Craig Roche

Dear Mr. Mayor (whoever you turn out to be), Congratulations on your victory! Even though you’ll be getting rent-free subsidized housing for the next four years, you still face a housing problem. If you want to keep small landlords (and the cost-effective housing that we provide) in the system, here are some suggestions.

Most tenants are afraid to ask their landlord for upgrades, as these tend to lead to rent increases. While this is true, you shouldn’t get too stressed, as living in a crappy apartment that you have to move out of often costs even more than living in a well-maintained apartment. When a tenant asks me to upgrade his apartment, there are two basic questions that I ask myself: Do I need to do this? Can I charge more rent for it?

Most market-rate leases in NYC are for one year. As their leases approach expiration, I’ve noticed that I see my tenants less frequently, presumably because they’re afraid that if they are too enthusiastic (or visible), I’ll nail them with a punitive rent increase. Though this may be news to tenants, this isn’t how most small landlords operate. The first question that I always ask myself is, “Do I want to renew your lease?"

As I’ve explained before, I hate losing tenants, but sometimes they leave anyway. Once I’ve signed the lease with the incoming tenant, collected three months of rent upfront, and agreed to a move-in date, my goals around a tenant move-in are pretty simple:

A hundred years ago, men and horses farmed vegetables, and most rentals were in owner-occupied buildings. Today in NYC, we call those farmers "urban gardeners" or "Amish"--and artisanal, old-style landlords are just as uncommon. Here are the top 10 reasons why: 1. Rent regulation: Rent regulation, imposed in 1947 and again in 1971, did not provide enough revenue for small landlords to function. Small landlords burned their buildings, defaulted on property taxes (NYC owned two-thirds of Harlem and the South Bronx in the early 1980s), sold their buildings to the tenants (a.k.a. the co-op conversion craze of the '60s-'80s), or sold out to better financed (and bigger) landlords.