A shady bill quietly being pushed by progressive Manhattan state Sen. Liz Krueger and Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal offers rent control for the rich — under the pretense of protecting middle-class New Yorkers.
It applies to roughly 100 co-op buildings across the city that sit on land someone else owns; typically, such “ground leases” are renegotiated every 20 to 30 years.
The bill would retroactively rewrite those contracts by limiting how much that land’s rent can increase, guarantee lease renewals and give the overall coop the right to interfere if the landowner opts to sell the parcel.
All to the benefit of well-off Manhattanites whose Upper East and West Side apartments would easily sell for $1 million or more on the open market.
Two noteworthy beneficiaries would be corporate lawyer Jonathan Karen and real estate investor Adam Flatto, previous donors to both Krueger and Rosenthal, as well as Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who just got the bill passed out of committee and on its way to the floor.
Karen owes three co-op apartments in a Bilionaires Row building; Flatto’s firm would be able to keep costs down at its condo spaces while charging its retail tenants high rents.
Krueger and Rosenthal represent the city’s highest concentration of wealthy co-op owners — who, by no accident, are the bill’s driving force.
And in a bid to win progressive votes, they claim their bill is modeled on the progressive Good Cause Eviction measure — not that plainly aims to protect working-class folks, not the well-off.
Critics say the proposal won’t pass court muster, as it violates the Constitution’s Contracts and Takings clauses; maybe so.
But if it passes, it’s yet another message that the Legislature is happy to tear up private contracts by changing the terms of agreement, merely to benefit a few wealthy political insiders — and thereby warn anyone thinking of doing business in New York to find some less-hostile environment.
That alone would make it veto-bait for Gov. Hochul; wiser heads in the Legislature’s leadership should kill it first.
