Comptroller Talks Budget, Housing

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC. New York City Comptroller Mark Levine is back with us now. He's been in the news for several reasons in recent months. We were just talking about extreme AI scenarios in our previous segment. Levine put out a report saying the city is sleepwalking into the AI future. And he modeled five scenarios from a productivity boom to what he calls an AI shockwave. On housing, Levine created a shockwave of his own last month when he went on conservative WABC radio and blamed New York's rent laws for so many rent stabilized apartments sitting vacant. He said, quote, why would a landlord leave an apartment vacant? Well, unfortunately, the law is very difficult. When an apartment becomes vacant and they need very expensive renovations, sometimes a six-figure price tag, the owners of the buildings are not able to raise their rent enough to cover the cost of that renovation, unquote. Now, that surprised some people coming from a largely progressive Democrat who had endorsed Mayor Mamdani's election.
He also said, we've got to up our game to get job growth going again in New York. In that interview, he said, it's partly because there's a lot more competition from other parts of the country, places like Texas or Florida.
Now, as the former chair of the City Council's Jewish Caucus, and intending to resume investing in Israel bonds as controller, which Brad Lander had stopped, Levine has criticized those protesting that intention, referring to other countries with questionable human rights records. He said, we have had no protesting about our investments in Saudi Arabia, our investments in Pakistan or China, only this one little tiny sliver, unquote. And as the watchdog over the city's finances, he's expressed concern that this year's big budget gap was closed with one-time fixes that leave the city vulnerable in the future. But on the brighter side, he was able to announce a 13 percent return on the city's pension funds so far this year, much better than the average 7 percent return. And he supports the mayor and governor's Pied-a-Terre tax on high-value second homes in the city. So there's a lot to talk about with Comptroller Mark Levine since his last appearance just after he took office in January, some of which is very supportive of the Mamdani administration, some of which puts him at odds, some of which has nothing to do with the mayor. Comptroller Levine, always good of you to come on. Welcome back to WNYC.

**Mark Levine** (2:38)
Brian, it's great to be here. That was quite an epic intro.
Thank you for that. I think there may be some context missing from some of those topics. I'm sure we'll get into it though.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:49)
And you can go right there. What do you have in mind?

**Mark Levine** (2:53)
Well, my goodness, on rent stabilization, I strongly support a system which protects one million households in New York City and have spent much of my career making sure tenants have a fair shake, whether in housing court with HPD and dealing with difficult landlords. We have a housing affordability crisis in New York, which is driven by a housing shortage. And I, like many advocates, are looking for every potential supply of housing we can bring on the market so we can help empower tenants and bring rents down. And there are apartments now in rent stabilized stock that are sitting vacant, partly because they need large renovations. And the current rent laws don't really provide a way to finance them.
It's something that I and I think many people want to fix, that does not and should not undermine our rent laws. And it shouldn't mean that those units exit affordability either. I think there's a win-win scenario here where there's a little flexibility to renovate these vacant apartments when we have such a desperate need for housing, but also keeping in enough protection to ensure they remain affordable.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:05)
Right. But did you mean to suggest that New York City or state law has become too anti-landlord in your opinion and that it works against the interest of rent stabilized housing availability because the law is too onerous for them to have incentive to fix up those apartments?

**Mark Levine** (4:26)
I certainly never have made such a broad statement and never would. The 2019 rent laws had many, many provisions which I had been fighting for and strongly support and has dramatically reduced the pace of evictions in rent stabilized housing in New York City and that's something that I celebrate.
But a package as large and complicated as that, it's not surprising that there be some things we have to iron out. And one provision that I think there's consensus we have to work on is just what we do about apartments which are vacant after a long time occupancy have potentially tens of thousands or even more of backlog repairs that are needed and how to get them on.