We need to blunt the teeth of the shark - growing inflexibility of rental housing laws - Annual Review and Forecast, section 4

The ever-changing, more restrictive laws and regulations which have buffeted our rental housing over the many years of my involvement with our housing industry were unimagined in past decades.

We've seen layer upon layer of new laws and regulations heaped on owners, the DHCR come into being, a more and more difficult Housing Court, etc.

But some things which should have changed have not. I have long sought the enactment of a bill which, if passed, would have a sweeping, lasting and most favorable impact on every aspect of rental housing. This bill would go far to insure the survival and health of our housing stock, and with it, the City's tax base. It would strike at the very core of all inequities which bombard our rental housing and would do much to eliminate or dilute those inequities.

The bill? Abolish the use of the terms "landlord" and "tenant" to be replaced with "owner" and "renter," which properly characterize the individuals involved.

"Landlords' and "tenants" walked our earth in medieval times. To continue to refer to today's owners and renters as "landlords" and "tenants" is to taint any sense of cooperation and mutuality of purpose to the detriment of all.

The familiar children's rhyme "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me" could not be further from the truth when the words are "landlord" and "tenant." To appropriately characterize owners of rental properties as "landlords" is to quite literally "break the backs" of many owners. To call renters "tenants" is to falsify the true relationship of owner and renter.

Landlords - the real landlords - were at the center of the political and economic systems of Europe from the Ninth to 15th Centuries. They were lords of widespread lands. Their homes were massive, high-walled castles centrally located within their lands.

These real landlords, a superior class with great and unlimited wealth, rented out portions of their lands to tenants, who farmed the land for the benefit of the landlord. In return, the landlord protected his tenants in time of attack from neighboring lords by giving the tenant and his family sanctuary within the castle walls.

Today's owners of rental property bear no resemblance to medieval landlords. They attempt to provide housing facilities for people who must be sheltered. The great majority of them own fewer than 40 units. Fifty percent are minority people. Many struggle to operate - should one or two renters fail to pay rent, their buildings could be pushed into in rein proceedings. Obviously, today's renters also have no resemblance to feudal tenants.

Why then have the labels "landlord" and "tenant" stuck to owners and renters when there in no reality attached to the terms? Because the implications of great wealth and power associated with "landlord," and the implications of the downtrodden "tenant" have been useful to and used by the political arena for its own purpose.

The image inherent to the powerful, wealthy, greedy "landlord" as opposed to the poor, downtrodden "tenant" immediately establishes an adversarial stance between owner and renter, particularly renter against owner.

Anyone who has attended a public hearing of the Rent Guidelines Board has seen - and heard - the hostility of renters toward owners. Indeed, owners seem to represent the devil incarnate, are inherently evil, and are to be viewed with suspicion and mistrust.

Stirred on by professional tenant advocates, raucous shouting and yelling drowns out any owners tale of the harsh economic realities of operating property. Many of these owners - as are the great majority of New York owners - do not have large holdings.

I have no doubt that the use of "landlord" and "tenant" has directly influenced the Rent Guidelines Board over the years, as the guidelines have been unrealistically low.

I have no doubt that "landlord" and "tenant" have influenced the decisions and procedures of the Housing Court. Why shouldn't the court assist a "tenant" in living rent-free for months if that money is due to a wealthy "landlord" rather than an owner?

I doubt if hardship application approvals would have been so rare if owners rather than "landlords" had applied. Also, I doubt whether regulations and filing requirements would have been so numerous and all-encompassing.

The adversarial stance between "landlord" and "tenant" certainly has destroyed many one-to-one individual relationships between specific owners and renters. Simply put, owners need to rent to people who pay rent, and those people need housing. The adversarial stance, with all its baggage, dooms many of these relationships from the signing the lease.

The guy who described operating rental housing in New York City as being similar to swimming in a tank full of sharks had it right. You know you're going to be eaten, you just don't know when.

It is my personal opinion that making it mandatory to call owners "owners" and renters "renters" would do much to blunt the teeth of the system.

COPYRIGHT 1998 Hagedorn Publication
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