Rent Controls In The Big Apple Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Rent Controls In The Big Apple - Essay Example There are different levels of control, however: pre-1947 buildings, rent stabilization buildings, and unregulated apartments. The one section of society that loses out in this arrangement is the poor. Sixty years after the temporary measure of rent constraints were introduced, the state government will discuss the state of this policy soon; it will likely be continued for the foreseeable future. There was, however, an attempt to rid the market of these price restraints back in 1997. A debate ensued between the Republican-dominated Senate and the Democrat-led assembly. The result of this argument was that a compromise was reached—23,000 renters were freed of rent constraints out of a group as large as one million. The â€Å"lucky† people who qualified for this arrangement had to be extremely wealthy—household incomes of more than $175,000 per year for a period of two years, or those renting apartments that cost more than $2,000 per month. The result of this decisi on was that the poor remained under strict price controls. One thing that was hidden in that agreement was that the next date to re-consider rent constraints would change to a year without elections, thus taking politics out of the decision as much as possible. Since 1997, New York’s politics and markets have changed to the extent that not too many people are likely to oppose rent constraints now. Most economic experts do not support rents constraints because it severely affects the supply and demand markets and results in unwanted side effects. Many landlords and tenants do not have the freedom to work out their own deals; they are locked into whatever agreement is decided by the law. One consequence of the ill-nature between landlords and tenants is that the law makes it virtually impossible for a landlord to evict a criminal. Henry Pollakowski, an economist at the MIT Center for Real Estate, says