After reading these articles, I probably don’t have even a fraction of understanding of the struggles that renters face but I think I got the gist of it and it’s clear to me that changes must be made in policies for affordable housing and these are just a few of the proposed policies that I think should be enacted.
48-Hour Response Time For Necessary Repairs.
I agree with one article writer’s depiction of most landlords, that they “operate on a continuum between greed and laziness,” which prevents them from up-keeping the apartments they rent out, sometimes even forcing tenants to pay for these improvements themselves. I don’t, however, believe that the landlords are purposely trying to push tenants out; after all, that’s where their income comes from. I just think that most times they are too lazy or cheap to take responsibility for the repairs. However, tenants are suffering from this laziness. Therefore, I would propose that landlords have a 48 hour response time to make necessary repairs before a tenant can take legal action.
Rent Freeze
A five-year rent freeze sounds a bit too much for landlords to compromise on. I’d go with three or four-year rent freeze instead. Even after that amount of time is up, there should be a limit on how much of an increase in rent a landlord can ask for. And if this rent freeze is not agreed upon, I support Steven Flax’s proposal for a 1 percent increase for one-year leases and 2.75 percent increase for two-year leases. With Williams Willard’s proposal that rents be increased 3.6 percent to 5.5 percent for one-year leases and 4.3 to 9.5 percent for two, while it may look like small increases to landlords and might not even bring them much profit, it’s a huge burden on some renters who can barely even keep up with their current rents. A small increase in their rent can mean a few less meals for them or cutting out other necessities just to make ends meet.
Rezoning
Moreover, I would propose to enact the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) program where 25% of units must be made affordable to families with an averaged income of about $46,600 for a family of three. Now many people criticize this program and state that this plan is still not enough for lower-income residents but I think that this plan is a great compromise between the interests of landlords and tenants because, as I wrote before, landlords need to make a living too and reserving 1/4 of their building space to lower-income families is a sacrifice for them. When you compare this 25% to Bloomberg administration’s 2005 rezoning of Williamsburg where only 11% of units must be made affordable to low-income families, this proposed plan is a tremendous step up.
As a class advocating for more affordable housing, we could make an interactive website that would inform people of the struggles that renters have to face every day along with proposals of solutions to these problems and perhaps we could set up polls with different questions and allow visitors to our website to vote on certain important matters and voice their opinions so we can see where people stand on these matters and be able to see their sides of the story. I don’t believe that we can ever make every single person happy with the decisions that the government makes but I do, however, believe in compromise and I would hope that the website would allow both tenants and landlords to make proposals and, hopefully, compromises.
