In Sunday’s New York Times, the writer and filmmaker Lee Grant wrote a letter to the editor about her neighborhood, the upper west side. The gist: her favorite local restaurants and shops, some of which have been in the neighborhood for years, have been forced to close up shop due to insane real estate prices. Chains have replaced them all.
In the news, we hear stories of the depressed real estate economy. In the Boston Globe, it was reported that Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke was hesitant to declare the economy on the mend precisely because of commercial real estate lag. But in New York City, this is hardly a reality. It may be that housing does not fly off the shelf quite as quickly as it used to, and it may be that a West Village apartment goes for half a million less than it had two years ago. But it still has a multi-million dollar price tag.
Everyone has an anecdotal story about New York prices. My smart and lovely neighbors for example are moving out of their TriBeCa apartment because their rent is too high and the job market too unfriendly. What’s infuriating about this is that my building had been rent control.
Under the Mitchell-Lama program, my landlord received major tax breaks for keeping rents affordable to middle-income people. And it worked beautifully. But no one was told my landlord would have the option to buy out of the program 25 years down the road. Well, he did just that, and as his decision to do so coincided with the city’s real estate boom, rent in my building rose from $1,000 a month to $5,000 a month. Many of my neighbors, who had worked so hard to make TriBeCa livable, left, and new 20-somethings moved in. The neighborhood became “hot” and our favorite restaurants like River Run on Franklin – best steak and potatoes in the world – closed because they, too, couldn’t pay the rent.
It’s not enough to sit by and let the market take its course. Too many people are getting screwed. We need more rent control. Free market capitalists and conservatives may be horrified at the thought but then ask yourself which laissez-fairest, which republican representative, ever had to struggle to pay the rent or had been forced to move because of a landlord’s decision to embrace market prices. Very few, I’d bet.
To Lee Grant: I hear your plea. It makes me sad, too.
And how exactly would you regulate neighborhoods changing? Suggesting that rent control should last forever is like suggesting that the minimum wage shouldn't rise with inflation (it actually hasn't relative to when it was instated in the 30s, minimum wage would be like $30 an hour or more if it had matched inflation).
ReplyDeleteThere would be no reason (or money) for a landlord to develop, improve, or purchase at all in the first place if they have no means of growing their income over the decades. Furthermore, it suggests that the rich/young have no right to live in one of the major urban centers of the world simply because other people got there first.
Change happens, and pretending it doesn't just causes more issues than it solves. Without a constantly changing urban landscape, there would be little drive for entrepeneurship or economic vitality in cities, and cities are where there is the most of that! If every city started changing at the same rate as small town America, we would all have the economies of small town America, which aren't good (even without the recession).
I would argue with your statement that no laissez-fairest or conservative have had money/rent issues or been forced to move. A large number of libertarians are poor! Laissez-faire capitalism is not about keeping the rich richer, that is a symptom of an uneducated populace. Laissez-faire capitalism is about allowing economic development to take its own pace without attempting to dictate its actions across the board.
I absolutely believe there needs to be a degree of regulation, but this kind of regulation is illogical and harmful to the city's economy, and therefore harmful to us. Sure some people are hurt by having to move or pay higher rent, but that is a small price to pay for the longer term health of this beautiful city. It is hypocritical of us to worry about the harm to a few of the richest people on the planet (even the poorest in NYC are richer than most people in the world) when many of our personal choices otherwise are available at the disadvantage of others.
To sum up: What's wrong with 20-somethings moving in? Do you think we have no capability of making our neighborhoods as rich and diverse and interesting as those 20-somethings who moved in a few decades ago? Or those who moved in a century or two ago? If you want a place that doesn't change much, move to a small town, cities are MADE to change, because they wouldn't have been cities in the first place if they didn't.
Want to see what happens to a city that stops changing? Go check out Detroit and see how much fun you have.