This morning, I embarked on what has become a familiar journey: I woke up before 6 a.m. and stumbled out of the door of my rent stabilized apartment in Brooklyn and onto a bus bound for Albany to once again demand that Governor Cuomo address the expiring rent stabilization laws. I was joined by many of my neighbors from the Crown Heights Tenant Union and other tenants and advocates from all around the city. These are people I hardly knew a year ago, but as a result of the work we’ve done together, they are trusted allies and many of them are my close friends.
Early this afternoon, nearly 75 of these friends of mine were arrested after refusing to leave Governor Cuomo’s office without concrete assurances that he would push to strengthen the rent stabilization laws and give back the $1M he has taken from Glenwood Management. I am proud to say that my own NYS Assemblymember, Walter Mosley, was one of those 75 people, as was my NYC Councilmember, Laurie Cumbo.
The rent stabilization laws in their current form are a product of decades of conflict between working class tenants and well-heeled real estate interests. Tenants vote. And we protest, and we shout until we are hoarse. That is what it takes for a regular New Yorker like me to be heard in Albany these days. Real estate firms, on the other hand, assure they will be heard by writing million-dollar checks to politicians for their campaigns. And for the past few years, landlords and developers have been winning.
This skewed dynamic has been the source of at least two major corruption scandals to rock Albany over the past year. The former Speaker of the NY State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, and the former Majority Leader of the NY State Senate, Dean Skelos, are both facing criminal charges for taking bribes from wealthy real estate interests. All the while, rent stabilized tenants are being pushed out of their homes at a dramatic rate, thanks to loopholes in the rent laws. Taking advantage of vacancy bonuses, preferential rents, major capital improvement and individual apartment improvement increases, landlords are removing thousands of units from the rent stabilization system and spurring gentrification across the city, from East Harlem to East New York to my own neighborhood of Crown Heights.
We need this dynamic to change. We need an end to the incentives that encourage landlords to harass tenants out of their homes. We need to put an end to a tidal wave of destabilization that contributes to New York City’s crushing affordability problem. We need an end to vacancy decontrol, and secure tenancies for people with preferential leases. We need these changes NOW.
Rent stabilization is a critical source of affordable housing for New Yorkers. 2.5 million people (1 million households) live in rent stabilized housing, and data shows that many of those families are low income people of color. Housing justice is racial justice. Housing justice is economic justice. By refusing to strengthen these laws, Governor Cuomo is slamming the door (literally, today) in the face of the most vulnerable residents of his hometown. In light of this complete disregard for the neediest among us, I have to wonder: who is Governor Cuomo working for? Is he the Governor of New York, or the Governor of Glenwood?
I had plenty of time to ponder these things as I sat on the floor in front of the Governor’s office today and waited to be arrested by Capitol Police. The look I saw on the faces of my neighbors and fellow tenants gave me hope that we can still win this fight. We are done with just asking for justice. We DEMAND it. We are done competing with Leonard Litwin or REBNY or the RSA for the Governor’s attention. We DEMAND it.
A little over an hour after the first arrest of the day and well before we were all processed with desk appearances for next week, Governor Cuomo’s office announced a hastily thrown-together “event on strengthening rent regulations” in Harlem tomorrow afternoon. Based on his recent laughable suggestion that the deregulation threshold be raised by $200 from $2500 to $2700, we expect an altogether inadequate set of proposals to be unveiled tomorrow. But we’ll be there, with banners and signs in our hands and chants on our lips. And next week on June 9, 2015, busloads full of tenants from NYC will again descend upon Albany.
Mr. Cuomo, I hope by then you’ve decided whose governor you want to be.
Esteban Girón is an organizer and tenant advocate with the Crown Heights Tenant Union (Local 2 – Burke Leighton Tenants). He recently formed the CHTU Court Solidarity Committee, a group of CHTU members tasked with helping fellow members navigate Brooklyn Housing Court. He lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his husband Sean and their dog Chicochu.
The Crown Heights Tenant Union (CHTU) is a coalition of tenant associations formed in February of 2013 to fight back against displacement and illegal rent overcharges in Crown Heights. The CHTU uses a collective bargaining model and is calling on our landlords to sign a legally-binding tenant union contract. For more information or to see our demands, please visit
www.crownheightstenantunion.org.
