Hundreds are expected to hit the streets at Foley Square Thursday and call on Albany to save affordable housing in the city.
The Rally to Save NYC’s focus is on the state’s rent stabilization laws which expire next month and affect nearly one million units throughout New York. The unions and nonprofits that organized the demonstration, such as the Met Council on Housing and the Alliance for Tenant Power, want the loopholes closed to prevent the deregulation of units to market rate.
“These apartments are being lost in the system,” said Delsenia Glover, campaign manager for Alliance for Tenant Power. “If we don’t strengthen them this year, then in the next 20 years we won’t have any rent stabilized apartments left.”
The march, which had close to 600 attendees on Facebook, will begin at Foley Square at 5 p.m., march on the Brooklyn Bridge and head to downtown Brooklyn.
The laws, which come up for renewal every four years, have become a contentious debating point between housing advocates and landlords.
Proponents of the laws say they need to be updated because there are too many aspects of the current regulation that allows landlords to put their units back at market prices such as one loophole that allows building owners to raise rent if it is vacant. More than 55,000 rent-stabilized units citywide were deregulated between 2002 and 2011, according to the city.
Landlords, however, want less regulation so they can counter the rising property taxes and other costs of ownership.
