Archinect - News

Landlord groups and the quest to end Americans’ (un)air-conditioned nightmare

2024-08-06T11:36:00-04:00

Most often, homes with little or no air conditioning are occupied by low-income residents – often renters — and people of color, a 2022 Boston University analysis of 115 U.S. metro areas found. That leaves them vulnerable as climate change makes heatwaves more frequent, more intense and longer lasting. Heat stress now kills more people globally each year than any other weather-related cause, according to the World Health Organization — and many of these deaths occur indoors.

New York, Los Angeles, and Austin are each currently mulling aggressive cooling laws that would levy huge fines against landlords who do not provide their tenants with efficient cooling systems, joining other states and cities in a burgeoning movement. As was reported last week, 2023 saw a 20% rise in heat-related emergency room visits in America. This year is already on track to be the hottest on record, making the possibility for successful opposition bids increasingly untenable.

New York City could soon mandate air conditioning in all residential buildings

2024-07-18T18:40:00-04:00

City Councilmember Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn, who confirmed the news with Gothamist on Wednesday, said he plans to introduce his bill during Thursday’s stated meeting. The bill is intended to mimic current local law requiring landlords to provide tenants with heat during the winter months by requiring them to ensure tenants can cool their homes to at least 78 degrees when it is 82 degrees or warmer during the summer, Restler said.

Councilmember Restler, who argues that the new legislation is tantamount to requiring heating in the winter, also told the New York Times it will "save lives as we reckon with the challenges of the climate crisis." Landlords would have a maximum of four years to comply with the mandate.

The Thursday vote comes as meteorologists are saying 2024 is likely on pace to be the hottest year on record.

Soane Medalist Peter Barber on some possible fixes to the UK's housing crisis

2022-11-11T11:22:00-05:00

There is no housing shortage. There are over 400,000 empty homes in the UK, and about 200,000 homeless people. The vast majority of empty homes are in parts of the country which have become depopulated because of economic decline – in the Midlands, the north, and coastal cities. So the solution to the housing crisis isn’t building tons of homes. It’s about reviving the economy in those places, launching a massive retrofit campaign, and bringing people back.”

“We could end the housing crisis overnight, if we wanted to,” Barber told Oliver Wainwright in a recent interview, referring to the private grab on council housing that has developed unabated since the Thatcher administration's Right-to-Buy laws came into effect in 1980. “We should introduce private sector rent controls, halt the selling of council houses under right to buy, and build 150,000 council homes a year funded by direct taxation."

An LLC attached to Helmut Jahn's erstwhile firm has now filed for bankruptcy

2021-09-01T10:54:00-04:00

Chicago Business is reporting that an LLC related to the firm founded by recently deceased architect Helmut Jahn is filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in an unfurling landlord-tenant dispute that began taking shape during the pandemic.

Jahn LLC reported gross revenues under $13,000 last year and has reported liabilities totaling $11 million compared to a little over $600,000 in available assets. The firm reported a total of $1 million in revenue between 2019 and 2020 comparatively.

Jahn was the sole proprietor of the LLC (which is separate from Jahn Architecture, Inc.), which has seen its prospects decimated by the architect’s loss this spring. The firm stands to bring in significant fees from its forthcoming 1,000m supertall development (to which the LLC is registered as the copyright holder), which will now fall subject to potential judgment creditors, particularly its landlord at 353 Clark St. DUS, depending on the court’s decision.

Crain’s has also reported that DUS was being sued ...

Corrupt NYC landlord ordered to pay a record $8M to tenants and sentenced to 1 year at Rikers

2017-12-22T14:31:00-05:00

In the summer of 2016, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman charged Croman with 20 felonies, including harassing tenants at rent-regulated apartments within his various properties as well as falsifying rental income in order to secure as much as $45 million in financing. This fall, Croman plead guilty to charges of grand larceny, tax fraud, and an additional fraud charge relating to false statements.

The notorious Manhattan landlord Steve Croman, who owned nearly 150 buildings across the city, has agreed to pay $8 million to his former tenants, the largest-ever settlement with an individual landlord in the state. Additionally, he has been sentenced to serve one year of jail time at Rikers Island.

In recent years, New York lawmakers have been pushing for stricter laws to crack down on abusive landlords. Back in August, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an 18-law package that aims to protect tenants from harassment by landlords and make it easier for residents to take abusive building owners to court. They also increase punishments and enforce laws against dangerous and illegal construction.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has echoed these efforts, emphasizing that his office has zero tolerance for landlords who try to boost their profits while disregarding the wellbeing of their tenants. Croman, who would push out rent-regulated tenants by turning off their electricity, removing wa...

NYC's squatters get their own graphic novel/historic documentation

2017-02-28T19:59:00-05:00

Amy Starecheski, oral historian, former squatter, and author of the recent book, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Become Homeowners in New York City, gathered a group who have been documenting the squatting movement from multiple perspectives, from firsthand experience to generational remove. Below, Amy guides us through some of the documents they have gathered and created: a graphic novel, a sketchbook with instructions for DIY electrical wiring, interviews, and installations...

Thanks to Amy Starecheski, the documentation of the gritty romance of squatting in city-abandoned NYC buildings in the 1980s and 1990s can now be perused, graphic-novel style:

Airbnb offers landlords a cut of the profits

2016-09-13T17:27:00-04:00

Landlords have had a gripe with Airbnb for a while. The sharing platform facilitates subletting apartments without their consent or knowledge, not to mention a cut of the profits. Now, Airbnb is hoping to make amends by rolling out a new initiative dubbed the 'Airbnb Friendly Building Program'. Here's how it works, according to Fortune:

Building owners—provided they operate in a jurisdiction where short-term rental laws are clear, meaning that there’s no ambiguity nor potential for a regulatory mess—apply for the program. Once accepted, the owner then decides the terms (which units, for how long, revenue division, etc.) under which tenants can rent out their homes and submits them to Airbnb as well as amends its tenants’ leases. Eligible tenants in that can then sign up for their building’s program through Airbnb, and become part of the regular reports the company sends to the landlord.

What’s more, Airbnb also handles paying out both the hosts and their landlords, as well as collecti...

£950 for a mouldy 'central' flat? Welcome to London.

2016-04-28T10:59:00-04:00

If you want evidence that London’s renters are being taken advantage of, look no further than a new social media campaign. Launched Monday, the #rantyourrent hashtag encourages London’s overcharged and poorly housed tenants to visually detail the bad conditions they’re expected to put up with in return for large sums of monthly rent. The results, detailed in a new Tumblr called Vent Your Rent, make for sobering viewing.

More articles on London and the housing crisis here:

The root of London's housing crisis lies beyond its borders

London's housing crisis is creating a chasm between the rich and poor

London's Bleak Housing

Bank of England proposes new limits for "buy-to-let" landlords

2016-03-29T13:00:00-04:00

Buy-to-let landlords should face new limits on the amount they can borrow, the Bank of England has proposed. It suggested that lenders should be much stricter when deciding whether or not to grant landlords a mortgage. Instead of just taking their rental income into account, the Bank wants lenders to look at their wider financial situation as well. If adopted, the new rules could reduce lending to landlords by up to 20% over the next three years.

According to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), the newly-proposed standards should "curtail inappropriate lending, and the potential for excessive credit losses."

The new strictures would take into account the costs a landlord accrues in order to rent a property, tax liabilities associated with the property, a landlord's "personal tax liabilities, 'essential expenditure' and living costs," and, in cases where it supports the loan, a landlord's extra income.

For more on the real estate landscape of the UK, check out some past Archinect coverage: