Owning won’t end problems with students
To the Editor:
I fully support Larry Edwards’ demand for a conversion “that is affordable to all the tenants who live here today and to those who have been living here for 30 to 40 years or more.” (Town & Village, Sept. 4).
However, assuming that owning an apartment will prevent transient college students from noisy partying at all hours is unrealistic in today’s real estate market. The neighboring universities will merely buy up blocks of apartment condos or co-ops as investments and turn them into student dorms with the same “howling in the courtyards,” and “waking up their neighbors at 3 or 4 in the morning.”
As for affordability, only stronger rent stabilization laws can keep apartments within the middle class, not “ownership.” Today’s “market rate” for two-bedroom Manhattan co-ops ranges from $750,000 to over a million. Families earning under $300,000 a year will be shut out.
This has nothing to do with building owners, the Tenants Association, or elected officials – all are powerless against the so-called “free market.”
And for wealthier people who can afford to “own,” they might still find themselves living next door to howling students. They might as well join the party.
Elliot Markson, ST