More Rent Reg

Rent regulation is crucial in this city (“Rent Spike Denied,” April 26), and was instituted to prevent profiteering by landlords in a market short on available apartments. That it protects the majority whose median income is $37,000/year is important—but it would be better if more tenants, not fewer, had those protections.

James Harmon knew three apartments in the building he inherited were subject to rent regulation even then. He nonetheless bought out his brother’s share. Rent regulation—like the fire, health and zoning regulations from which he benefits—were part of the scene from the get-go.

—Sue Susman

Use Your Horse Sense

My country horses (“Horses Can’t Cope,” April 26) have never been in an air-conditioned or heated building; they don’t have sprinklers in the field, nor do they have fan-waving slave boys to feed them bonbons while they lounge in their hay beds and fret over the next week’s weather forecast. They are coping just fine living pretty much as horses have for a long, long time—only without the fear of being dinner to a saber-toothed tiger.

Horses grow a thicker coat in winter and shed it in spring; come summer, they sweat. They accept weather without questions or self-pity. So stop projecting. When horses are not visible near Central Park, it does not mean that they are now riding around in air-conditioned taxicabs.

—Sarah Bellepeppa

Don’t Cut Tobacco Program

The proposed $5 million cut to the New York Tobacco Control Program by Gov. Cuomo and the state Senate yields troubling news for those who have hoped to prevent tobacco addiction in our nation. Smoking tobacco continues to kill 1,200 people—daily. For every smoker killed by his or her addiction, the tobacco industry is creating two new smokers under the age of 26, a trend that should alarm everyone.

Big Tobacco knows how to peddle its products to unsuspecting youth. More than a million dollars an hour is spent to market tobacco products in this country. Nearly 1.5 million kids will try their first cigarette this year, with 75 percent of these children continuing to smoke into adulthood even if they intend to quit within the next few years.

Unfortunately, despite public support for funding to the New York Tobacco Control Program, our legislators in Albany have routinely reduced funding. In the past four years, New York has cut funding for tobacco prevention programs by 52 percent, from $85.5 million to $41.4 million, and now Gov. Cuomo and the state Senate want to cut more. New York currently spends less than 2 cents of every dollar in tobacco tax and settlement revenue to fight tobacco use.

I encourage all New Yorkers to visit www.yourethecure.org to learn more about ways to stop the continued cuts to the NY Tobacco Control Program.

—Dr. Susanna Horvath

Chair, American Heart Association’s New York City Advocacy Committee

By Sean Creamer and Anam Baig

James Harmon’s brownstone (center) at 32 W. 76th St.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court weighed a decision that could have meant the destruction of rent regulation in New York. The court decided on Monday morning, after several delays and requests for more information, not to hear a case brought by Upper West Side resident James Harmon against the state’s rent regulation laws. While supporters of Harmon’s fight grumble and regroup and advocates of rent regulation breathe a collective sigh of relief, many people have said that they were surprised that the challenge went this far in the first place, and that the fight to keep rent regulations in place is not likely to end any time soon.

City and state agencies charged with defending rent regulation reiterated the long-standing viability of the law, even as it is has faced legal challenges in the past.

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court will allow the existing court rulings dismissing this case to stand. Rent regulation in New York City has a long history, and the court properly left it to elected state and city officials to decide its future,” said Alan Krams, senior counsel of the Appeals Division, in a statement issued by the New York City Law Department.

While rent control is designed to enable people who cannot afford market-rate rents to stay at a comfortable level in the city, one disgruntled property owner decided that his tenants were taking advantage of this system. Harmon sued to overturn the regulations that he said amounted to the taking of his property, since he was not able to rent the units out at market rates.

The court declined to hear the case because of the fact that Harmon and his wife Jeanne were aware that the building was rent controlled when they inherited the property.

Harmon, an Upper West Side resident, inherited the five-story brownstone building on West 76th Street. At that time, he became the landlord of several tenants who were living in rent-controlled apartments. According to previous statements made by Harmon, he felt that these tenants were affluent citizens and did not belong in rent-controlled apartments.

“It’s pivotal that the Supreme Court even thought about taking it, said Sue Susman, the president of the Central Park Gardens Tenants’ Association. “For decades, the U.S. Supreme Court was in support of the regulation.”

Harmon had several avenues he could have taken to alleviate the situation, but he chose to go to court, Susman said. He could have filed a hardship increase application, where he could have showed the State Housing Agency his account books and had his tenants pay a higher percentage of regulated rent.

Harmon, an attorney, argued that under his Fifth Amendment rights, the fact that rent control even exists is an unconstitutional seizure of his personal property by the government. The court ruled that there was no “taking of property” and dismissed the case, but Harmon appealed, touting his 14th Amendment right to due process which he claims was denied him. The case was denied in both the Federal District Court and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

He pleaded to the courts that rent stabilization laws were denying him the ability to earn as much as he could from his apartments. He has to offer the rent-stabilized apartments at 59 percent below the regular market price to his tenants, is not able to choose his tenants and has no say over who inherits the apartments when their tenants die. Even when a beneficiary of the deceased takes over the property, they too are graced with below-market-rate rents.

Harmon’s lawsuit was against several parties who are in charge of rent control policies, including Jonathan Kimmel, the chair of the Rent Guidelines Board, and Darryl Towns, the commissioner of the New York State Homes and Community Renewal.

After the denial of both federal courts, the Harmons petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, which would allow the Harmons to appeal to the Supreme Court for a final decision in their case. The state and city each filed a brief defending the Rent Stabilization Law as constitutional, urging the Supreme Court not to grant the petition. With the decision on Monday, the case has finally reached its last stop.

“The Harmon family is disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision,” Harmon said in an email. “We still believe that the Constitution does not allow the government to force us to take strangers into our home at our expense for life. Even our grandchildren have been barred from living with us. That is not our America.”

While Harmon was looking to free himself of his rent-stabilized tenants, his efforts snowballed into a movement with the aim of dismantling rent control policies in New York City. Real estate interest groups stood together to oppose a sanction that they believe impedes their rights, but most local politicians support rent regulation and fight to renew it every time it is set to expire.

“I am gratified that the United States Supreme Court has denied review of the Harmon case, which could have spelled the end of rent regulation in New York City,” Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal said in a statement. “This is a victory for millions of rent-regulated tenants throughout New York City who would not be able to afford to live in this city were it not for rent regulation.”

With the state’s rent stabilization laws set to expire next year, Gov. David Paterson announced a package of proposals that would change when landlords can charge market rate for regulated apartments. The package also addresses the uncertainty of how the Stuyvesant Town ruling on tax benefits and rent regulation affects tenants and landlords.

But West Side legislators who have written and pushed for pro-tenant bills have reservations about the governor’s plan, and hope that this is merely the start of a debate about new housing laws.

Under Paterson’s proposals, the threshold for vacancy decontrol—the point at which a newly vacant unit is taken out of the rent regulation system and converted to market rate housing—would be raised to $3,000 a month in rent, up from $2,000.

But Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, author of a vacancy decontrol bill that has been bottled in the State Senate, wants the practice completely lifted. Paterson’s proposal on raising the limit to $3,000 barely changes the existing law.

“The problem is, landlords can get it to $3,000 as easy as they can get it to $2,000,” Rosenthal said. “Clearly, this is a gift to the landlords.”

Landlord organizations, however, are griping about the package just as loudly as tenant supporters.

“That’s perhaps the most ridiculous proposal amongst them,” said Jack Freund, executive vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association, about raising the decontrol level. “People who can afford $3,000 rents don’t need rent protections.”

Paterson also tried to clear up confusion around the State Court of Appeals decision regarding J-51 tax benefits. The state’s highest court found that Tishman Speyer, owner of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, wrongly used a tax benefit—known as J-51—to make renovations and raise rents, ultimately deregulating apartments. Freund said the decision has frozen transactions because building values are uncertain now that longstanding practices have been ruled unlawful.

Under the governor’s plan, tenants in wrongly deregulated units can recoup money from owners who wrongly overcharged rent. Rents can be claimed from up to four years prior to the court’s 2009 decision. Owners in the rent stabilization system would also be allowed to apply for rent deregulation when a unit becomes vacant and the rent hits the proposed $3,000 level, even if the landlord receives the J-51 tax benefit.

That doesn’t sit well with State Sen. Tom Duane, whose district covers the Upper West Side as well as Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.

“It undercuts the Court of Appeals decision,” Duane said. “To say landlords and developers can take advantage of J-51 and not be in the rent stabilization system is philosophically wrong.”