> Landlords reported more than 60,000 vacant rent-regulated apartments to the state in 2021 — a figure that dipped to about 39,000 the following year, roughly the same as pre-pandemic levels.
>Landlord groups don’t dispute that thousands of rent-regulated apartments are vacant, and blame 2019 changes to state rent laws that severely limit how much they can charge new tenants for after longtime renters move out.
>“This bill will do absolutely nothing to address the current problems with empty rent-stabilized units, or improve renting conditions for tenants,” said Jay Martin, executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program, an organization representing landlords of rent stabilized properties. “If HPD issues violations or writes fines on vacant units, it will just suck more money out of struggling rent-stabilized buildings.”
New York's rental market is a huge mess that needs a lot of work.
As we've seen from how the city finally said "No more" to all of the immigrants and asylum seekers sent their way, this is a very politically difficult problem to solve. The city's politicians are publicly very pro-immigration, but the city's housing stock is limited by zoning and shadow ordinances that heavily restrict the ability of anyone to build more housing. When faced with any situation that requires unwinding this mess, which would be _very_ unpopular with too many people, doing nothing takes precedent, the other supposed values and beliefs crumble, and rent rises another $1,000/month.
New York City needs more housing. But that's not going to happen easily. There was a huge outcry when the wealthy neighborhoods of SoHo and NoHo were planning to be upzoned, and although it went through, it proved how much of an uphill climb it is to say "You are allowed to build tall buildings in Manhattan".
A lot of people here with some awareness of the housing market in the US will see claims of apartment warehousing, and refuse to believe it. In the entire rest of the country, they would be right to not believe it. But in New York, with its insane implementation of rent control (applying to apartments, not tenants), this frequently means that some rent-controlled apartments, upon being vacated, require repairs to meet code that cost more than could ever be recouped at the legal amount it can be rented for. I don't know what counting these apartments is supposed to achieve. These apartments are only ever vacated upon death. Tenants literally pass them down to their children, who get to enjoy huge Manhattan apartments for $1,300/month: https://twitter.com/mualphaxi/status/1700952175508168819
I don't know of anyone who believes passing down rent-controlled apartments as an inheritance is a good system. You get to pay 1/4-1/5 rent because your parents lived there for decades before you when it became rent-"stabilized"? This is the kind of Nativism you wouldn't expect from a city run by Democrats, but if you ask the renters who live there, the only problem with this system is that it didn't stabilize rents for everyone. The huge shortage of housing doesn't even factor into the equation, despite being the single biggest cause of rent going for $4,000-6,000/month.
Rent control (and generally, all price controls) should be used rarely and judiciously, only in the extreme case where a necessity in very short supply is being sold for obscene prices. We saw what happens when you do this en masse to all housing in Berlin and in Ireland. In a housing shortage and with strict price caps, you trade a crisis of too-high rents with a crisis of too-few units available for rent. There is huge pent-up demand for housing when there are shortages. When not managed by prices, it's managed by rationing, by long lines, by sending dozens and hundreds of applications, by being considered "likely to vacate/move out" by the landlord not wanting to get stuck charging the same rent for 60 years. The solution to the shortage isn't to ration and control housing prices, it's to increase the production of housing.
But of course that's not happening. In Europe, North America, and Australia alike, you have a hodge podge of zoning laws restricting 80% of _urban areas_ to detached single family homes, "historically" designated buildings and neighborhoods (that can never be torn down), and all kinds of ordinances that prevent buildings from casting shadows, from using too much of the lot, from not having enough parking, from having too-small units, from not having enough affordable units (often defined such that building profitably and legally is impossible), and for many other ridiculous and absurd reason.
I really have zero patience for these "Count the purposefully vacant apartment units!" political positions, given how severely divorced this is from the real nature and causes of the housing affordability crisis. It's silly. It's absurd. It's a public display of gross ignorance at best, and malicious misdirection at worst.
Prices are high because you made it illegal to build enough apartments. Apartments are being kept empty because of your absurd system of rent stabilization and tenant protections that go too far. Condos are kept empty because your property taxes are too low.
The solutions to this problem are very technically simple. The politicians, landlords, property owners, and tenants just don't want them because they each have very strong incentives to not solve the problem.