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Upstairs, Downstairs

From: Jeff Kahana, Queens
Your article on rent control in New York ["Rent Asunder," by Alex Williams, June 17] points to the illogic of a system that neither protects the poor nor serves to promote efficiency and improvement in the real-estate market. It would be much wiser if the state provided vouchers for those with incomes below a certain level that could be used to defray the costs of renting. Under the current system, rent control is a selective tax on property owners, one that progressive New Yorkers may favor in principle but is patently unfair and breeds resentment and hostility among neighbors. New York should follow the example of Massachusetts, which eliminated rent control about eight years ago.

From: Jane Robinson, Manhattan
Alex Williams unfairly implies that all rent-stabilized tenants are wealthy, selfish system abusers with second homes. In fact, many of us are in unrenovated studios and one-bedrooms with decrepit, wood-rotted windows, intermittent hot water, and poorly lit hallways. We may have affordable rents, but we have lousy services.

From: Jason Andra, Manhattan
Rent control and rent stabilization are often demonized for artificially inflating New York real-estate prices, yet the real problem is with landlords. Landlords insist they need high rents to make up for being forced to keep some rents abnormally low, and yet, even without rent control, landlords would continue to charge extremely high prices for spaces barely worth anything.

From: Katie Bowen-Kosh, Manhattan
I am a shareholder in a Washington Heights co-op, and many of my neighbors living in apartments identical to mine are protected by rent control. I have never felt anything but neighborly toward them, and there is no feeling in the buildings of "us vs. them." This leads me to believe that the problem lies with the new breed of spoiled and overindulged owners and renters, such as the ones interviewed in Alex Williams's article.

From: Jeffrey Gross, Brooklyn
I couldn't help being amused by one rent-controlled tenant's contention ("Without rent control, it would be a city of bland, boring rich people") that being impecunious somehow makes one interesting. Really, what could be less interesting than the lockstep "nonconformity" of New York's pseudo-boho types?

From: Miriam Sarzin, Manhattan
How irresponsible of you to incite people to blame their neighbors for their landlords' greed. Most of the rent-stabilized and rent-controlled tenants where I live are retired persons living on fixed incomes, and many of them are active in local issues. It is these old-timers, not the self-absorbed newcomers obsessed with having a "hot" address, who make a neighborhood a community.

From: Debra Cardona, Manhattan
The first person to agree to pay $6,000 a month for an apartment worth only $800 was a fool. If no one had ever agreed to pay these inflated prices in the first place, no landlord would ever have charged so much. Resentment and envy are getting in the way of the real issue. Rent-stabilized tenants are not the problem. It is the landlords, who have wanted to do away with all rent regulations so that they can be free to charge whatever they wish.

From: Larissa Kebuz, Maplewood, N.J.
Oh, how my heart bled for all those beleaguered apartment-dwellers who weren't lucky enough to fall into a rent-control situation. And you really wrenched my heart when you wrote about that poor family that had to suffer the horrible indignity of moving to (of all places) New Jersey!

From: Norma Hutman, Oneonta, N.Y.
For those hoping their elderly neighbors with rent-controlled apartments might die: My aunt moved into such a situation when widowed in 1961, her living room commanding a view of the park and swallowing two nine-by-twelve rugs. She was paying less than $300 a month when she died 40 years later at 103.

 

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