Rangel's low income housing plan
...This is the kind of corruption to be expected from attempts to manipulate the market price for housing. It drives up the price for others and gives undeserved benefits to those with connections. Abolish the rent controls and Charlie Rangel want be so tempted to use his influence to get a better deal.Now comes one of the nation’s most powerful politicians — Representative Charles Rangel, a Democrat from Harlem — who has managed to get four of these rent-stabilized apartments. A big proponent of low-income housing, his own rents in Harlem are about half the market value. On the most basic level, that means three or even four renters missed out in favor of a congressman who has a net worth of $566,000 to $1.2 million.
The stark unfairness here should be obvious. Yet, Mr. Rangel, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, argues that at least three of his apartments are legal under his reading of the rent-stabilization laws. He will “look into” the use of one apartment as an office, a violation of housing rules that would get most tenants thrown out almost immediately.
More inexplicably, Mr. Rangel argues that his half-price rent on the three other apartments of about $3,200 a month is his due. It is, as he puts it, “the protection afforded by the New York rent-control law to residents like myself from the escalation in market price that is pressuring so many of us to leave a community we can no longer afford.”
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BTW, his half price rent of $3,200 would make a mortgage payment on a mansion in Houston that might hold all four of his apartments. For $12,800 he could live in a real ritzy neighborhood. And, for $25,600, the market value of the four apartments he could make the mortgage payment on a nice size apartment building.`
Such are the advantages of living in an area where the control freaks don't control the housing business.
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