It's also really arbitrary. I live in the upper west side district mentioned. My rent is $2600, i.e my unit is skirting just above the rent control line. I bet my unit was 'de-controlled' in the last 8 years.
But the classification doesn't matter to me personally at all. If the apartment went from $2400 to $2600, while it was decontrolled, the affordability hasn't changed that much. Meanwhile a unit that was $1900 several years ago could be $2400 now because they reset the rent every time the tenant switches. It is much less affordable, but it is still rent controlled. This data is not going to help you figure out if things have gotten significantly less affordable.
Which really means this is just a map of where median rents are close to the line between rent controlled and not rent controlled. Notice that the areas that are much more expensive don't show change, since everything was over the line to begin with. The places that are really cheap also don't show a huge amount of change because even after increases the units are still rent controlled. So overall it's good data but it's not telling you that much.
They want to preserve the culture of people who have less money. Yes, the market would be more efficient with no price controls but at the cost of replacing low income tenants with higher income tenants. I think a better solution is reasonably priced public housing distributed throughout the city.
Price controls are generally considered to be inefficient purely from an economic perspective.
However, the free market has generally been a terrible provider of low-income housing solutions. There's a long, long history to this from shanty towns to tenements. That's why basically all developed countries have some type of social housing component from demand-side subsidies to public housing or regulated stock.
When we lose permanently affordable units, it is invariably extraordinarily expensive to replace them given land costs and the size of subsidies that are needed. Contemporary homelessness emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s in both San Francisco and New York as both cities started to lose single-room occupancy hotels or SROs.
Regarding efficiency.. I'm noticing more homeless wandering the east village pandering for money these days. With the rents approaching 4k/mo for a 1bdrm, people will probably not tolerate being harassed for money (was called an asshole the other day for ignoring a request for donation by a dude, who I can only assume is homeless). That said, I kinda miss the edginess of the East Village from years gone by...
I'm all for rent-stabilization going away, if two things happen:
1) We remove building restrictions around the city that keep new taller apartment buildings from going up. Yes, almost all of NYC is developed land, but many parts of Brooklyn, for example, are full of one and two story buildings that aren't using the space effectively.
2) We upgrade the mass transit systems to handle the increased population. The subway system is already strained to the breaking point, and the buses can't help enough without getting personal cars off the road to free up traffic.
The author seems very keen on rent control, but I think one should look more cool headedly at some alternatives that can achieve the same result by different means.
Bombing the city in particular should be considered. Bombs could be supplied cheaply by the US army, where they are plentiful, and they could achieve the same level of devastation that rent control has produced in parts of NYC like the Bronx. Of course, they are also other ways to achieve the effects of rent control, like arson, bringing back Mongolian hordes from the dead, etc.
What matters is that we can have an open, transparent debate about the best way to ruin the real estate stock of the city.
When was the last time you went to the Bronx? 1977?
The Bronx is no Williamsburg, but it's changing. Your snark is well-taken, but at least pick a city that's actually doing shitty... like Camden, NJ, or a decaying Rust Belt city.
A very vulgar response. I've heard it put in less stupid terms by other rightists. Although I've never heard a native New Yorker complain about rent control, regardless if they're rich or poor
Why is rent stabilization bad? All it does is stop the rent from going up too much while you are living there. I wouldn't want to be a tenant without it - who wants to be forced to move because the rent went up by too much? As soon as you leave, the landlord can sign a new lease at whatever rent they like. That is distinct from "rent control" in NYC, which caps rents and is a much stronger measure, but only applies to tenants living in the same place since July 1st 1971, or March 31 1953 if it's an apartment in a 1 or 2 family home.
> After hearing through a FOIL request that it would cost the city $50,000 to deliver the building-by-building data (which implies that the city itself does have the data readily available), John, and some peers at BetaNYC, went about scraping the tax bills for NYC buildings to get the rent stabilization information out of PDFs.
> In this new era of open data, you should not need to know how to write a PDF scraper to find a reasonably priced place to live, or discover where you are about to lose one.
I'm having a hard time imagining how it would cost $50,000 to export data.
NYC employees cost ~$107,000/year [1]. They probably calculated that it take about 6 people months of labor to manually transcribe the data into an Excel spreadsheet (e.g. six people for a month, or whatever).
Can we just hurry up and turn all of Manhattan into luxury hotels for tourists already? It can be like Venice: 90% hotels and a few condo buildings near the park for billionaires.
It's very well served by public transit, so anyone who works there can commute from elsewhere.
I love posts like this that never fail to remind me that the Hacker News intelligentsia has more respect for efficient markets than it does for poor people.
You say that as if efficient markets is at odds with poor people. When you look at an economic problem such as this, you almost always find that the culprit is some market intervention. In this case, the problem of high rents in relation to income usually results from building restrictions.
No, high rents do not result from a group of greedy, fat rich guys, who wear monocles and enjoy preying upon the poor.
[+] [-] dmitrygr|10 years ago|reply
It has been shown time and time again that price floors or ceilings very rarely help a market be efficient. Quite the opposite usually.
[+] [-] krschultz|10 years ago|reply
But the classification doesn't matter to me personally at all. If the apartment went from $2400 to $2600, while it was decontrolled, the affordability hasn't changed that much. Meanwhile a unit that was $1900 several years ago could be $2400 now because they reset the rent every time the tenant switches. It is much less affordable, but it is still rent controlled. This data is not going to help you figure out if things have gotten significantly less affordable.
Which really means this is just a map of where median rents are close to the line between rent controlled and not rent controlled. Notice that the areas that are much more expensive don't show change, since everything was over the line to begin with. The places that are really cheap also don't show a huge amount of change because even after increases the units are still rent controlled. So overall it's good data but it's not telling you that much.
[+] [-] unabridged|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktothemc|10 years ago|reply
However, the free market has generally been a terrible provider of low-income housing solutions. There's a long, long history to this from shanty towns to tenements. That's why basically all developed countries have some type of social housing component from demand-side subsidies to public housing or regulated stock.
When we lose permanently affordable units, it is invariably extraordinarily expensive to replace them given land costs and the size of subsidies that are needed. Contemporary homelessness emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s in both San Francisco and New York as both cities started to lose single-room occupancy hotels or SROs.
[+] [-] rottyguy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] busterarm|10 years ago|reply
The number of units under price ceiling have an insignificant impact on the market anyway.
[+] [-] ChrisLTD|10 years ago|reply
1) We remove building restrictions around the city that keep new taller apartment buildings from going up. Yes, almost all of NYC is developed land, but many parts of Brooklyn, for example, are full of one and two story buildings that aren't using the space effectively.
2) We upgrade the mass transit systems to handle the increased population. The subway system is already strained to the breaking point, and the buses can't help enough without getting personal cars off the road to free up traffic.
[+] [-] murbard2|10 years ago|reply
Bombing the city in particular should be considered. Bombs could be supplied cheaply by the US army, where they are plentiful, and they could achieve the same level of devastation that rent control has produced in parts of NYC like the Bronx. Of course, they are also other ways to achieve the effects of rent control, like arson, bringing back Mongolian hordes from the dead, etc.
What matters is that we can have an open, transparent debate about the best way to ruin the real estate stock of the city.
[+] [-] rmxt|10 years ago|reply
The Bronx is no Williamsburg, but it's changing. Your snark is well-taken, but at least pick a city that's actually doing shitty... like Camden, NJ, or a decaying Rust Belt city.
[+] [-] danharaj|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] busterarm|10 years ago|reply
Stop this devastation bullshit. Non-resident tenants/illegal hotels likely dwarf this number significantly.
[+] [-] boskonyc|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ectoplasm|10 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_New_York
[+] [-] hanley|10 years ago|reply
> In this new era of open data, you should not need to know how to write a PDF scraper to find a reasonably priced place to live, or discover where you are about to lose one.
I'm having a hard time imagining how it would cost $50,000 to export data.
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|10 years ago|reply
[1] Or did, on average, a few years ago. Regardless, this is close enough for our purposes. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/nyregion/09salaries.html?_...
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] forrestthewoods|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmxt|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ForHackernews|10 years ago|reply
It's very well served by public transit, so anyone who works there can commute from elsewhere.
[+] [-] rekt|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] misiti3780|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] busterarm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ancap|10 years ago|reply
No, high rents do not result from a group of greedy, fat rich guys, who wear monocles and enjoy preying upon the poor.