Via Matt Welch, here is a fascinating story about rent control and bankruptcy. There is much pulling of the heartstrings by New York Times reporter Mireya Navarro and it's clear how Navarro and the newspaper come down. I'm going to ignore the emotional blackmail* and instead focus on the relevant facts:
Two years ago, [Mary Veronica Santiago] took refuge in bankruptcy, hoping to have her debts wiped away. ... The issue, pending before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, is whether a rent-stabilized lease can be treated as an asset in a personal bankruptcy, just like a car or a piece of land, and used to pay off creditors. ...
Mrs. Santiago has lived for 50 years in a two-bedroom apartment near Tompkins Square Park, in a neighborhood where unregulated apartments rent for thousands more a month than Mrs. Santiago’s rent of $703. Her main income is a Social Security check and, under normal bankruptcy proceedings, her lawyers said, she would have avoided repaying the $23,000 she owes because she had no assets. ...
But as her case was nearing conclusion, her landlord stepped in with an offer to buy her rent-stabilized lease and produce the funds to pay off her debt. ...
The widow’s lawyers argue that a rent-stabilized lease is a public assistance benefit, just like Social Security or disability payments, and should be exempt from the bankruptcy estate. Treating it like an asset, the lawyers said in court documents, undermines the intent of rent-stabilization laws in New York designed to protect tenants deemed in need of assistance with housing.
"This is not what bankruptcy is about," said Kathleen G. Cully, one of Mrs. Santiago two pro bono lawyers. "What’s next? Are they going to start going after food stamps?" ...
The trustee in Mrs. Santiago’s case has proposed an arrangement in which the landlord would pay her debt, pay the trustee and his lawyer, and allow Mrs. Santiago to live out her years in her apartment at a similar rent under a non-rent-stabilized lease "with no succession rights" that could otherwise have allowed her to pass the apartment on to her 50-year-old son, a personal trainer who lives with her and helps support her.
Her lawyers opposed the proposal.
Emphasis mine, because that's kind of a fascinating, if idiotic, analogy. It's idiotic because you can't pass food stamps down as you can rent-controlled leases, suggesting that food stamps are a limited benefit and not property (and, thusly, that rent-controlled leases are more like property than a limited benefit); it's fascinating because it suggests that these people think the impoverished have a natural right to give someone else's property away at a below-market rate if they so choose.
I'm sorry, but doesn't this strike anyone else as fundamentally immoral? Or at least a little, teensy eensy bit immoral? A woman racks up a ton of debt she can't pay. Her landlord offers to pay off the debt and allow her to keep living in the apartment at a similar rate, solely taking away her ability to pass on the insanely cheap rate to her 50-year-old son. And she says no, because she thinks her 50-year-old son has a right to live in someone else's building for next to nothing after she dies.
I'm actually kind of impressed by the chutzpah. Not surprised, of course. But impressed.
Featured Photo Credit: nosha via Compfight cc
*I think we can all agree that her story is a sad one. That sadness does not entitle her to a mutli-lifetime lease on someone else's property.