How nice to see that at least one Democrat — former Gov. David Paterson — gets it, when it comes to New York’s shabby treatment of developers and businesses.
Paterson last week called their industries the “backbone of the city’s revenues” and an “essential element to the city’s standing, particularly the taxes that they pay.”
He warned that “you’ll really find out how bad it can be if they do move away.”
Indeed. Progressives in Albany and at City Hall treat these groups like moneymen to be squeezed — and, notes Paterson, these vital players in the local economy have “picked up on that.”
He’s right about how they’re treated: For starters, property owners are being choked by ballooning taxes and a deluge of laws that make it impossible to turn a profit.
Property taxes, combined with water and sewer rates, now constitute 30% to 40% of a building’s costs.
Utility bills are sky-high and rising.
Local Law 97 requires apartment buildings to reduce carbon emissions by undertaking pricy overhauls in heating systems.
Progressives have also been on a never-ending quest for new ways to make it harder to own and run buildings, which — on top of everything — has threatened the city’s housing stock.
Last year, they let a key tax break, known as 421-a, expire without any plan to replace it.
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Absent the break, developers can’t afford to build units with lower-than-market-rate rents.
“New Yorkers are going to lose out on affordable housing if Albany doesn’t act,” fumed Mayor Eric Adams.
The progs have also pushed their (misnamed) “Good Cause Eviction” bill, which would make it nearly impossible for landlords statewide to boot tenants and would effectively cap how much they can raise rent — essentially creating universal rent control.
Trouble is, real-estate firms and other businesses and have options.
They can find greener pastures elsewhere, as Paterson noted: Lawmakers “have no control over whether [companies] leave or not, and they seem to almost treat certain members of the population as if they’re expendable.”
They’re not. “We need them to be here. We need affordable and luxury housing.”
If lawmakers keep up the hostility, the city could face “situations like what we had 70s, where the proliferation of crime and the unaffordability of housing at that point created a really squalid condition around the city,” warned Paterson.
New York’s come a long way since those dark days.
How tragic it would be to let all that progress slip away.
