Save our buildings or The Bronx (and the rest of NY) will burn again

During the 1977 World Series, fires outside Yankee Stadium prompted broadcaster Howard Cosell to make his famous announcement: “Ladies and gentleman, The Bronx is Burning.”That encapsulated the decline of New York City in a single phrase. Yet just a few years earlier, there was clear evidence of the city’s decline in the financial situation of rent-regulated buildings.Years of capped rents coupled with rising operating costs due to high inflation led to buildings with revenue that didn’t cover expenses.Building owners were forced to choose between paying for fuel to heat their buildings or property taxes.Because owners picked fuel, the city’s budget suffered, contributing to the government’s plummet into bankruptcy. Data released last week by the Rent Guidelines Board paints a picture eerily similar to what was happening in The Bronx before that day in 1977.The RGB report, which looked at 2023 data, showed that pre-1974 buildings in The Bronx are in severe distress.More than 12% had operating costs that exceeded the building’s income, even before they paid the mortgage or did mandatory improvements like Local Law 97 compliance.When you factor those things into the calculation, the majority of these older buildings are operating in the red.  This is in line with various news reports about increased bankruptcy filings and buildings selling at ridiculous discounts of 70% or more.One building sold at a shocking 97% discount.Overall, the number of older, rent-stabilized buildings failing to pay their mortgages shot up significantly in 2024.In one case, a building owner is actually suing a bank because the bank refuses to take the building off the owners’ hands as part of the foreclosure process.You read that right: The bank doesn’t want to take possession of the building because it knows know it’s losing money.Buildings that are operating at a loss have no access to additional financing for emergency maintenance or mandatory improvements.Ban...