When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani donned a race bib last week and hit a high-school track in The Bronx, it wasn\u2019t to compete in a sprint, but to profess concern about the problem of vacant housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He proudly announced a set of reforms for the city\u2019s affordable-housing lottery, aimed at taming the bureaucratic morass that keeps apartments built with city financial support empty and unoccupied for months at a time.<\/p>\n
The new Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development plan \u2014 SPEED, hence the track-and-field theme \u2014 is meant to make it quicker for lucky low-income housing-lottery winners to move into some 10,000 subsidized units, thus easing the city\u2019s severe housing crisis.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s a drop in the bucket compared to the scope of the housing problem<\/a>.<\/p>\n If Mamdani is truly concerned about filling empty affordable apartments, he should support the ongoing lawsuit brought by small rental-property owners<\/a> that could get up to 50,000 \u201czombie\u201d rent-stabilized units back on the market.<\/p>\n The suit, brought by the Institute for Justice on behalf of the Small Property Owners Association, aims to undo the 2019 state law that\u2019s caused those vacancies.<\/p>\n Under Albany\u2019s draconian Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, rent-stabilized landlords must essentially eat the cost of repairs<\/a>, even as the city\u2019s Rent Guidelines Board keeps rents for stabilized units artificially low.<\/p>\n But renting a unit requires landlords to make improvements mandated by the city\u2019s housing code \u2014 improvements that cost more than restricted rents can cover.<\/p>\n Ergo, vacant apartments.<\/p>\n The lawsuit, which was joined this month by the US Chamber of Commerce, is currently before Second Circuit federal Judge John Cronan.<\/p>\n The defendants, the state and city of New York, are set to make their arguments June 5.<\/p>\n If Mamdani really wants to ease the housing crunch, he could simply switch sides in the lawsuit \u2014 and lobby Albany to lift this shortsighted law.<\/p>\n But we know that\u2019s unlikely.<\/p>\n Far from sympathizing with small landlords staggering under increasing costs, Mamdani has staged<\/a> \u201crental ripoff\u201d show trials instead.<\/p>\n As property owner Douglas Eisenberg recently told The New York Times, a $40,000 apartment upgrade would mean a rent increase of just $222 a month \u2014 if he\u2019s lucky.<\/p>\n All while his rent-stabilized units are getting squeezed by higher property taxes, rising water and sewer costs and heftier insurance premiums.<\/p>\n These are the very buildings whose rent Mamdani proposes to freeze \u2014 and whose Rent Guidelines Board has signaled will receive limited rent increases<\/a> of between zero and 2% this year.<\/p>\n So what\u2019s the endgame here for Mamdani?<\/p>\n He must surely know that continued cost pressure on the owners of rent-stabilized housing \u2014 especially the expensive-to-upgrade pre-war apartments that predominate in The Bronx \u2014 will only force them to leave more units vacant.<\/p>\n Perhaps that\u2019s actually his goal: pushing distressed owners into defaulting on their property taxes, leaving the city to take ownership.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n After all, his official \u201ctenant advocate\u201d Cia Weaver is on record, prior to joining City Hall, making calls to treat private housing as a \u201ccollective good\u201d and advocating the seizure of private property<\/a>.<\/p>\n And a massive increase in city ownership of what\u2019s now private housing isn\u2019t far-fetched: We\u2019ve seen this movie before.<\/p>\n In the 1980s, under Mayor Ed Koch, some 100,000 apartments were classed as \u201cin rem\u201d housing \u2014 buildings whose owners had failed to pay their property taxes and had, as a result, become city property.<\/p>\n City Hall became those tenants\u2019 de facto landlord, collecting rent on their dilapidated units.<\/p>\n There are signs this could be happening again.<\/p>\n About one in 25 \u201clegacy\u201d older buildings in the city face looming city liens because of \u201csignificant arrears on property taxes or related charges such as water and sewer fees,\u201d the Furman Center reported in February.<\/p>\n That means the city could, once again, take ownership of thousands of largely rent-stabilized apartment buildings.\u00a0<\/p>\n Koch chose to renovate those in rem buildings, spending $5 billion ($14 billion today) in city funds to do so \u2014 and then to slowly sell them to private and non-profit developers.\u00a0<\/p>\n But a socialist Mayor Mamdani could seize the opportunity to retain public ownership.<\/p>\n He foreshadowed just that possibility in his campaign\u2019s housing platform: \u201cWe can\u2019t afford to wait for the private sector to solve this crisis,\u201d Zohran for NYC proclaimed.<\/p>\n