Margaret Chin, Rosie Mendez and several other NYC Council members made a final written plea to Mayor Michael Bloomberg Monday for his support of renewing state’s rent stabilization laws, set to expire this week.
The rent regulations, they told Bloomberg in the letter, enable more than 2.5 million individuals to stay in their homes and neighborhoods due to low rents and eviction protections.
“The reality is that it is our lower- and middle-income families who depend on rent stabilization that are most at risk of being forced out of our city,” said the Council members. “Rent stabilization continues to be among the strongest means we have to keep our communities economically diverse.”
The state must also expand the existing laws, Chin and the others said, noting that the city has lost more than 300,000 rent regulated apartments to vacancy destabilization in the past 18 years.
“We need to strengthen the laws by eliminating vacancy destabilization, reforming the major capital improvement and individual apartment improvement mechanisms, reducing the vacancy bonus and increasing enforcement,” according to the letter. “Additionally, Mitchell-Lama and Section 8 tenants must be protected by rent stabilization when they leave those programs.”
