The Berserkonomics of One Rent-Stabilized Apartment Building [New York City]
For decades, New York has owed a key part of its allure—its unwillingness to honor class divisions with geographic ones—to rent stabilization. Under the system, which governs rents for a million apartments in the city, wildly different tax brackets can be found sharing walls, watts, and water pipes. But is a rule that limits rent increases to prescribed percentages—and flies in the face of both soaring costs and a runaway market—still viable?
Not for MetLife, which is selling Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, the fabled middle-class enclave where some 8,000 apartments still rent for about half the market price. Elsewhere, more than 200,000 units throughout the city have been deregulated since 1993, and virtually all new construction, promises of “affordable housing” aside, is betting the farm on luxury.