Although we call it “rent control,” the key thing it controls is often not so much what you can charge for a lodging as whether you can ever reclaim it. This recluse successfully held out for $17 million to relinquish his moldy, squalid rented lodging at what is now 15 Central Park West. [New York Post]
P.S. But at least the U.N. likes the idea. While on the subject of legal insanity in NYC real estate: Andrew Rice, New York mag, “Why Run a Slum If You Can Make More Money Housing the Homeless?” I wrote about the epic New York City homeless-rights litigation in Schools for Misrule, and more links are here.
One Comment
I am not sure the article means what you think it means. I do not think this has anything to do with tenant rights. Instead, it seems the tenants signed leases that prevented eviction. Perhaps they got the no-eviction clause because of rent-control laws. Perhaps they got the no-eviction clause as a negotiated term of the agreement.
In any case, if I have a lease with a no eviction clause, I, too, would make the landlord pay an arm and a leg to evict me.