the rent get's wired directly by the state and the benefits won't pay for an apartment in an expensive area anyway, which, combined with the apparently rather liberal zoning, as far as high-rise buildings are concerned, makes the situation rather bearable.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > And for legally binding documents the tenant has to deliver within a deadline, he can, if it's that bad (at least in Germany), pay a court bailiff to deliver the document and certify this delivery. That's true in the US as well, but again, the point is that a landlord who wants to make your life hell and drag you through the court system has plenty of opportunities to do so.
chimeracoder 8y ago
> I mean, we can keep doing this back and forth about where we agree on how things should work and I'll agree with you, but then I can tell you about how my family or I have been going to court with our landlord at least every other year since the late 80s We could keep doing this back and forth, and I'd encourage you to do so, because you're just proving mu original point: rent control and rent stabilization are terrible at serving their stated purpose of providing affordable rent for people of modest means.
- wahern 8y ago
  I think the debate about rent control has been sadly twisted and misdirected. I don't think rent control was ever originally about affordable rent. That's just the modern narrative. Affordability is an artifact that happens years later, and as you say it's inconsistent and haphazard. Rent control is about providing stability. I think 80%+ of home mortgages in the U.S. are fixed-rate. People pay a premium because stability in housing expenditure is extremely important to individuals, couples, and especially families. It provides an anchor point with which to organize their economic life, but mostly I think its human nature to prefer and need that stability. As a practical matter, though, there's no such thing as a 30-year, fixed-rate, residential lease. (Or more similar, a fixed-rate life estate as after paying off a mortgage nobody can kick you out.) It's possible but for historic reasons it's simply uncommon, and because such terms lack the ubiquity of the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, you'd doubtless be paying a huge premium. Ultimately, providing this stability to renters is a collective action problem. In order to the minimize the cost (and obviously there is a significant cost to property owners that should be fairly internalized by renters) you want a way to quickly channel a large segment of the market into using something like a fixed-rate perpetual lease. Ergo, rent control. Affordability for low-income renters (or any renter) is a different matter and it's a shame that we've conflated these things. But we live in exceptionally conservative times such that the only way to publicly justify any manner of government regulation--even in liberal cities--is to sell it as a way to improve the lot of the most impoverished. The working- and middle-class have been utterly relegated to the vicissitudes of private markets and we no longer even have a vocabulary to discuss public policies targeting the larger population.