Impacts Of Rent Control In NYC Law Term Paper Essay

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Rent Control in New York City
Laws of rent control limit the total amount of rent a landlord expects his or her tenants to pay, either by determining and setting the rent ceiling or reducing the standard amount at which the rent increases. The two policies applied in this scenario are rent control and rent stabilization. Moreover, the two laws set guidelines under which a landlord can evict a tenant. In New York City, rent control and rent stabilization are two of the most significant and famous laws. In response to the challenges that people face when it comes to housing affordability, the body governing the city has renewed its rent control interest rates across town, especially in high-cost coastal markets. However, there are considerable shortcomings associated with rent control policies. This paper serves to analyze the significant issue of rent control and its impacts on New York City, its advantages and disadvantages with the view of creating a solid understanding of the contemporary nature of the policy.
Meaning of Rent Control and how it Works
Rent control laws vary among cities and municipalities. Still, its standard definition is that it is a government program that caps the amount of money a landlord can demand from leasing housing or for renewing a lease. Municipalities usually enact policies, and although the details are widely distinct, all are intended to keep living costs affordable for lower-income residents. Downs states that the earliest rent control laws in the United States date back to the 1920s, where they were typical rent freezes (407). Due to the inefficiency of the latter, the laws were dropped. However, in the 1970s, they have revived again, but this time it was a more moderate form of policy called rent stabilization.
Living in New York City requires vast sums of accommodation money because the rent could take away about 30% of the paycheck. This has forced most people to want to invest in a property and rent it out to capitalize on tenants. The city has two rent control programs. The first one is an older program that has been in the process of being eliminated for more than thirty years. This is because the law placed extreme limits on rental prices, but the law set in 1971 still covers renters now. Additionally, there are still some buildings whose rent control programs were affected after World War II in 1947 (Brown 211). This means that if an individual purchased the property with rent control, they could not lease it out with the market price due to the introduction of price ceilings.
The second program belongs to the 1970s, and it regulates house prices for almost half of the buildings in the city. According to the policy, rent can only be increased annually, and the housing agency controls the minimum acceptable percentage for the increase. It further states that the rules and exceptions are administered by a combination of the city and state agencies. Besides, the high cost of living in New York is often given as proof enough for the unreliability of rent. The ordinary cost of a single bedroom house in the city was $3,080 in 2018 (Gyourko, Joseph, and Peter 58). Advocates of rent control, suc...