It is time to end rent stabilization.

In the past few weeks my office has had several calls from rent stabilized tenants asking what their rent would be if stabilization ends. Could New York City tenants, that last bastion of true socialists, believe the end of the subsidization is near? I hope the end is near, not only for the good of the owners, but for every citizen of New York.

Since World War II, we have been emersed in a system of controls and regulations that have made owning rental housing in this city a nightmare. At first, housing regulation was part of a national government program of administering all wages and prices in the country during that war. Several other laws were passed having to do with rental housing during the same period, most notably the "non-military affidavit," which made sure that no family would be evicted if they relied on financial support from someone in the military.

When the war ended, the state and the city continued the regulation of housing. This increasingly became a political tool. as more and more goodies were added to the law, such as statutory tenancy. By the early 1970's, Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the legislature passed vacancy decontrol, only to see it shelved by the courts during the Nixon price control era and then repealed in subsequent legislatures, which expanded the rent stabilization system instead.

After almost 60 years, we are on the verge of witnessing the end of one of the greatest stupidities ever perpetrated by our elected representatives. However in the coming months we will see the "Great Exaggerations" begin. Horror stories will circulate in the press from so called "Tenant Representatives" stating that children and old people will be evicted from their homes. The middle class will be driven out of the city and life as we know it will end.

Anytime anything changes people are afraid. This is a part of human nature that we must accept. At the same time we can't let these unfounded fears guide our housing policies any longer. These policies have contributed to thousands of units being abandoned, thousand of families of all economic classes being forced into either apartments to small for their needs or fleeing the city entirely.

Study after study has shown that neighborhoods whose residents are either poor or lower middle class have rents under stabilization that are either at or just below market levels, while apartment rents in upper class neighborhoods are below the market. What controls have done, in effect, is subsidize those people who need it least. These are the folks who have homes in the country and are paying for them by not paying a fair rent here.

You can't speak about the irony of controls, without also speaking of the other absurd provisions of the law which have taken root. I have a true story that is a perfect example of how the law, meant to protect tenants from "greedy landlords," has been perverted.

In the mid 1950's, a mother, father and their daughter move into an apartment that was subject to rent control. In 1970 the daughter leaves home and around 1980 the mother passes away. In 1983 the father re-marries a women with two teen-aged daughters, all three of which move into the apartment. In 1988 the father passes away, leaving the apartment to his second wife and one of her daughters who is still living with her. In the 1990's the daughter marries, the second wife leaves, and the daughter's new husband moves into the apartment. Amazing as it seems, the apartment is still rent controlled because of succession laws.

A system that can produce this absurdity is in need of drastic reform. The reason this nonsense has gone on so long is that we have left the other side to tell the story using their real life examples, while we rely on reason solely to make our case. As any politician will tell you, this is a losing formula.

Just a few years ago, retail establishments were clamoring for some form of rent control in order to stop steadily increasing rents. The "tenant advocates" were saying that if protections weren't enacted thousands of businesses would close and the impact would be staggering. Then a recession hit the city and rents came tumbling down as the market softened. How many of us cut our rents on renewals and even existing leases in order to keep tenants? You hear no more about commercial rent control.

If rent regulation is allowed to expire, the world will not end, nor the sky fall. The only thing that will happen is that people will have a choice on where to live and the city and state will have increased revenues because of more money being made available for income and property taxes.