5 Myths About Rent Regulation
(COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK) Oksana Mironova, July 18, 2019
Myths about rent regulation have been around for decades and have had a significant influence on how housing policy is made. With New York State’s rent regulation laws up for renewal this spring, and with a new wave of progressive legislators taking office, now is as crucial a time as ever to know what’s fact and what’s fiction.
Here, we outline five common myths about rent regulation. Read our full report “Rent Regulation in New York City: How it works, what went wrong, and how to fix it” for a history of rent regulation in New York City and our policy recommendations for 2019.
Myth 1. Rent regulation is a handout for the rich
In reality, rent regulated apartments house significantly more low-income New Yorkers than NYCHA and subsidized housing combined (365,000 compared to 182,000 in 2017). Low-income households make up 38 percent of total rent regulated households.
Rent regulated housing is available to everyone regardless of income, so, yes, some higher-income people do live in regulated apartments. But that number is only about 13 percent. By far, rent regulation benefits low-income people the most.
This myth got a boost in the early 1990s from lifestyle articles about celebrities living in rent regulated apartments, creating a false narrative about who the typical rent regulated tenant was. Organizations representing landlords used this narrative to lobby the New York City Council, which passed a bill in 1994 that allowed landlords to deregulate apartments when monthly rents reached $2,000.