The State Assemblymember or Senator in your community will decide your fate as a tenant in the next seven months. The rent laws now protect you from eviction and rent gouging. Because the real estate industry has been waging war on tenants and the rent laws, including lining up elected officials to help them gut and end rent regulation. They have succeeded in getting government to administer the laws less as tenant protections and more as a landlord entitlement programs. Everywhere in the city landlords are harassing tenants and warehousing vacant units to remove them from rent regulation.
Every tenant knows that there are no affordable units and nowhere to move.
Rents are soaring. Both the state legislature, the City Council, and Mayor Giuliani have already declared their willingness to weaken rent protections. Governor Pataki has consistently voted against rent protections and has stated his intention to get rid of rent regulation. But before any of them pay off their debts to the real estate industry, they have to run for re-election. Guiliani and the City Council in 1997, and Governor Pataki and the state legislature in 1998.