Why Free Markets Are the Answer to New York's Housing Crisis

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday Morning with us is today is Judge Richard Weinberg. Oh, he’s general disclosure, he’s general counsel to me at the Red Apple Group of companies, me personally, and also has been a judge in the Supreme Court for almost fifteen years.

0:16 And also he was the speaker the loans I guess right hand person for fifteen years or judge that I meant, Did I leave anything out?

0:28 Speaker 2 That’s fine, thank you?

0:30 Speaker 1 Okay. Now I understand that the new mayor wants to freeze rents effective October first, and that city people that own buildings in the city, their water is going up, their real estate taxes are going up, their you know, everything is going up, and they’re mad as hell. Tell us about what the heck.

0:57 Speaker 2 Is going on. They filed the lawsuitent States Court in Staten Island. They’ve said that the whole process was a sham, that the mayor packed the rent guidelines board, that they ignored crucial economic data showing the harm and the costs of the of the landlords, that they violated their statutory obligation to do fact finding independently, and that the whole

1:22 system used by this mayor was totally corrupt, violated statutory mandates, was unfair, The tenants ignored their own data, and that they have a very good chance, in my opinion of settings determination by the Guideline board. By the way he packed the Guideline board, he replaced all the previous members, so six of the nine were already stacked against the landlords.

1:46 Speaker 1 Let’s put it this way, Eric Adams, mayor Eric Adams, before he left, how many board members did he put on?

1:53 Speaker 2 He had, He had a number of them, but they were all they resigned or were replaced. And on dominic putt. They know, I understand the way I heard it. They were almost forced to resign by pressure being put on them.

2:08 Was that possible? That’s possible. That’s the politics of it. Okay, how many people on that board? Nine people? Now, one of the people was on the board was an attorney and she got off because she said she was not going to be part of the corrupt process. She said they were ignoring their own data. They never took into

2:24 consideration the course of the landlord. That there was this arbitrary that was capricious. And this is an Article seventy eight proceeding which can set this aside.

2:33 Speaker 1 So let me ask a silly question. Sure, the silly question is it’s just state court.

2:37 Speaker 2 A federal court, state supreme court.

2:39 Speaker 1 So if this is state supreme court, but if people created fraud to take us into that situation, does that mean it may come under the US Attorney.

2:50 Speaker 2 Well, that’d be as a very interesting question, and why not look at it?

2:54 Speaker 1 I bring up very interesting questions usually.

2:57 Speaker 2 So the point is, if you have such corruption in the process, where they’re violating their mandates, and he can show real corruption in the process, why not have the Usterney look at it.

3:10 Speaker 1 I agree with you one hundred and ten percent. What else do you want to tell the people of the city in New York that are business people, They work hard, and I guess that we’re in the socialist environment and they’ve been threatened that they could lose their buildings.

3:29 Speaker 2 Well, that’s the whole point is that Mondomery administration and his housings are. This is an attempt to make it unaffordable for landlords to maintain or to their buildings, so they’ll abandon their buildings, or if they don’t abandon their buildings, they have the shem hearings. He had to go after the landlords and their bad landlords to seize their property.

3:50 This is the worst kind of left wing socialism that you can imagine. It’s an attack on private property. Small landlords is a terrible thing. And if you care about housing affordability, you need more supply and less supply. And by the way, John, the worst landlord the entire city of New York is New York City’s public Housing Authority.

4:11 They do not have the ability or the competence at all to run housing. They should get out of the housing business, and they should allow the free market. When you have a free market, you’ll have more housing, more building of housing, more maintenance of housing, and it’ll be more affordable.

4:28 Speaker 1 Judge Richard Weinberg, thank you for your wisdom, thank you for your common sense, and we’ll talk again real soon. Thank you.