The Rent is Too High and Here’s What We Can Do About it
By Lincoln Restler
Fresh out of college in 2006, I came home to Brooklyn just as the big new luxury towers of Downtown Brooklyn were starting to shoot up into the sky. I remember walking by the construction sites and knowing that these developments weren’t for most longtime residents. I volunteered with Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE) to walk the neighborhood after dusk and count empty units. Already hundreds of luxury apartments were sitting vacant while an affordability crisis and waves of displacement were overtaking our community.
In the ensuing decade, life in our neighborhood has only become harder to afford. The pandemic has dramatically exacerbated these challenges, but as with depressions and recessions before, we have an opportunity and a moral imperative to create a new deal for New Yorkers. New York City belongs to the people. We must make it a place that is permanently affordable to keep people in their homes and neighborhoods. We have more vacant rental apartments and commercial storefronts than we’ve had in decades and we need to ensure these spaces are accessible to families and small business owners. We need to Lower NYC Rent.
According to StreetEasy, there is a 75% increase in available apartments in Brooklyn since last summer - with some neighborhoods experiencing much larger spikes, such as 102% more available apartments in Downtown Brooklyn, 187% more in Greenpoint, and a 203% increase in DUMBO. Yet at the same time, even with the increased supply, real estate broker Douglas Elliman has identified a 12% reduction in Brooklyn residential leases signed compared to last year. Despite all this upheaval, median residential rents in Brooklyn have remained buoyant and are down only marginally - less than 1%. The housing market is broken.
The commercial market, which had been struggling pre-coronavirus, has undergone even more dramatic changes. Almost 100 storefronts have closed in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, where I live, since the pandemic struck. Near my childhood home in Brooklyn Heights, there are 18 storefront vacancies today on just two blocks of Montague Street.
Enough with real estate developers making billions in profits by insisting on only building luxury housing. Enough with greedy landlords keeping storefronts empty for years on end. We need to Lower NYC Rent. My plan takes power from real estate developers and landlords and gives it to tenants. When tenants reach the end of their lease, usually they have to cross their fingers that their landlord won’t elect to raise the rent because they know someone else will always be available to fill the spot. When vacant units have their rent lowered, tenants will have more affordable options for the first time, giving them the power to negotiate a better deal with their landlord when the lease is up.
As a member of the City Council, I will continue my fight to make Brooklyn affordable for all by introducing the Lower NYC Rent legislation on the municipal level and Senator Julia Salazar and Assembly Member-elect Emily Gallagher will introduce the corresponding bill at the state level. This would create a comprehensive registry tracking all vacant residential units and commercial storefront properties and be maintained by the New York City Department of Finance. We would require that if a residential unit is vacant for at least three months, the rent must be reduced to the federally determined Fair Market Rent, which is $1,801 for a one-bedroom in Brooklyn. Over the course of three months, this new pressure on the market would lead to gradual reductions in the rental price, putting the apartment in reach for more working families. If the rent is reduced to the Fair Market Rent, this would allow not only more working families to afford the apartment, but would also allow New Yorkers who are low-income or experiencing homelessness to use a housing voucher to cover rent. Similarly, on the commercial storefront side, we would require that if a space remains vacant for three months, there would be a 10% reduction in the publicly listed rent and additional 10% reductions every subsequent three months.
In the 33rd Council District, which is one of the wealthier Council districts in New York City, 3 of 4 tenants were paying more than 30% of their income and 1 of 4 tenants was spending more than half their income on rent before the pandemic. Now, the struggles people are feeling to cover rent are dramatically worse. The threat of a tsunami of evictions is upon us.
If we want our neighbors to be able to afford to stay in Brooklyn and if we want local entrepreneurs to open businesses and provide essential goods on our commercial streets, then we need to actually support them. Brooklynites don't need to look too far to find neighborhoods that fell into the hands of developers only concerned about the size of their bottom line – where the desires of the haves are always more important than the needs of the have nots. We need to wrestle power away from the real estate developers. We need to Lower NYC Rent for the parents raising a young family in Greenpoint and for the butcher trying to open a shop in Brooklyn Heights. No more development for developers’ sake. Let's start making homes and businesses for the people who, together, form our community.
As a kid, I remember people from outside of Brooklyn asking my parents nervously what it was like to live in a “scary” place. Today, people ask how we can afford to live in Brooklyn at all. I never anticipated that over two decades the neighborhoods I lived in would gentrify so thoroughly and be made so homogeneous and so damn hard to afford that my childhood friends and their families would be forced out. Affordability is the number one problem in Brooklyn today. Our neighborhoods are slipping away from us and nobody seems able to stop it. Rent Regulation is not enough. It's time to get bold, because if we don't, the Brooklyn we love won't survive the next decade.
It is long overdue that we start ensuring apartments are more affordable and storefronts are filled with local businesses instead of corporate franchises. The affordability crisis has been out of control for decades because the real estate titans are the most powerful force in New York City, but when we get organized and fight back - we win. Lots of people wring their hands about New York City real estate, but the 33rd District deserves a Council Member with a concrete plan to fix it. A plan to Lower NYC Rent. Join me.
Lincoln Restler is running for District 33 in the New York City Council, which covers Brownstone and North Brooklyn. Check out more at www.lincolnforcouncil.com.