Who Pays the Rent?

In NYC, we have something called rent regulation. These are certain apartments that fall under either rent control or rent stabilization. In case you were wondering what the difference is between control and stabilization, it's basically this: rent control is a fixed rate that applies only to people living in apartments since 1971 that were built before 1947 (once people move out or die, the apartments become rent stabilized); rent stabilization applies to apartments only built before 1974 and sets maximum rates for rent increases, keeping rents relatively low.

We are really the only big city in the country to have rent regulation and it's always been controversial. Fierce defenders of rent regulation think that the laws have been watered down and weakened over the years (they have) and that the laws have been too complex. People on the opposite side of the spectrum think that rent regulation interferes with the free market, warps the city's economy, and should be gotten ride of. Because of rent regulation, thousands and thousands of apartments have been made affordable for the middle class. But over the years there have been many attempts made by landlords and developers to phase out the rules which has only made them more complex.

The hub of the current controversy over rent regulation is that there are some people who live in rent controlled or rent stabilized apartments who could, otherwise, afford market rates. A new study by the business-friendly Citizens Budget Commission estimates that there are roughly 100,000 relatively affluent families living in these apartments. They believe that, in this case, people who can afford market rate apartments should not be allowed to rent these regulated apartments and should have their protections lifted. These people are, the CBC argues, hogging apartments intended for less affluent. And the CBC believes, over all, that rent regulation is bad and should be gotten rid of because, really, it hurts the people it's intended to help.

This is a bunch of crap. The CBC is a cynical, sneaky, mean-spirited attempt to strip poor and middle class people of their affordable apartments. Here's the deal: even though some people who can afford market rate apartments live in these protected units, vastly more of the people who live in them cannot afford market rates. Also, rent regulations are not meant to protect only the poor: they are meant to protect all tenants in NYC, to shift the market so as to keep all rents relatively affordable (not that it's an easy task). The CBC's suggestions would decrease the number of rent regulation apartments available in the city and this would weaken rent regulation even more.

This a slippery slope, bit-by-bit attempt to chip away at some of the few remaining law left to protect ordinary people, gradually setting the stage for full elimination of rent regulation.

The folks behind the CBC report know that getting of rent regulation one fell swoop is impossible. Politically, the backlash would be so severe it might actually strengthen rent regulation. So they instead suggest this small, at first blush seemingly reasonable suggestion to tweak the laws so as to make them more "fair" and "sensible"... when in fact their goal is to do away with all protections all together.

The only people who would benefit from this are landlords, developers and financiers. The rest of us? We'd get hosed.

You think the housing crises in this town is bad, just imagine it (or don't) if they got rid of rent regulation. So I urge you to fight against any attempts to weaken rent regulation.

Why is the Rent Too Damn High? Go back to 1994

As gentrification sweeps over our city, as the cost of living explodes, it's easy to point to many reasons: drastically lower crime rates, making previously undesirable neighborhoods desirable; more New Yorkers choosing to stay in the city instead of moving to the suburbs to raise families; massive infusions of foreign money spurring new construction and gobbling up real estate (mostly as tax shelters); more and more people moving here from across the country in pursuit of hot jobs; and, obviously, technology, creating a new class of rich people and sites like Airbnb. 

It all comes down to one basic thing: the rise of market demand. 

There's more demand than supply for housing in NYC, and thus the rent gets too damn high.

Very often, when it comes to massive demographic and economic shifts like this, in a city or a country, people will say, "Well, there's no simple explanation. You can't point to one thing."

But what if you can? What is there's one simple, clear explanation?

In 1994, the City Council passed a law allowing landlords to take apartments out of rent stabilization when the rent passed $2000 a month. Called "de-control", the arguments for this move were that rent stabilization actually subsidized wealthy people, that the "average" rent was $600 so the likelihood that it'd be $2000 for most were "remote". Well, since then, over 152,000 have fallen out of stabilization, and that number rises to almost 250,000 when coop conversions are included. Also, this law incentivized landlords to harass and evict tenants with impunity, trying to get the apartments vacated so that they would fall out of stabilization. 

Then it got worse: in 1997 the state legislature passed a law that made it impossible for the city council to change its own law. And it's been higher rents ever since. 

So there, in a nutshell, is why the rent is so damn high.

This effort was, as you might imagine, engineered by the real estate industry. A lot of astro-turfing and cynical politics was behind it: they mounted a big PR campaign to make council members and New Yorkers convinced that de-control was actually in their interest (when it was the opposite). They pointed to rich people and celebrities paying low rents, they found black and Latino landlords to appear in ads, trying to make this move into some kind of "progressive" economic thing. It's was a complete, very effective snow job.

What's most frightening is that many of the city council members who voted for it didn't understand what they were voting for. They were conned, ashamedly so. 

And now gentrification is everywhere, including in small, out of the way neighborhoods like Highbridge in the Bronx. No place is safe -- this is the new menace.

And it all goes back to March 21, 1994 when this law passed. This is why politics matter and why elections have consequences.    

How Many Seconds? "Rent" @ 25

It seems like every couple of decades a Broadway musical comes along that not only is good but truly great, and not only great but also so original, so groundbreaking, that it evolves the artistic form of musical theater and pushes it forward into the future. 

In the 1970s it was A Chorus Line. In the 2010s it was Hamilton. And in the 1990s it was Rent. 

Debuting in early 1996, twenty-five years ago, Rent is that rare musical that was not only a big hit but also a cultural phenomenon. People sang the songs in their homes, with their friends, on the streets, and in school choruses. It was on TV, the major media covered. It was parodied, relentlessly. It was everywhere.

It even became that rare musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, something that happens maybe once a decade.

Rent was the vision of a man named Jonathan Larson, a young musical fan who spent years writing it (with some help, apparently, that lead to a lawsuit). It was a re-telling of La Boheme, about young people dying of AIDS in NYC in the early 1990s while trying to stay in their building on the Lower East Side. Back then, you didn't see shows about subjects like this, with characters like this, on Broadway. Also, rock musicals weren't really mainstream yet -- in the 1990s, Broadways was still very high on the big opera-like musical spectacles like Cats, Les Miz, and Miss Saigon. Then came along this very offbeat show about very offbeat people living offbeat lives, singing songs about love and death, hope and despair, in a very modern, ultra-recognizable world -- and it blew everything else on Broadway away. 

Just as Rent was opening Off-Broadway, Larson tragically died from an aneurysm and didn't live to see how quickly the show transferred to Broadway and became a Tony-winning megahit, the hottest ticket in town, and eventually a movie. I remember watching the Tony-awards that year and seeing his sister collect his awards, reminding everyone how long it took for her brother to become an overnight success.   

I still listen to the album from time to time, and it never ceases to bring me joy. In 1996 I was in college, living far away from NYC, and listening to the album always me brought home -- NYC on my mind, you might say. 

It still has that transcendant effect. 

I've blogged about Rent and its Bohemian spirit over the years. The show was still running when this blog debuted in 2007, I covered its closure in 2008. So end of the original Broadway and the start of this blog touched in a way. That makes me happy.

And we'll still be listening to, and talking about, Rent 25 years from now.

Take the Cannolis in 525,600 minutes: Creating "The Godfather" and "Rent"

Two vaunted pieces of NYC culture are the 1972 movie The Godfather and the 1996 Broadway musical Rent. This year Rent celebrated its 25th anniversary and, next year, The Godfather will celebrate its 50th.

One is about the mafia in the 1940s and '50s; the other is about young people in the 1990s. While both works couldn't be more different, they remain beloved classics since they are brilliantly crafted stories about the city as a place of great opportunity and great danger. In short, both stories are about NYC as a place where the American dream thrives -- if it doesn't kill you first. 

There is a new genre of info-tainment that's becoming more popular: books, documentaries, podcasts, and movies about the creation of classic works of entertainment. Sometimes, even not that classic.

And this year is no different. There is a new movie coming soon about Jonathan Larson, the creator of Rent, based on a meta-musical he wrote about the making of Rent called tick ... tick ... Boom. It's directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Also, there is a new book called Leave the Gun, Take the Cannolis about the making of The Godfather. You should read this fascinating excerpt about how Marlon Brando came to play -- and discover -- the character of Don Vito Corleone, one of the most iconic performances in cinema history. 

Whenever you encounter a masterpiece, a perfectly realized work of art, it's easy to believe that it somehow grew out of the earth, emerged complete from the ground, like some kind of beautiful plant. But no. There was time when their creators would struggling, working hard, putting the pieces together, re-working and re-writing and re-doing it all, probably fighting feelings of failure and doubt, doing their level best to create something good -- and they had no idea at the time that they were creating something that would resonate across time. They just wanted to get it done and get it done as best they could. History would take it from there. 

Can't Beat the Rent

Beating the rent is one of the fundamental characteristics of any New Yorker. Paying as little as possible for as much space as possible is built into the DNA of all the people who call this city home. 

So how about living in a mansion for free?

Believe it or not, some people do it. There are a very, very lucky few people manage to land gigs as caretakers of historic homes all over the city. The basic gig: they get to live in these places rent free so long as they make sure the homes are properly maintained and sometimes give guided tours. Sure, they are paying rent in terms of labor (being a caretaker is a job) for which they don't get paid, but having a huge place to live in the densest city in the country ain't a bad deal.

Needless to say, as someone who loves NYC and history and would love to live in a big house rent free, yours truly is jealous. 

Let's just hope that, for these caretakers, ghosts of the previous characters don't urge them to kill their families. Remember this dialogue from The Shining?

Jack: Mr. Grady, you were the caretaker here.  Grady: I'm sorry to differ with you, sir, but you are the caretaker. You've always been the caretaker. I should know, sir, I've always been here. Did you know, Mr. Torrance, that your son is attempting to bring an outside party into this situation? Did you know that? ...  Jack: It's his mother. She, uh … interferes.  Grady: Perhaps … they need a good talking to, if you don't mind my saying so. Perhaps … a bit more. My girls, sir, they didn't care for the Overlook at first. One of them actually stole a pack of matches and tried to burn it down. But I corrected them, sir. And when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty, I … corrected her.    

Awesome scene.

And talking about care taking and NYC real estate, some people are really taking care of their buildings roofs. Check out these photos, they're amazing. 

For once, great news

The week is young but already it's shaping up as one of the most consequential weeks in the history of NYC real estate ever. 

Consequential, mostly, for what won't be happening.

Namely, rent stabilization is here to stay and Walmart is staying out.

First, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case brought by some Manhattanites seeking to overturn the state's rent stabilization rules. That means that over one million New Yorkers who live in rent stabilized homes are no longer in danger that their rents will skyrocket. It's hard to overstate what a big deal this is. This city's middle class is already dying but rent stabilization is one of the few things propping it up. Had the court heard the case and overturned the law, the havoc this would wreck on the city's middle class would have been devastating. Mercifully it won't happen. Personally, I was surprised: this Supreme Court is the most conservative in almost a hundred years and has shown no hesitancy in overturning laws that it finds ideologically distasteful. This has been the most pro-business, pro-rich, anti-worker, anti-poor Supreme Court ever so the fact that they decided to leave these rules intact is quite pleasant. For once, this Supreme Court made me happy -- as it should for the whole city.

Second, the stench of Walmart is probably guaranteed not to waft into this city anytime soon. The retail giant has been busted for bribery in Mexico. This scandal is just in the nascent stage and it's hard to know how big it'll get or what the fallout will be. However, the argument that Walmart is good for this city is now harder and harder to make. Why should this city give the green light for a criminal organization to set up shop in our town and destroy small businesses? Even it's proponents can't defend the company. And, boy, the proponents should try hard. A few times that I've blogged about Walmart, I got "comments" from "readers" saying how great Walmart is for NYC. These were probably paid hacks spouting some company generated talking points. I wonder if such "comments" will be forthcoming now.

So this has been an historic and historically good week for real estate in NYC. Homeowners and small business owners got a break. Let the good times roll!!

Reality Estate

When you watch TV shows set in NYC or other great places, if you're like me, you wonder how much the characters' home or apartments might cost to own or rent. Never mind the plot -- what about the digs?

Sadly, for us New Yorkers, real estate always wins out.

That's why you must check out this piece from Vanity Fair by New York real estate legend Barbara Corcoran appraises the values of fictional TV dwellings past and present?

Would the Jeffersons still be able to afford their dee-luxe apartment in the sky?

How much would the rent on Carrie Bradshaw's apartment be -- and could a newspaper columnist afford it?

What about the 2 Broke Girls?

And do you know it would be cost almost a quarter of a billion dollars to buy Downton Abbey?

For shows set in NYC, some do a more realistic job than others in portraying the homes of New Yorkers. For example, in Mad About You, the size of Paul and Jaime's one bedroom was realistic -- except for the size of their bathroom which was enormous. Friends, on the other hand, was roundly criticized for having several minimally employed twenty-somethings living in apartments the size of Australia. Seinfeld was mostly realistic -- although how Kramer ever payed rent remains a mystery.

L'Essence de NYC

Today's New York Times has several stories that sum up why it's both wonderful and exasperating to live in this town.

The city's Rent Guidelines Board voted to hike rents on rent stabilized apartments last night: Board Backs Rise in Rent Up to 8.5%. The board has 9 members and the vote broke down 5-4.

I heard Mayor Bloomberg on his WOR show this morning claim that this decision was some kind of "compromise." This is an utter lie. The board is appointed by the Mayor and they all vote the way he wants. This vote was engineered to look like they cushioned a much nastier blow but they really didn't, the decision was predetermined.

Oh, and it looks like the Bush economy is coming home to roost in New York: Layoffs Show on New York Unemployment Rolls.

And can you believe that some members of the MTA board are actually kvetching that the public is mad that they get free EZPasses? Backing Off Free Passes at M.T.A. Paterson and Cuomo are trying to end this outrageous practice and they're getting bushback from people who can easily afford their own damn EZPasses! Dizgrazia!

So the middle class gets screwed while the rich get helped. What else is new, right?

Well in NYC, that's never the whole story. For example, in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, one of the poorest parts of the city, a beautiful new library opened that will certainly brighten up the neighborhood: After a $2 Million Rehab, a Brooklyn Library Reopens.

And here's a lovely story about a beautiful tree being spared the chainsaw in Cobble Hill: A Sapling Grows Into a Giant; The Streets Around It Change, Too. A tree grows -- and continues to grow -- in Brooklyn.

And talking about Brooklyn, tonight in the gorgeous Prospect Park you can go to a live performance of the Metropolitan Opera tonight for free: Arias in the Park, Met Stars Included.

So while life is New York is tough (and gets tougher) it's always good to remember that there's always things in this city to appreciate and enjoy no matter what. That's the spirit of this town, l'essence de NYC.

Interview: Natalia Singer on the 1980s

It’s shocking at how popular the 1980s remain. After all, Roseanne is back on TV and a big ‘80s icon, Donald Trump, is now president (unfortunately). Sure, since the ‘80s we’ve had lots of changes: 9/11, two Iraq Wars, the fall of the Soviet Union, a black president (after two Bush presidents), the Internet, the IPhone, the OJ trial, the Great Recession, marriage equality, social media -- but, if you look at all the 1980s nostalgia around us, it’s clearly the decade that won’t die.

We still love the ‘80s … for reasons I can’t quite comprehend.

Natalia Singer has a few thoughts about that decade – and many more. She literally wrote a book about it, a memoir about her life as a young woman in the Reagan era. Now an English professor at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, Natalia’s personal journey through that time was intertwined with its political and social changes. In the first of three amazing interviews, Natalia tells us about her book and her 1980s experiences, her life now, her thoughts about New York, and her visit to Rajnesheepuram, subject of the fascinating new documentary Wild Wild Country.

You wrote a memoir, Scraping By in the Big Eighties, about your life as a young woman in the 1980s. What inspired you to write a book that's personal but also sociological?

Thank you for this excellent question. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to tell this very personal, raw, intimate, and sometimes harrowing tale within this larger political and sociological context because I saw the two as inextricable. I was inspired by the work of George Orwell, James Baldwin, Adrienne Rich, Virginia Woolf, and Susan Griffin—writers who saw their lives within the larger context of history informed by a lens of race, class, and gender, and who provided a rich template for how to make the personal political, and vice versa. I read their work while I was telling my own story because my story is not only about what happened to me at various key moments in the 1980s but about what happened to us as a nation as the social safety net I had relied on as a child began to unravel under Reaganomics.

As the daughter of a single mother who was disabled, I would probably not be alive were it not for the social safety net. Lyndon B. Johnson’s dream of a Great Society “where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled” had yet to be fully realized when I was growing up in a working class neighborhood on the West Side of Cleveland, but my family of three was able to rely on Medicaid, food stamps, Aid to Dependent Children, and a thriving public school system in which my honors track classmates and I went on to study at topnotch universities. I was able to get free legal aid during a family crisis, 3% student loans, fee waivers on college boards and applications, and, as a student and then a young adult, affordable rent.

And then Ronald Reagan happened. Watching him hasten inequality, exasperate America’s racial divide, roll back reproductive rights for women, kill the ERA, declare war on America’s unions, poison our air and water, all during a militaristic buildup that was frankly terrifying: I wanted to tell that story too and how it affected me personally. I wanted this book to dig deep to the marrow, to hit bedrock emotionally, but also to reach out to engage with others as a literature of witness.

I am a very political writer and I always look to find common cause with my readers. Writing for me is a form of resistance, and it’s also a way of building communities. I also teach the memoir, and I have always been really irritated with the way the American memoir relies on the conversion narrative (dating back to The Confessions of St. Augustine) married to the Horatio Pulled-myself-up-by-my-Bootstraps Alger myth. In other words, in hard capitalism, we like stories about people who suffer and fall and then rise—through self-determination alone. I wanted to write about what happens when you don’t rise because someone else’s boot (and presumably, bootstrap) is being held against your neck. I wanted to critique the mentality that says that we, as individuals, can do and be anything—an ideology that became very popular in the eighties as Ronald Reagan did everything in his power to hasten inequality and systemic racism and sexism.

But I also wanted to write a book that would bring all our disparate struggles for justice together—to unite us, not divide us. A quote I go back to repeatedly from Susan Griffin to inspire both my writing and my teaching is this one: “Any healing will require us to witness all our histories where they converge, the history of empires and emancipation's, of slave ships as well as underground railroads; it requires us to listen back into the muted cries of the beaten, burned, forgotten and also to hear the ring of speech among us, meeting the miracle of that.” Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life.

It seems like Eighties nostalgia never ends. I remember Eighties nostalgia starting in the 1990s! GLOW and Stranger Things are the most recent examples, and now Roseanne is back (it first premiered in 1988). You might even call Donald Trump's presidency (both the man and his reactionary agenda) a piece of ‘80s nostalgia. Why do you think this decade seems to hold so much power over the common imagination – and has it become almost self-destructive?

Donald Trump was a big joke in the Eighties. He was The Donald, a symbol of 80s-style materialism on steroids, and, for the people who had to run into him in the city and at all the clubs where he groped women, a shallow icon of male white privilege. He is and always has been a vulgar con man.

I am mystified as to why people are nostalgic about that decade. I spent most of those years in terror that we’d all be killed in a nuclear war—that we started. When I think of the Eighties, this is my montage: Jimmy Carter putting up solar panels on the White House and Ronald Reagan taking them down; Reagan’s myth of the Welfare Queen; first-strike nuclear capability; AIDS spreading unchecked because of our president’s neglect and homophobia; televangelism and Tammy Faye Baker’s mascara clumps; “Just say no;” $10,000 gold-plated nuclear sub toilet seats; the HUD scandal, the Savings & Loan Scandal; the Stock Market Crash of 1987; Iran-Contra; U.S. sanctioned torture and human rights violations in Central America; the Valdez oil spill in Alaska; the rise of the prison system and disproportional incarceration of people of color; I’m just getting started. Trump represents a continuation of this mass destruction.

But, I will say this: the Eighties had excellent music! The Pretenders, the B-52s, The Clash, some of Madonna, Sting, The Smiths, Cowboy Junkies, 10,000 Maniacs, U-2, Radiohead, The Talking Heads, Roxy Music, The Cure, Blondie. Who wouldn’t want to have an Eighties dance party and rock out to these songs again?

Talking nostalgia, what are your favorite memories of the 1980s (both personal and otherwise) – and your worst?

Before housing costs were insane it was possible to live in a gorgeous place, pay very little rent, and sort of eke out a life working part time and making art the rest of the time. This ended before the decade was over, but I still remember my $170 apartment in Ballard in Seattle, and my friends, Cindy and Dawn, who had a Thompson Street apartment in the Village where I stayed when I came to NYC and slept semi-comfortably on the floor (even if my head was in the bathroom and my body in the little hall in front)! Until 1985 I lived in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, and then Port Townsend) and it was easy to scrape by on restaurant work, a little writing and editing, and to spend long, rapturous weekends hiking the Hoh River Valley or camping at Third Beach near La Push of bicycling and whale-watching in the San Juan Islands for very little money. Those memories are imprinted on me for life. Up on the coast, I met people who lived in trees—literally—and they functioned in a post-capitalist economy by bartering, foraging, and just hanging out. And in NYC and in LA, in those years, I met many people who got by just fine because of rent controlled apartments, free clinics, community gardens, and luck.

Low points—too many to count but I did list a few under 4. This is the decade in which we see the rise of homelessness and food banks, the backlash against feminism, increased police brutality, and the hard core resurgence of a kind of militaristic masculinity that seemed already passé in the seventies but came back with a fervor then—a harbinger for Trumpism. The ecological disasters—Valdez and Chernobyl. Industrial farming: get big or get out. Basically, it was a nonstop nightmare. 

What are some of your favorite music, movies and TV shows from that decade?

I didn’t watch TV in the eighties at all. I watched a ton of TV as a child, then stopped in college and didn’t really start again until the late '90s. I gave you a list of my favorite music from that era above (should have read all the questions first!) In the Eighties I watched a lot of foreign films by Werner Herzog and Peter Weir. I also liked Hannah and Her Sisters, A Year of Living Dangerously, and of course, The Big Chill. 

Thanks Natalia! In our next interview, Natalia tells us about her 1982 visit to the now mythical Rajneeshpuram, the Oregon site of the Rajneeshee cult, the subject of the hugely popular and controversial Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country.

Is Airbnb Good for NYC?

Yes! Yes it is! Airbnb is wonderful! It's the best thing ever to happen to NYC! Everyone loves it! It's the greatest thing ever! Oh my god, I love Airbnb so much! It's so awesome! I want to marry it and have 10 million of its babies!

No, not really. I'm kidding. Hope you could tell.

Airbnb, the "sharing" website that lets people rent our their apartments, has been on an aggressive PR campaign to try to convince New Yorkers that not only is this business great for NYC but that New Yorkers love it and think it's a wonderful thing. I've written about Airbnb before and lots of electronic ink has been spilled over its merits and drawbacks but it all comes down to this: it's illegal. 

Airbnb is a crime syndicate. It is illegal for people to rent out their apartments if they are in a rental building or co-op. The renters are not paying hotel taxes. The buildings are not zoned to be hotels. And very often Airbnbers are using these temporary rentals to engage in drugs or prostitution or other illegal stuff. It's been leading to disturbing things like total strangers roaming the halls, young people having parties in the middle of the night, and all sorts of other unintended consequences -- like landlords not renting out apartments and turning them into permanent Airbnb hotels. This is illegal! 

And yet ... Airbnb will try to tell us otherwise. And man, they are out in force! This company is flooding the airways with ads, you can't go into the subway without an Airbnb poster getting in your face. They're more aggressive than panhandlers! And this article about Airbnb is fascinating -- not only for the article itself but also for the comments section. At first, all of the comments are anti-Airbnb, people who guinealy have a problem with the company, and then ... a little while later ... but then quite suddenly ... a stream of pro-Airbnb comments! Hmmmm ... wonder why? Clearly, Airbnb is paying these people to search the Internet and flood comments sections and chat rooms with the company line. It's Astroturfing at its finest.

I've seen this before. I wrote a few anti-Walmart blog posts in the past and they always resulted in pro-Walmart comments being instantely fired back at me. I wondered who in NYC loves Walmart so much that they would take the time to write corporate propaganda messages to me, a nobody blogger? Then I realized that I was being Astroturfed, that people on the Walmart payroll were doing it as part of their PR campaign. I'm waiting, waiting quite patiently, for the first Airbnb Astroturfing comment to be flung my way. Quite frankly, I'll be a lil' sad if they don't.

So no, Airbnb is not good for NYC. In fact, it's really, really bad. Like, really, really, really bad. 

More Proof of NYC's Dying Middle Class

Once ‘Very Good Rent Payers’ Now Facing Eviction

And Mayor Mike is going to spend $100 million to get re-elected?

I have an idea: why doesn't Mike's campaign employ every New Yorker facing eviction? Then they could pay the rent and he could single-handily save middle class New York!

Seriously, as I've said before, Mike's been a good mayor in many ways but he has a tin-ear when it comes to the middle class in this town. The middle-class is dying and Mike doesn't seem to notice or care. The most we've gotten out of him about this issue is lip-service but no action.

The term-limits law was extended precisely because Mike is supposedly an expert on ... the economy. But what is the "economy" if not the entity that gives people the ability to the pay their bills? Mike's supposed expertise is in short supply when it comes to rescuing the middle class.

It's much too early, in my opinion, to endorse for Mayor yet but Mr NYC will endorse and vote for the candidate who has the best plan to save middle class New York.

Is Rent Control a Scandal?

According to the Wall Street Journal it is.

Rent Control Is the Real New York Scandal

I'll leave this for you to decide. I just always find it amazing how programs and policies that help the poor and middle class are always seen as the "real cause of our problems" while programs and policies that help the already rich and powerful are viewed as good and beneficial to society as a whole. But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Paul Colby, RIP

Put this in the category of people who should have been famous - but weren't.

Paul Colby managed and owned the famous Greenwich Village club The Bitter End for decades. And, unlike so many of those clubs, it still exists today. It was, and is, a small cramped venue where people interested in emerging artists came and gave the newbies a chance to practice their craft in front of an audience.

And several of these newbies became legends.

Everyone from Bob Dylan to Woody Allen to Lady Gaga got there start performing there. Kris Kristofferson practically credits the The Bitter End for his entire career.

Several years ago, when CBGBs closed, there were lots of stories of unpaid rent and mismanagement that led to its demise. Sure, there was a greedy landlord who hiked the rent but many disputed why this great club had to close. So it's a wonderful thing that someone like Paul Colby could keep a place like The Bitter End running for years. Without him, none of these artists would have had a stage to perform on.

A great New Yorker with a great legacy, Colby died recently at the amazing age of 96 years old. Because of him, our city's cultural life was made a lot richer and, for that, we thank him.

The Powers That Be

Politics in New York City is tough -- and also tough to understand. It doesn't fall along neatly predictable liberal Democrat vs. conservative Republican lines. There are lots of conservative Democrats (see those scumbags who voted against marriage equality last week) and a few semi-liberal Republicans (some of the biggest opponents of over development are the few Republicans on the city council). So forget everything you hear about Red vs. Blue when it comes to city politics -- it's more a goulash of turf battles and personal jockeying where party and ideological labels are irrelevant.

But if you want to get a better idea of what drives politics in New York, forget about the Democratic and Republican parties and instead pay attention to the little known but very important third parties that influence politics here. The Working Families and Independence Parties are basically extra ballot lines for the major party candidates and most voters could care less about them. However, once you understand who funds these parties and what their respective agendas are, you know everything you'll need to know about the candidates that accept their ballot lines.

When it comes these parties, as it always does in this town, it's all about real estate.

The Working Families Party is a pro-labor/anti-landlord organization funded mostly by unions. They have an agenda of higher taxes on the rich, lower taxes on the poor, strong rent regulations, and a living wage.

The Independence Party is a pro-business/anti-tenant organization funded by landlords and big businesses that want lower taxes on the rich, higher taxes on the poor, no rent regulations, and a no minimum wage.

City Hall News and The New York Observer both have long (and I mean long) articles about these parties and how they are both rising in prominence and power in this city. They've been around for a while but this year they both scored some impressive victories. While a number of city council candidates and the Public Advocate and Comptroller candidates on the WFP ballot won, Mayor Bloomberg won (again) on the Independence ballot line and the city council added two Republicans, one of whom had the I's endorsement. When a third party ballot helps you win, obviously you're going to help those who put you in power. You dance with them that brung ya.

So you should read these articles to see just who is behind these parties, what they are up to, and what their agendas portend for NYC's future. Because whichever one gains the upper hand in the years to come could greatly affect how New Yorkers live in this town in the future. And that could be great for some but devastating for others.

Seasons of Love - Rent (Music Video)

Well it had to happen eventually: "Rent" is closing on Broadway. After 12 years, it will close on June 1.

I saw this in 1997, about a year after its historic opening, and enjoyed it (although it was a bit loud). I own the soundtrack and usually listen to it a couple of times a year - and I'll never stop.

NYC Renters Catch a Break

For decades the real estate industry has controlled NYC by controlling its politicans -- both at the city and state levels.

Campaign contributions and cynical pressure groups (like "Jobs for New York") have made politicians cower and give landlords and big real estate companies whatever they wanted at the expense of renters and ordinary people. For years they have tried -- and, in some cases almost succeeded -- in getting rent control and stabilization abolished. Renter protections have been systemically weakened over the years, most notably back in 1994 and 1997 (read all about it here).

So when the state legislature this week passed massive new tenant protections it was a huge  historic victory for renters and ordinary New Yorkers after decades of being trampled on: security deposits will be limited to one month, tenant blacklisting and illegal evictions are criminalized, rents regulations are no longer tied to income, more apartments will remained rent regulated. 

These are amazing, great changes -- and show, now more than ever, how elections have consequences.

Ironically, bizarrely, we have an extremely greedy NYC real estate monster to thank for these new laws: Donald Trump. If that psycho hadn't been elected president in 2016, it's quite possible that the Democratic grassroots wouldn't have turned out as strongly as they did in the 2018 elections, leaving the Republicans/IDC corrupt coalition in power in the state senate.

Thanks Donald!

Review: "Hair" (1979)

Recently I came upon an article in the Hollywood Reporter listing 47 iconic movie and TV sites in NYC. Read it here. (Why it's not an even 50, I can't say.) 

One location that's obviously cited is Central Park which has been used in too many movies and TV shows to count. But one of movies that's not on this list but that makes great use of nation's most famous urban park is Hair from 1979. 

Based on the late 1960s anti-war, anti-establishment hippie Broadway smash, it's about a young man named Claude from Oklahoma who comes to NYC on his way to enlist in the army before shipping to Vietnam. (Why a guy from Oklahoma would need to travel all the way to NYC to go into the army is odd but, hey, it's a movie). Anyhoo, while roaming around Central Park one afternoon he comes upon a group of hippies who befriend him and rock his world. He also gets close to a young beautiful society lady who is bored by her preppy boyfriend and upper class life. Eventually it all goes haywire and Claude goes into the army -- before his friends head out to Nevada, trying to rescue him from going to Vietnam. There's a big, surprising, ultimately tragic twist at the end about the randomness of friendship and fate.

When the musical Hair hit Broadway in 1968, it was a stunning, crazy, and almost dangerous thing. America was mired in the hopeless Vietnam war and the anti-war, hippie movement was gaining steam (Woodstock would be a year later). This musical rocked the culture, a show that was both highly political and highly entertaining -- plus, at various points, the cast members took their clothes off. Richard Nixon, right after he became President, imagined that he'd go to a show and, as soon as cast got naked, he'd get up and walk out, showing his solidarity with the Silent Majority, the squares in the "real America" (fortunately he never did it although it would have been lit). Like A Chorus Line, Rent and Hamilton later on, this show defined its time. 

But when the movie came in 1979, times had changed. Vietnam was over, Watergate and stagflation had and were traumatized the nation, and this movie already seemed like a museum piece. It was of and about another time. Hair the movie was moderately successfull but didn't have the same resonance as it had had on Broadway 11 years earlier. 

The movie was directed by Milos Forman, who had just won Oscars for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and would, later on, do so again for Amadeus. Hair is somewhat forgotten from his filmography. The cast is amazingly -- especially a young Treat Williams (RIP) as George, the hippie leader, and Beverly D'Angelo, the bored young deb. Claude is played by John Savage who had just had a huge success in The Deer Hunter. He's a good actor but rather miscast -- he's not really believable as a young Okie. The rest of the mostly unknown cast is quite good, including the late, wonderful Nell Carter singing in the park at night.

Still, there's something about the movie that sorta doesn't work -- it reminds me of the Rent musical, a great, brilliant show put to film that somehow, someway, sucks the life out of the story and score. But I still suggest seeing it for the music, the cast, and beautiful shot Central Park. 

The Way We Live Now

"We" being New Yorkers that is (all due respect to Anthony Trollope of course).

Today I found four articles that perfectly sum up the exigencies of living in NYC today. In short, this city's getting too damn expensive. That's not news, obviously, but these articles make very clear how it's affecting people.

First, this article from the Times about rent stabilization. Yet again the Rent Guidelines Board is holding a vote to raise rents on these kinds of apartments. As someone who lives in such a pad, I'm obviously very interested in how it turns out. Last year two-year leases went up 5.75% and one-year leases went up 3%. In 2006, the raises were nastier, 7.25% and 4.25% respectively. How much rents will go up this year is any one's guess. It's a miserable situation all around: the landlords are getting screwed because the price of oil is driving up maintenance costs and the tenants are getting screwed because their wages aren't going up enough.

Second, and this one really bummed me out, was this Times article about supermarkets that are disappearing from poor and middle-class neighborhoods (due to, you guessed it, rising rents). People are being forced to take the bus and train to shop for food. Obviously poorer people don't have the best diets to begin with and suffer from things like obesity and heart disease in greater rates than most. Not having easy access to supermarkets where they can get fresh and healthy foods means, in the long run, that they'll eat more junk and have even more health problems. Not good. Not good at all.

Third and fourth were two very different articles in this week's New York magazine.

The first one was about the grueling and incredibly dangerous jobs of transit workers. I know I bitch a lot about the MTA but my wrath is directed to its incompetent crony management and not the decent folks who actually make it run. Several track workers and have been killed the last few years in tragic accidents. Like police officers and firefighters, these are good, middle-class New Yorkers who put their lives on the line each day so that the rest of us can be safe and, in this case, on time to work and play.

The other article is about, of all things, Sarah Jessica Parker, Miss Sex and the City herself. You'd think that she's the epitome of rich New York, pampered Yuppie who's driving up the prices of everything and driving out the middle class. The thing is, the gentrification of New York even upsets and bothers her!!! In this article she bemoans, as I do, how the city has changed in the last twenty years and how Manhattan in particular is turning into a big gated community. Now if the tyranny of uberwealth bothers this icon of New York City glamour, then you know it's gotten bad. Bravo Sarah Jessica. I like her even more than I did.

Sorry to make this post such a downer but when I saw these articles today, they really made me think. Think about how the city I love is becoming inhospitable for so many and instead seem to be catering more and more to so few (mainly the wealthy and wealthy tourists). It's nearly impossible to be middle class in this town today and maintain any decent quality of life. I grew up middle class here in the 1980s under Mayor Ed "How'm I doin'?" Koch and, while the city had a lot of problems then (namely a high crime rate), people and families of modest means could still hack out a decent living. Today, it's virtually impossible. The city's getting too gentrified and sterile, a city of the haves and have-nots, and it's making New York City lose it's gritty, sexy, distinctive edge.

While Mike Bloomberg's been a good Mayor in many ways, the dying middle class in this town has not been one of this top priorities. Let's hope his successor, whoever that is, feels differently.

"Rent" Closes Tomorrow ...

... and so ends a piece of Broadway history.

Like Opera Inspiring It, ‘Rent’ Is Set to Endure

Remembering "Diff'rent Strokes": 1978-1986

How exactly does it take "diff'rent strokes" to move the world? 

What are these strokes?

Who's doing the stroking?

And how in God's name does stroking, different or otherwise, move the world?

Lots of people stroke and the world keeps spinning on its axis!