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Welcome to another edition of New York tomorrow presented in cooperation with the American Jewish Committee this series offers a look into the future of our city in the fields of culture education politics and social life here now is our moderator serving in Levine director of the Department of Education and urban planning of the American Jewish Committee Mr Levy our guest tonight is from accounts Berman commission of the department of rental housing migrants how subject is soaring runs driving the middle class in New York commissioner Berman nineteen sixty seven the form of sixty seven and then in January sixty eight an October sixty eight the regulations on apartments that were on the rent control went off of those apartments two hundred fifty dollars and up since that time all we hear about is the rents of doubled and rents are fifty percent higher seventy percent higher one hundred percent higher and one gets the impression that the entire middle class isn't right in the city of New York to the Lansing administration and your department took those controls off my combatants like oh no not at all as a matter of fact Mr Levine I think the Lindsay administration has done more to try to protect the middle class who are affected by the two hundred fifty dollar decontrol than was done in the prior administration let me explain what I mean in one thousand nine hundred sixty five during the prior to the city administration the city council itself he controlled most departments renting for over two hundred fifty dollars at that time. And they had that time and I was another walk not run it actually was correct that was under the Wagner administration in one thousand nine hundred sixty five they decontrol approximately seven thousand apartments with a exception that if a family had four own more people living in the apartment the particular apartment would not become decontrol. Until after that family moved out now subsequent to one thousand nine hundred sixty five we in this present ministration were required under the law to continue that same particular decontrol that the city had started back in one thousand nine hundred sixty five this was not discretionary this was mandatory because of the fact that under the rental or if there is more than a five percent vacancy in any category of apartments the law says you must must mind you not me must decontrol those apartments now in one thousand nine hundred sixty five when the last census figures were taken the figures reveal that for apartments renting in excess of two hundred fifty dollars there was an eight point eight one vacancy rate which meant that we must decontrol those apartments sell that based on the sixty five census figures we in one thousand nine hundred sixty seven were required to update the city's action of one thousand nine hundred sixty five and we decontrol or announced the decontrol of approximately six thousand apartments renting for over two hundred fifty dollars now at the time we announced that in one thousand nine hundred sixty seven we provided for some additional protections to the tenants that they had not had prior For one thing and not only did we protect families and possession that is families with two or more children but for the first time ever we made a distinction between small medium and large size apartments and in our decontrol order which went into effect in early one nine hundred sixty eight we announced that those apartments that were say small apartments there would be a requirement that the landlord get a a a lease for a period of one year with no more than a ten percent increase and for larger apartments there was the requirement that the landlord give a two year lease with no more than a ten percent increase for each of those two years or a total of twenty percent thereafter the apartment could then be rented at whatever the going rate would be. This was a protection depressurization if you will to put it to protect the tenant in possession from suddenly finding himself thrown into a situation where the rents could rise to unlimited Hyde's my many talents are being thrown into position you hear a conference think three kinds of claims some of the management representatives say it's only on true that there have been such things as hundred percent raises and yet every day you find ten and signing petitions a thousand times and Sonic petitions you holding hearings on Friday to determine the extent of the problem what do you know about the problem terms of facts and figures Well I think we have to distinguish between the apartments that were previously under control and have now been decontrol and we're talking maybe about two or three thousand of those that are actually affected the problem that you're referring to the complaints we're getting about massive rent increases affect apartments that have never been under rent control these are apartments substantially that would build since one thousand nine hundred seven and never had the benefits of the rent control law these are the apartments that we're talking about there are approximately five hundred thousand of those apartments in the city of New York and we are getting thousands upon thousands of complaints from tenants in those apartments saying to the city we know you don't have any jurisdiction we know there's no law that protects against a landlord charging an increase but but please help us because our land those are asking for exorbitant rent increases it's been that problem that has arisen in the spring and summer that has caused us to to be concerned that is cause the mayor to be concerned and it is on this basis that we are holding these hearings and are conducting the investigation that the mayor has asked us to can do you tend to discover in these hearings on what will come out of these hearings on Friday Well we see the hearings are. Serving several purposes for one thing we are trying to ascertain why there are these waves of high. Rent increases taking place in not controlled apartments we want to find out whether there's any justification on the part of the landlords for granting these increases we want to find out if there's any rent couching going on by landlords based on the facts that we will have submitted to us testimony from tenant groups from landlord groups from good government groups we hope to be able to come up with some recommendations to the mayor as to how the city can print to protect the tenants who are being affected and what steps if any the city should take I don't want to prejudge the hearings but you've been making some statements about some of the remedies that you seem to feel are needed obviously based upon some pretty good factual evidence that's already been produced for you can you outline in your own view of the nature of the problem how serious it is how rapidly we have to move into some remediation and whether that remediation is going to be on a voluntary level was a con a cough a new city council legislation Well I think I think it's fair to say that all of us in government and I'm most responsible housing people out of government feel that it would be highly desirable to get this problem resolved without having to go to legislation legislation should be the last resort I think everyone's in agreement with that and the question is are there other options that can be available we think there are options at least that are worthy of exploration for example the mayor himself has called in to his office at city hall the leading figures in the real estate industry he has told them that this problem is serious that he's concerned about it that he has called upon them to take steps to to self police the industry to set up criteria to to crack heads if necessary to get people in the industry in line the mayor has told the industry that he hopes that we do not have to resort to legislation but it's up to the industry to solve this thing or else the city may have no alternative but to go the legislative or commission a barman. Years and years we have gone through this voluntary kind of business on many many other pieces of social legislation and we've heard the argument for voluntary compliance on desegregation and voluntary compliance on fair housing and so on and we found that there was very little voluntary compliance we found that only after the law was passed that you get any compliance and even then compliance was difficult are we going to go through the same kind of business again and again when we know that the market system is such that it moves runts up because there's a shortage of housing in New York City and people want to get what they can the devil take the hindmost or we're going to deceive ourselves again and believe. People to somebody is goodwill is going to overcome an appeal to the marketplace what I when you say legislation is the last thing we want to see why isn't legislation the first thing we want to see one fact there seem to be so many people with grievances is not the correct kind of response the government has through the problems of its citizens that is to pass a law that will affect the only stifle the kinds of rank counting that seems to be going on no I don't think it is and I'll tell you why. Legislation is the obviously the easiest and simplest way of trying to meet this problem but I think we have to look at the problem and figure out what the long range results are for example I think it's quite clear that the reason we are having these excessive rent increases is because we have a critical housing shortage in the city as a matter of fact we have the tightest housing market in one thousand years in the city of New York the only way we're going to lick the shortage is if we can get another decent housing new housing built so that there is a free flow of apartments amongst those tenants who are seeking apartments now if we can put a legislative lid on the amount of increase that a landlord can obtain what may happen and this is the fear of many responsible housing officials in and out of government what may happen is that the real estate industry will decide not to build in the city they can easily go to Westchester Long Island or New Jersey where they will have no such limitation we therefore if we go the legislative route gamble that we may very possibly dry up the sources of new construction that is an argument that is advanced it is a serious argument there are some who don't necessarily agree with that argument but it's one that we cannot dismiss too lightly Now let me answer the other part of your question you said can is it isn't it hopeless for us to rely on the goodwill of an industry to west to voluntarily self regulate I would agree that we do not expect them to voluntarily do it as a matter of goodwill the only way we'll get the industry to self regulate itself on a voluntary basis is if we get them sufficiently frightened so that they figure if they don't do it that way they will end up with what they would deem to be oppressive legislation now that's our big hope that the industry is sufficiently concerned about where we may go so that they decide that they better do what or else they're going to end up with legislation which they don't want and which many others do not want. Therefore I feel that there is some reasonable hope that we may get this self regulation on a voluntary basis what does one do in the meantime if I am I tenant who has been applying to one of the fifteen and I am offered a new lease at three hundred fifty for a little Romany for me or is there some remedy that can take place on the present law or on the present situation of York City now there is not if you live in a non controlled apartment there you have no remedy has attended the landlord can ask what ever rattled the market will bear and there is nothing the government can do about it at this stage and at this juncture as I say what we are attempting to do is to see if we can get a halt to these unlimited rent increases to get a criteria developed which will resemble some fair amounts of increases and if there are abuses of that the able to have specific action taken against those landlords who are in fact abusing Let's go back to your other precept that what's really needed is we need more housing I guess no question kind of housing market now is it possible that some real state people likely idea that there's a tight housing market have encouraged a tight housing market on the fact quite interest in maintaining things as they are renting creases could easily come about that we've heard about these things in other industries where you can tame the market and hold it at a certain point or you profit from it no I don't think so because there's an awful lot of money to be made in responsible real estate in New York and I think the industry recognizes that they're always looking for ways to expand their their profit position and there's no question that New York real estate is the most attractive real estate anywhere in the United States particularly in Manhattan and some of the other boroughs but no housing is not going to offer housing and I don't know housing usually comes in on a pretty high run yes it does but if you have enough units that are available then the lease the theory in three. What will happen is if you have a sufficient units around with this great a bargaining position amongst the tenants the rent range will drop off and that's a that's a normal economic flow of supply as enough to happen in the postwar period Yes it certainly has as a matter of fact we had that situation in the early sixty's where we had a welter of new building going on and you may recall that apartments in new buildings were being rented as recently as five years ago with a months or two concession with trips to Europe if you will with all kinds of inducements to get tends to take those apartments so that we have had that situation in the past where we have had more apartments available than there were people looking for those apartments Now ideally that's the kind of situation we'd like to try to get again where there are enough apartments around so that there is not the scarcity that requires people to pay a greater then the normal amount of their income for rattled which would be in no more than twenty five percent of a person's annual income let's look at this problem on. One of the accusations one of the major accusations against Lindsay administration is that he's done a very very poor job in putting up our. Housing starts and down housing finishes and down a plan seem to be jumbled the city doesn't seem to be building housing this is usually. Involved in the low profit in the low income market on the middle income market co-ops and so on so you're really telling me that not only is the city doing a bad job in a sense of maybe you wouldn't say it I'm saying it and putting up but someone's private industry so in fact New York is being locked in to a housing situation that might be very disastrous ferocity some of these people who are moving from two fifty to three fifty could have an option to go back to two fifty maybe two hundred if there were enough co-op housing co-op housing coming in at those prices co-ops any seems to be coming out of the same price. On and all the options. And housing bring gobbled up to such a why has really to force the New Yorkers of tomorrow into the suburbs Well I think it's very I would agree with part of what you say I think that there's no doubt that there has not been enough housing built in this city and indeed in every major city in the United States in the past few years and there's several reasons for that the major reason nationally I believe is the very high cost of mortgage money that is required by a builder if he is to build if you look at the number of housing starts throughout the United States over the last few years you'll see a tremendous drop off over what was done prior to nine hundred sixty five I think we've bottomed out on this problem I think the figure is hundred sixty eight and the projected figures for one thousand nine hundred nine will show a marked improvement but again realistically we're not going to see the read the fruits of this new construction for three or four years because that's the length of time it takes between the time you put it on the drawing boards and the time you have a completed structure now this is not the fault of New York City it's not the fault of any particular situation it's and it's a national problem due to the high cost of mortgage financing in New York it's been somewhat complicated by the fact that we've had a new zoning resolution in effect since one thousand nine hundred sixty two which cuts down on the density provisions which gives a builder less rentable area on his space to rant and therefore has discourage certain build is very frankly from building residential construction in New York City this is been the situation you have to be doing to Lindsay because owning the zoning law was a bad law and it created. A. Great beauty and great a sense of the use of street life isn't this also an important factor in Iraq Study it is but I think you've got away the priorities I think it definitely has done all of the things you suggest but what it hasn't done is provide. More units for the people who need units and I think we we may have to compromise a bit I think we may have to compromise some of the light in air and some of the aesthetic qualities in order to get more housing built and if that is required I think that has to be given top priority and we may have to amend our zoning law in order to do that while commissioner Berman we know something about that old kind of housing we've built those kinds of housing and public housing projects straight up and down kind of thing and we have discovered that. The environment is not alone the four rooms that people love and. Needs the amenities on the outside that we discovered the style of life that people have is the patent upon the physical environment as well are we going to move backwards because of a shortage of housing only become innovative and in ways that we haven't before in terms of the price of housing maybe the industrialization of housing maybe you know bringing and a whole new prefabricated system of housing in our city or are we so far away from doing that it's hopeless and why isn't there one when you talk to housing experts a sense that things are pretty hopeless you talk about four or five years before any of this kind of relief can take place and you talk about. Not desiring any legislation is not possible that your responsibilities in the housing maintenance commissioner is to propose a law maybe for four or five years the kind of law that would at least. Hold on until we can get some more housing rather than assume things or go along the way they're going on I get the feeling that it's not just you know what's on offer I interview somebody in the housing field this the inevitability that things are getting worse and yet I don't sense that this is leadership Well actually we're we're born optimists I think you've got to be an optimist to survive and in municipal government these days if you're not you don't belong in the business and I think we all feel those of us who are working in this area that we are making progress and we are moving ahead sometimes I feel we're moving ahead two steps at a time of then one step backwards because it's you know it's an uneven movement no doubt about it but I don't think there's any question that. We have to play and in terms of where we go in the future I think it was President Kennedy who once said that a politician looks toward the next election and the statesman looks towards the next generation and I think that that's true that's the the latter is the philosophy of the Lindsay administration we're trying to play and in terms of the next generation we've got to get more housing in the city if it means changing a zone in law which gives us some beauty gives up some more lighting than we have to do it the art of compromise is essential if we're to move ahead and I'm not I'm not at all convinced that just because the new zoning resolution has given a certain is that extent we should sit with it if we're not getting housing built and the fact is we're not getting housing bill and haven't since one thousand nine hundred sixty thousand you really believe that it's a zoning law that has been a major contributor to not having Yes I do and I think if you talk to any major builder in this city he will affirm that all you've got some new legislation coming on the Federal Housing Development Act which may encourage some building I wonder if on another subject one of the interesting things about your job is you're on a hot spot on middle class runs I don't remember any of the run commission I was going on a hot spot I'm not usually because you absorb the building. Apartment your predecessor has been on a hot spot because of climate low income apartments and that one doesn't have very much about that is that when you're doing a good job I don't know I like to feel that when we don't get criticized it means we're doing a good job I think that's the way it usually works in government I'm just curious have been some programs that you've developed very innovative programs on building my code enforcement I can describe some of my own one thanks not things have improved a little bit in this field if not much well there are a few that we are kind of proud of one one that I feel very strongly about is what we call our rent escrow program that we developed about a year and a half ago in which we decided that just to take massive the penal sanctions against a landlord would not get us better housing Traditionally my predecessors have always reduced rents to as low as a dollar a month we've brought yank landlords into court and have them found guilty of criminal sanctions and fined ten to fifteen dollars for not curing violations that hasn't gotten us better housing what we're trying to do is address ourselves to the problem building to find the ways of tailoring of building different programs and one of the devices we're using now is a rent escrow approach where instead of reducing rents we will direct that the rent monies be placed in ask grow and use for the purpose of repairing that building that way the landlord doesn't get his rent monies until the buildings are corrected the tenants have their rent money is used constructively and thirdly and most important we are we are restoring that housing to the viable housing stock of our city and and putting it back on the line where it should belong it seems to me that the in the particularly in a time of a housing shortage where it is difficult to build new construction we must rely on our existing housing stock and we have many many old buildings in the city we have forty one thousand old lot. Tenements that would build prior to one thousand one the salvation of our housing probably in part at least is finding ways of keeping those older structure is viable and useful and productive in the in the entire housing inventory and we are trying to develop programs addressed to correcting these older buildings and making them somewhat newer and certainly more livable and your code enforcement working with the cooperation of local indigenous groups. And doing what some people suggested many years ago of deputizing. Local people in the community is watching as our inspectors are still going on at the same old bureaucratic back of something inspectors and who you have a small staff and so forth what kind of community programs are involved in now where we're we're very much involved in community programming we work with for example in one of our operations our emergency repair program we have what we call the rescue program which is a group of local indigenous people who actually go out and make the repairs to these bad buildings in their communities you know that has been helpful it gives it an opportunity for job employment as well as gives us a better communication system of getting a finding out which of the buildings that need an urgent response I think it's quite clear that we also deal very closely with community groups they they visit with us they meet with us they call us they alert us to trouble buildings and we try to respond just as quickly as we can I think there's been on a decentralized basis a much closer working relationship with the neighborhoods and communities in this Lindsay administration than perhaps there is ever been in this city and I think this is good even though it presents problems we've had problems in the school situation we have had our problems in the housing situation in this area but I think the concept of decentralization is highly important if. Good to get away from the bureaucratic downtown approach of trying to deal with city government are your inspectors now decentralized on district basis yes they are our inspectors are working out of our local code enforcement offices out of our local rescue offices they do not have to traipse all the way down to the to the main office in order to report in and out and I think it's working quite well obviously dealing well with questions of graft and corruption departments like your own have always been under attack you know it's the kind of job where a person sometimes involved in not doing that job to you what procedures in this field Yes well let's say this you you never have what I would consider to be adequate procedures in that you can never completely prevent that kind of situation but I think we've tried to be unduly vigilant in this area I think in fairness to warm employees that they have taken a pride in their work and they themselves are the first to try to root out any wrongdoing on the part of any of their fellow departmental members we have an investigative staff that does nothing else but check on complaints that we get from the public about our employees and when we find an employee is guilty we will take very tough firm action with the district attorney if it's a criminal matter or a departmental trial it's not a criminal matter to root out those people we don't want to in our department but I'm happy to say that I'm very proud of our employees I think they've handled themselves very very well over the years and in our administration we've had a minimum of this kind of problem we're coming into what I called one thing. Is that your department deals with meeting. Yes that I know that. Frankly compliment didn't last year around the kind of emergency. Heating for top military commission a permanent. You have emergency provisions for this year out to you several We're going to be involved with citizens groups doing work in this field as well well I can say is that we have a central phone number for any citizen of this city to call in if he has a housing complaint particularly a no heater no hot water complaint that number is worth four three thousand numbers man twenty four hours a day seven days a week we will receive your complaint we will immediately get on the phone call your landlord and get him to restore the heat and hot water I'm going to get on the phone yourself and call our laws I know some form a commission is a done not because that where you work nowadays not really we have a very able staff the people who do and I would like to just mention to your listeners however that before they call us at work for three thousand that they first try to call their own landlord if they are unsuccessful in getting their heat restored that call the worth for three thousand number and we'll try to help are we finding that. Boiling. Hot water systems and heating systems are being pretty inspected and advance of the want to time so just say thanks and be prevented Yes they are for the first time this year we had notices sent to every one of the owners of one hundred fifty thousand multitude Welling's in this city directing them to inspect their boilers before October first and return a form to us showing that they had made such an inspection mission to bring our guest today on New York tomorrow but Fredricka as Berman commission of prominent rotten housing magnets This is serving Him loving director of urban planning of the American Jewish Committee you have been listening to another edition of New York tomorrow presented in cooperation with the American Jewish Committee host for the series is Irving in Levine join us again next week at this time for another of these broadcasts.