by Chris Munzing
The Emergency Tenant Protection Act (ETPA), designed to protect tenants from soaring rents, states that if vacancy rates fall below 5 percent, an emergency can be declared, and rents controlled. The city has spent the past six months conducting studies and analysis to determine if that emergency, in place since 1974, still existed. Their findings indicate that it does.
"The evidence is clear and convincing," said Councilman Denis Kelly. "The vacancy has not exceeded the 5 percent." He charged that the evidence to the contrary had been "contrived" by landlords, who, he said, had failed to be forthcoming with their evidence. Kelly's comments were greeted with applause from the mostly senior-citizen crowd. Each successive "yes" vote from council members received an ovation.
Kelly said that the evidence had been difficult to come by, as some landlords were unwilling to disclose their numbers. Council President Joel Crystal mentioned that in some cases, subpoenas were required to obtain the information.
Councilman Leonard Remo said that people should not feel "threatened to be removed from their homes." He felt the decision was beneficial to everyone in Long Beach, because it will keep rents affordable to people young and old, and will allow Long Beach to continue to be an affordable place for young families to plant their roots.
The studies began after landlords contacted the city and demanded that the ETPA be discontinued. "They initiated the correspondence," said City Corporation Counsel William Holst. "We then sent them requests for documents. They were not overly responsive, and in some cases, unresponsive."
According to the findings, vacancy rates for some buildings of 100 or more units were extremely high compared with past numbers. Further investigations concluded that the figures had been inflated, and that the true figures were below 5 percent. The findings also question the claims made by the Avalon Towers, an unregulated building with 50 percent higher rents that has no vacancies and a waiting list.
The final vacancy figure for buildings with 100 or more units, as determined by the city, was 4.8 percent, a number not large enough to bring about the discontinuation of the ETPA.
According to Martin Shlufman, however, the figure is around 6 percent. Shlufman, an attorney who represents Samson Management, owner of several properties including the Executive Towers, believes that the city is basing its decision on faulty information. "I don't know what they are basing their decision on," he said. "We gave statistics and actual apartment numbers" of the vacant units.
Shlufman explained that charts were provided that detailed which units were vacant, and extensive data was shown to account for a higher vacancy percentage. "It can be appealed, and it will," Shlufman said of the council's decision. An appeal would have to wait until after the Sept. 2 City Council meeting, when the decision will be officially amended. After that, Shlufman explained, an appeal will most likely go forward.
Shlufman also noted that the city is providing information only on buildings with 100 or more units, and deriving its vacancy rate from them. Though the findings provided by the city indicate that buildings containing 60 to 99 units also fall below the vacancy rate, Shlufman wants to know where those figures came from and how they were determined. He said he would be contacting those building owners.
With the attention this situation has been given and the huge ramifications of the decision, Holst said that it's possible that these studies will be done regularly in the future. New York City conducts surveys on vacancy rates every three years. Holst believes that a similar plan would be beneficial to everyone involved.
