> Surely you see that these are directly connected. With an increasing cost of living and a legally fixed profitability per month that isn't going up over time nor keeping up with inflation, from the landlord's perspective, there's little to no incentive for them to fork over cash they never got from the apartment to put back into it. At that point the only incentive is to hold onto the property itself and wait for its value to increase while deducting depreciation, and perversely, they are incentivized to make you as uncomfortable as possible since they cannot raise the rent on the unit until you move.

Sure and we also stayed and maintained the building and the landlord's property through the 70s and 80s when New York was a cess pit. My neighborhood was famous for petty crime and was full of pimps, street hookers, bums and scammers -- New York was half empty compared to now.

My landlord still had their property because of tenants like us who stayed when life in NY was grim. I was just around the corner from a building famous for the landlord trying to burn the tenants out (The Windermere).

Also what the landlord was doing by not completing the repair was illegal. Fineable. Slumlordish. Having a 2' round, 1' deep hole in the doorway of my bathroom floor is a massive safety issue. You're saying my landlord shouldn't be required to repair it because of incentive? If I fell in their hole and hit my head on the toilet and died, they would have a multi-million dollar liability on their hands.