GREENWICH VILLAGE — Preservationists and the city's real estate lobby are sparring over data that one side says shows that landmarking causes neighborhoods to lose affordable housing.
A recent report by the Real Estate Board of New York uses seven years of tax bill data to assert that landmarking does not protect rent-stabilized apartments, and that landmarked neighborhoods actually lose more regulated units than those that aren't landmarked.
By 2014, Greenwich Village had lost 25 percent of the regulated units it had in 2007, the REBNY report found, with a net loss of 1,432 rent-stabilized units. The Upper West Side lost 33 percent, with a loss of 2,730 units.
The two neighborhoods combined had 30 percent fewer rent-regulated dwellings in 2014 than they did in 2007, the report said.
The data was culled months ago by blogger John Krauss, and just a day after the REBNY report was released, preservationist group Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation enlisted Krauss to refute it.
Krauss took issue with the fact that the REBNY report didn't take into consideration neighborhood rents, saying higher rents would result in the loss of affordable housing through "high-rent vacancy decontrol," when an apartment's rent reaches more than $2,700 under a new lease. That's when landlords can take the unit out of the rent-regulation program.
This, Krauss explained, means that more expensive neighborhoods would be more likely to lose rent-regulated apartments.
"All they have shown is that landmark areas have higher rent," Krauss said in a statement distributed by GVSHP.
Neither side addressed whether there is a correlation between landmarking and neighborhoods becoming more expensive.
A recent report by the city's Independent Budget Office looked at the number of rent-regulated units around the city where tenants pay less than the landlord is allowed to charge. That report found that the West Village and the Upper West Side had the least number of units renting below the maximum allowable amount.
Krauss also said that in some neighborhoods, landmarked buildings lost fewer stabilized units than non-landmarked buildings. On the Upper East Side, he said, more than 28 percent were lost in non-landmarks, but less than 10 percent in landmark buildings.
The REBNY report also said that from 2003 through 2012 only .29 percent of the city's affordable housing units were built in landmark districts, with five new units of affordable housing in all of Manhattan's landmark districts, and 100 in historic districts citywide.
In his statement, Krauss objected to the inclusion of units built through the 421a tax exemption. While they may be rent-stabilized, he noted, those rents can start at prohibitively high amounts.
"Many stabilized units from 421a in new buildings are not affordable," he said. "Looking at the same tax bills REBNY did, it's easy to find new buildings, 100 percent stabilized, whose average rent per unit is estimated by the Department of Finance to be upwards of $4,000 per month."
Essentially, Krauss' data may have supported REBNY's argument in some areas, but not in all.
REBNY president John Banks issued a simple rebuttal insisting that their report still shows that in most New York City neighborhoods, more rent-stabilized units were preserved or built in non-landmarked areas whether or not the 421a tax break was taken into account. By and large, REBNY insists, landmarked buildings have not been good for affordability.
“Advocates have claimed that landmarking helps preserve rent regulated units," Banks said. "Our analysis shows there is no factual basis for that assertion.”
REBNY and the preservationists are also currently at odds over a pending bill in the City Council that would set deadlines for the Landmarks Preservation Commission for the first time in the agency's 50-year history.
Some affordable housing groups are backing REBNY in that fight, suggesting the current process hinders the construction of new units.
