Dear Editor:
As a small property owner in downtown Jersey City, it pains me to have to walk past PATH train advertisements of Mayor Bret Schundler promoting the waterfront as “The Profit Center.”
As an owner of a rent controlled building comprised of eight railroad apartments in the Historic Hamilton Park district, I have yet to see any change in profit at all!
Developers are building residential towers, commanding huge monthly rents just a stone’s throw away from my building, yet some of my tenants pay a mere $200 to $300 per month to live in luxury.
Despite paying over $1000 per month in rent for my own apartment, just a few blocks away, I am unable to occupy any of the units in the building that I own until one of my tenants moves out or dies. I am unable to increase the rent by anything more than 3 percent per year and even by pleading for a hardship increase, a 12 percent profit on my investment is all that the city will allow.
Rent Control, like communism, has failed, and the city is content to burden the middle class small property owner with its shortcomings in providing low cost housing, while promoting the creation of a highly lucrative “shadow market,” to house the influx of young professional commuters to Manhattan. In this age of entrepreneurship, that has seen the word investment redefined, it is a disgrace that the city has shamelessly continued to hijack our property and enforce this draconian ordinance that was originally introduced after the second world war, during a time of crisis.
The city has no more moral right to dictate the landlords’ profitability than it has to police the profitability of any small business. Only by creating a “free market” and by allowing capitalism to create a natural equilibrium, we will ever see fair rents in Jersey City.
Rob Croft