NY case study: Asian voters overwhelmingly reject rent control laws

Honing in on New York, Judge Glock and Renu Mukherjee of City Journal discuss the left's mounting failures to resonate with local Asian American voters. Rent control, kindly called “rent stabilization” in SJ, is proving a cogent battleground issue for Asian Americans, many of whom have bought/rent out their own homes and may not be able to shoulder higher rents emerging from stringent COPA-esque policies.

Politicians should rethink their abuse of landlords, both because they are essential to a functioning rental market and because they are a growing political constituency, especially among Asian Americans. Recent protests by Asian landlords in New York City show that the Democratic Party does not understand how it is driving away what was once a core voting bloc. In fact, one unappreciated reason for New York Asians’ shift to the right in recent years is the state’s growing efforts to expropriate small landlords and extinguish their entrepreneurial spirit.

Politicians who see landlords as a convenient political target ignore their strength. About 7 percent of all households nationally report some income from rent. They are not plutocrats swimming in unearned gains. The majority own between one and two units, and half of landlords reported negative income on their property in 2018 after accounting for taxes, repairs, and other expenses.

Asian Americans in New York City are more likely to hold property and less likely to be renters than other races, so they often suffer from the government’s pro-tenant policies. According to New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, in 2019, Asian households had the highest homeownership rate in the city, at 42.2 percent. (White households were a percentage point lower.) That rate is even higher for Chinese Americans—51 percent in 2021.

Because of New York City’s tight housing market, many of these homeowners rent out part of their homes and thus personally suffer from policies directed against landlords. A physician assistant of Indian background, Vanie Mangel, who rented out her basement and first-floor apartments, was barred by federal and state laws from evicting her tenants during the pandemic, even after they cursed at her, spit at her, banged on her floor, and refused to pay rent.

Since the pandemic, small landlords in the city’s Chinese American community have organized against many of New York’s tenant-protection policies. They were part of the constituency that led protests at Governor Kathy Hochul’s Manhattan office last year, chanting “Give back my property!” They’ve formed more than half a dozen groups on WeChat with names like “landlord protesters.” In Queens, Chinese landlords have held a weekly protest in front of the civil court (where housing cases are heard) for the past six months.

This article originally appeared in City Journal. Read the whole thing here.

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Image by Wil C. Fry