Landlords throughout New York State and especially those in the city claim that our elected legislators (backed by NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio) have set up, with their recently enacted stricter rent regulations, a Pandora’s box of potential conflicts, according to an editorial published by the Jewish Voice. Challenges are already being worked up by teams of lawyers and it’s more than a certainty that litigation opposing these new draconian measures will end up in the courts and most assuredly way up to the Supreme Court for jurisdiction. By their actions the Albany crowd may have doomed rent control altogether. The City Rent Stabilization Association and the Community Housing Improvement Program have both filed cases in the Eastern District claiming that New York’s law violates both the Due Process and Takings clauses of the U.S. Constitution. We have always been on the side of those who own their own businesses, those who have gambled their own dollars to build, purchase and develop safe, secure housing for those who wish to rent and reside in our city. These entrepreneurs fuel the stability and growth of our city, yet our legislators wish to strangle them with rules and regulations that carbon copy those of a dictatorial regime. Just take a gander at the housing as seen in videos of Cuba that are dilapidated, crumbling, dangerous and to put it plainly, ugly. As an example one of their tyrannical laws stipulated that a landlord is forbidden from taking a unit in his own building for his own use. It also limits the size of security deposits, sets new barriers to evicting tenants who are criminals or rent withholding ones and guarantees that high income tenants can’t have their upscale apartments escape the rent-stabilization program.
