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Know Your Rights
Source: WNYC Public Radio
Subject: Housing & Environmental Justice
Type: Media Coverage

As Rent Stabilization Law Expires, Advocates Vow to Fight

With state rent stabilization laws set to expire next year, an alliance of affordable housing advocates, tenants’ associations, city leaders and state legislators rallied in front of New York City Hall on Tuesday in support of renewing the laws — and restoring local control.

New York City lost oversight of rent regulation in 1971 when the Urstadt law said the city couldn’t make rent laws that are more stringent than the state’s. But, said Katie Goldstein, executive director of Tenants & Neighbors, “the lion’s share of [rent-stabilized] units are in New York City.”

About one million apartments citywide fall under rent-stabilization laws. Housing advocates estimate that 400,000 other units have fallen out of the system over the last 12 years.

Public Advocate Letitia James said city leaders should have control over city units, rather than “Individuals in Upstate New York who have no ties, no sense of what is happening on the ground in New York City.”

Several officials acknowledged that the Republican majority in the Senate is not likely to support a repeal of the Urstadt law.

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