Old Whine in New Bottles:
Owners Cry “More Profits, Please”;
Rudy’s New Reps Comply
By Kenny Schaeffer

In bizarre choreography, Mayor Giuliani appointed three new “public members” to the city Rent Guidelines Board immediately prior to the May 9 vote on preliminary lease-renewal guidelines over the coming year (see story on page 1).

Although two of the vacancies had existed for months, the positions were filled at the 11th hour, and one of the new members either forgot his instructions from City Hall or had not yet learned RGB procedure. After casting the deciding vote for 4% and 6% increases for 1- and 2-year renewals, with no low-rent supplement, Mort Starobin called for a “do-over.” He then cast the deciding vote for 3% and 5% increases, with yet another $15 poor tax on apartments renting below $500 a month, an extra rent hike that has been imposed cumulatively every year so far during the Giuliani administration.

Met Council had called for the removal of all three of the departed members of the Rent Guidelines Board. Ed Hochman, the RGB’s outgoing chair, had a “let them eat cake” dismissal of the housing-affordability crisis affecting hundreds of thousands of working families, low-income, and even middle-class New Yorkers. Tenants had also called for the replacement of Edward Weinstein and Justin Macedonia, two other “public members” who could not have been further out of touch with the plight of ordinary New Yorkers.

They were also out of touch with both the letter and intent of the Rent Stabilization Law of 1969 and the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974, which together are supposed to protect 2.3 million tenants in over 1 million stabilized apartments from oppressive rent hikes.

On April 30, the morning set aside for RGB members to hear expert invited testimony from both the tenants’ and the owners’ sides, the New York Times reported that Mayor Giuliani was set to dismiss Hochman and replace him with Steven Sinacori. Sinacori is a 30-year-old Queens lawyer, former aide to Giuliani’s chief of staff and member of the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals, which rules on zoning variances. Instead, when the meeting convened, Hochman abruptly resigned, throwing it into chaos and forcing cancellation of the scheduled testimony, including that of Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless.

While tenants have been calling for a Rent Guidelines Board whose public members reflect the diversity of New York City’s population, the three members appointed on May 9 are all white males. Further, one is a past mayoral aide (Sinacori), one a high-ranking mayoral aide (David Rubenstein is deputy budget director), and one a former landlord (Mort Starobin).

It is clear that our calls for a truly representative body have fallen on deaf ears, adding more urgency to enactment of Intro 859, which would give the City Council advise-and-consent power over RGB appointments. Introduced on December 19, Intro 859 has languished in committee, thanks to the apparent lack of support by Council Speaker Peter Vallone. Meanwhile, two of Vallone’s rivals for the mayoral nomination, Mark Green and Alan Hevesi, have sharply criticized the RGB process, with Green joining the call for a rent freeze.