TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

Rent Control/Stabilization is a program in New York City where, in exchange for tax breaks, condos set aside a certain number of units for rent-stabilization. These rents can only increase when the city’s rent board says it’s OK and, even then, only by the amount the city allows. The apartment must be stabilized for a certain number of years and, after that period expires, the person in the apartment cannot be evicted. When the person leaves, the building then has the choice to raise the apartment to market rate or continue letting it be stabilized. The Democratic-championed program is sold to New Yorkers by trotting out old people on fixed income, teachers, cops, firemen, and anyone else who provides essential services to a city they could not otherwise afford to live in.

The obvious abuses of this program are rarely mentioned; people who qualify for the apartments when they don’t make much money are not asked to leave them if their income goes above the threshold, people who sublet their rent-controlled apartment for market-rate (say, their rent control allows them to pay $650/month and they rent it out to someone else for your more standard $3000/month… these numbers are not exaggerations), etc. Fewer people still mention that the almost one million rent-controlled apartments in the city help to contribute to the ridiculous rent prices by decreasing the supply of available market rate apartments and thus, shockingly, driving up rents for everyone else.

So it should come as little surprise that in the back-scratching, favor-filled world of New York City that one of our esteemed Congresstrolls has not only one rent-controlled apartment… but four. Congressmen Charles Rangel has three rent-controlled apartments which he combined into one penthouse and a fourth on another floor of the building which he uses as an office in complete violation of the law. Y’see, one of the actual regulations on rent-control is, go figure, that a rent-controlled apartment must actually be your primary residence.

This is two months after the media discovered that our esteemed new governor also enjoys a rent-stabilized apartment. Unsurprisingly, I guess, it turns out that both guys live in the same building in Harlem.

I can’t even imagine the sh*tshow the New York Media would stir up if this was a Republican Congressman. I look forward to both Rangel and Patterson being re-elected. Since, you know, breaking laws is only bad if you’re a Republican politician.

Stay classy, guys. Please, continue the Democratic tradition of telling everyone that they need to take care of the poor while stealing from them with the other hand.