Although the presence of a slim majority of 32 Democrats in the 62-member senate has energized housing activists with a rare sense of opportunity, their effort faces the challenges of an unenthusiastic senate Housing Committee chairman, Bronx Sen. Pedro Espada Jr.; too few senators backing the repeal bill (S2237A) to pass it; and the countering pressure and arguments of the landlords' lobby.
Despite that, advocates insist the city is losing tens of thousands of rent-stabilized units every year and cannot afford to maintain the status quo any longer. "I think this is the year that it has to happen. The entire rent regulation system is on a brink right now," says Michelle O'Brien, executive director of Housing Here and Now and director of the New York Is Our Home campaign, which is focused on repealing vacancy decontrol with the help of other housing groups, the Central Labor Council and the Working Families Party.
"If we win this, it's the biggest victory for tenants since 1974," O'Brien said, referring to the year when the Emergency Tenant Protection Act and its rent regulations were passed. "And if we lose, we're going to see the deterioration and collapse of rent regulation as a viable affordable housing program in coming years."
To corral more support for the senate bill, which passed the Assembly earlier this year, activists are doing everything from door-to-door canvassing in specific neighborhoods and holding rallies in each borough to testifying at hearings and demonstrating at City Hall and in Albany – all with the goal of garnering the votes of Democratic senators Espada, Jeffrey Klein of the Bronx, Carl Kruger and Martin Malave Dilan of Brooklyn, and Republicans Martin Golden of Brooklyn and Andrew Lanza of Staten Island.
On March 30, when Mayor Bloomberg signed into law an extension of the city's rent stabilization laws (which is essentially a technicality, because City Council is required every three years to declare a "continuing housing emergency" if the rental vacancy rate is 5 percent or less; the latest figure is 2.88 percent) and took comments at the event, activists used the moment to advocate for vacancy decontrol. Without further action, says Met Council on Housing organizer Mario Mazzoni, city officials were only "patting themselves on the back for perpetuating a system they're allowing to slowly die."
The campaign is slow going, though. According to O'Brien, as of Monday 23 senators are signed on as co-sponsors; it was 24, but Diane Savino of Staten Island dropped off. (But, O'Brien says, whenever the vote is taken, approval is expected from some who are not "co-sponsors.") Giti Dadlani, who works as a rent regulation organizer with the statewide group Tenants & Neighbors, said of Espada that "there have been several attempts to set up a meeting with him, but he's been really unresponsive."
That may be because Espada, who was elected to the 33rd District seat in November, recently laid out his own housing program that "will not be determined by politics, but rather by sound and sensible policy," he wrote in a statement. His agenda includes items like improving the SCRIE (Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption) program by providing a tax credit incentive to stimulate landlord participation, and implementing a moratorium on Mitchell-Lama buyouts through 2010. He also points to millions of housing budget dollars restored or won as victories for residents in need of affordable housing. Espada's statement also announces the gathering of "a renowned group of academia and think-tanks at an 'Affordable Housing Summit' on April 30th at New York University to discuss economic implications of changes to the rent regulation system, surviving the foreclosure crisis, and enhancing public-private partnerships to affordable housing development" – although several of the city's housing and real estate leaders had not yet heard about it.
