Affordable Housing

Chin was not alone. Council members Corey Johnson, Dan Garodnick, Ben Kallos, Jumaane Williams, Helen Rosenthal and Mark Levine also called on the R.G.B. to reduce rents on stabilized apartments.

"For too long, rent increases have outpaced inflation, wage growth and landlord expenses. Now, we have the opportunity to right those wrongs through a rent rollback. As landlord costs have gone down with fuel prices, now is the moment to provide much-needed relief to tenants. I am proud to stand alongside hardworking New Yorkers in calling for a rent rollback this year," said Council Member Ben Kallos.

Kallos said he’s opposed to a high-rise luxury residential tower in a residential neighborhood, and will be looking to mobilize the community to push back against the size and scope of the Sutton Place Development.

“The brochure tells the story for us,” said Kallos. “What’s most concerning to me about [the project] is that it’s creating a future where the only people that will have a right to light and air are the people who can afford it.”

Kallos pointed out that the sales brochure touts views above the 50th floor that will have unobstructed views.

“They don’t even bother showing what views will look like for the first 100 feet,” said Kallos.

Like Brewer, Upper East Side council member Ben Kallos is also concerned that developers are getting far more from these programs than what they’re giving back to the community, especially when the inclusionary housing program is combined with the controversial 421a tax break for developers that build affordable housing.

Kallos said while there’s been outrage over so-called poor doors, where affordable housing tenants have a separate entrance than their market rate counterparts, there should be more outrage over the “poor building.”

“There is very little difference between the poor door and the poor building,” he said.

Kallos believes that the inclusionary housing program and other initiatives designed to spur construction of affordable housing have not delivered on the promises that made possible their existence.

Councilmen Corey Johnson and Benjamin Kallos, fellow Manhattan Democrats, demonstrated with tenant groups ahead of the first 2015 meeting of the Rent Guidelines Board—and the announcement of three new de Blasio appointees to the nine-member panel charged with setting the annual increase for the city’s roughly one million rent stabilized apartments.

The Democrats chanted “fight, fight, fight, housing is a right” and “What do we want? Rollback!” with members of the Metropolitan Council on Housing and the Flatbush Tenants Council. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Kallos insisted that increasing property values, atrophying tenant wages and declining fuel costs justified a first-ever decrease in rents at regulated units.

It's a little-known fact that renters who end up in housing court can find themselves on a dreaded "tenant blacklist," making it difficult to procure a NYC apartment in the future. Now, thankfully, several City Councilmembers are taking steps to kill the list once and for all, so go ahead and skip a rent payment when your landlord shuts your heat off, you deserve it.

Though the city stopped permitting housing court to identify tenants sued for eviction by their names and addresses in 2012, private companies have been able to gather that identifying information through public records, which they can then sell to landlords screening prospective renters. This is a problem, particularly because you don't have to be convicted in such a case to end up on this list—in fact, people who've been taken to court by mistake can still end up on the list.

But legislation sponsored by City Councilmembers Ben Kallos, Rory Lancman, Alan Maisel, and Mark Levine aims to curb all this by amending the city's administrative code, making it impossible for landlords to reject an applicant based on whether or not they were "a party in past or current landlord-tenant action or housing court proceeding." Landlords would still be able to screen tenants who are evicted or fail to satisfy the terms of a court order.

“The safety and affordability of our city must be protected. We need to ensure that AirBnB is not putting profit over people by allowing unsafe or illegal practices that threaten New Yorkers and the affordability of our neighborhoods. Thanks to the proactive leadership of Chair Jumaane Williams and others, the New York City Council can ask the hard questions about what the sharing economy really means for residents,” said NYC Council Member Ben Kallos.

A City Council member will introduce a bill Thursday that would help New Yorkers avoid being discriminated against for being on the "tenant blacklist."

Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Upper East Side) said there have been too many cases where a prospective home buyer would be denied a lease by a landlord because they were involved in a housing court dispute. The councilman said many of these landlords would request a report about the applicant's history from a service that has access to the court's index number database, but wouldn't go into detail about the circumstances.

"Someone who had a perfectly strong credit score would be denied by the fact that they are in landlord tenant court, even if they were on the right side," he said.
 

A slew of city council and assembly members rallied at City Hall today to call for a rent freeze on rent-regulated apartments next year and, more ambitiously, the end of a law that has granted Albany great sway over how New York City regulates affordable housing.

Mr. Williams–along with Council members Ben Kallos, Vanessa Gibson, Mark Levine and Corey Johnson and Assembly members Richard Gottfried, Walter Mosley and Linda Rosenthal–took turns railing against both the restrictions placed on the city’s ability to rent regulate and the failure of the Rent Guidelines Board to not enact a freeze on rent-controlled apartments this year.

As this year’s historically low rent increase goes into effect Oct. 1, tenants, elected officials, and advocates are starting the campaign for rent reform, calling for a rent freeze for 2015.

Council member Ben Kallos said the increases set by the RGB years before have been higher than necessary, as the Price Index of Operating Costs—the metrics that determine inflation for building owners— often exceeds the inflation of consumer goods as shown on the consumer price index.