Lefties want more poison to cure NYC housing crisis that they caused

You think New York has an affordability crisis now? Beware: A housing emergency you don’t hear about — driven entirely by lefty legislators — endangers the city’s stock of rent-stabilized apartments.Buildings that host over 600,000 rent-stabilized units — with both private and non-profit owners — are on the verge of mortgage default.Mass foreclosure, of the sort New York last experienced in the 1970s, would crater the market, endangering these buildings and their already-vulnerable tenants.The New York Housing Conference, which represents not-for-profit, publicly financed buildings that provide deeply subsidized housing for low-income tenants, reports that its members will soon need a $1 billion bailout to avoid default.The problem, the NYHC explains, is simple arithmetic: “Rents are not covering expenses.” The state’s 2019 rent-law changes made it impossible for landlords to raise rents when other costs go up — like utilities, insurance and labor — and prevents building owners from recouping the costs of unit rehabilitation after tenants move out.We’ve flagged how that slams mom-and-pop landlords, but it’s a crisis for nonprofit outfits, too.Yet most affordable housing is still privately owned, and the New York Apartment Association, which reps owners of such rent-stabilized buildings, notes that its members are in the same boat.

Thousands can’t cover their mortgage payments, much less make necessary repairs or upgrade their tenants’ units.The NYAA estimates that the private market would need $3.65 billion to rescue its members from insolvency.This crisis wasn’t the result of vulture capitalists speculating wildly to make a fast buck: It was progressives wildly rewriting the rules for a vulnerable sector to score political points.Democrats won control of the Legislature in late 2018 and started swinging for the left-field fences: That’s when they rushed through all those disastrous “criminal justice reforms,” too.

Morn...