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Real Rent Reform Campaign
The Real Rent Reform Campaign, known as R3, is a coalition of about 65 tenant, labor, civic, religious, and community groups working to promote legislation that protects tenants in New York State.

The group, founded in 2010, has been growing since it began working to renew the rent laws (then set to expire in June 2011). That June of 2011, for the first time in decades, the rent laws were renewed and strengthened rather than weakened. R3 focuses on legislative reform, promoted by a broad base of active tenant advocates.

Members of the R3 Coalition
Some of R3's members: 2022, a Cooperators' Organization from Penn South; 615 Warburton Avenue Tenant Association; [|Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development]; Asian Americans for Equality; The Barack Obama Democratic Club of Upper Manhattan; The Bridge Fund of Westchester; Brighton Neighborhood Association; Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, Inc.; Bushwick Housing Independence Project; CAAAV; Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens; Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats; Central Park Gardens Tenants' Association; Chelsea Coalition on Housing; Chelsea Reform Democratic Club; Chhaya CDC; Church of the Visitation Social Action Committee; Community Free Democrats; Community Service Society of New York; Community Voices Heard; [|Coalition for the Homeless]; Cooper Square Committee; CWA Local 1180; East Side Housing Coalition; DC 37, AFSCME; Fifth Avenue Committee; Gang of Six; Goddard Riverside / West Side SRO Law Project; Good Old Lower East Side; Habitat for Humanity – New York City; Housing Conservation Coordinators; Housing Court Answers; Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness & Housing; Janel Towers Tenants Association; Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church; Legal Services Staff Association / UAW Local 2320; Lenox Terrace Association of Concerned Tenants; London Terrace Tenants Association; Make the Road New York; Manhattan Young Democrats; Metropolitan Council on Housing; MFY Legal Services, Inc.; Mitchell-Lama P.I.E. Campaign; Mirabal Sisters Cultural & Community Center; Mount Vernon United Tenants; Neighbors Helping Neighbors; New Settlement Apartments / CASA; New York Immigration Coalition; Neighborhood Preservation Coalition; New York State Tenants & Neighbors Coalition; Park West Village Tenant Association; Pratt Area Community Council; Project Hospitality; Riverside Edgecombe Neighborhood Alliance; Samuel J. Tilden Democratic Club; St. Nicholas Neighborhood Preservation Corporation; Stuyvesant Town / Peter Cooper Village Tenant Association; Tenants Political Action Committee; Urban Rebuilding Initiative; Urban Justice Center; VOCAL; Washington Heights and Inwood Community Union; Westhab, Inc.; West Side Neighborhood Alliance; West Village Houses Renter's Union; Woodside on the Move; Working Families Party. An organization that wishes to join should go to the R3 website.

Some of the challenges that remain for tenants are:

 * Major Capital Improvements - Where landlords repair or improve the building, tenants incur permanent rent increases that far exceed the cost of the work done.


 * Vacancy Decontrol - This leads to the ongoing loss of units to New York's affordable housing stock.  That loss can only be stemmed if vacant apartments may not be renovated out of rent regulation.


 * Mitchell-Lama and Section 8 Protection - those living in buildings removed from the Mitchell-Lama or Section 8 programs find themselves without tenant protections unless their buildings were built before 1974.


 * Preferential Rents - permitting landlords to rent to a new tenant at a “preferential” rent lower than the legal stabilized rent, then later offer the tenant a renewal lease based on the legal stabilized rent. This hits tenants with huge rent increases, sometimes several hundred dollars a month, thus forcing them to vacate. The owner can then add another [|20% statutory vacancy increase] and can do this all over again with a new tenant, while steadily moving the legal rent closer to the $2,500 per month threshold for vacancy decontrol.


 * Owner Use of Apartments - landlords can recover “one or more” apartments for their own use or that of a family member. Landlords have used this mechanism to empty entire buildings. Tenants want to limit recovery to one apartment, and require the landlord to demonstrate “immediate and compelling necessity” as in NYC rent control and suburban rent laws.


 * Vacancy Bonus - an automatic 20% rent increase when a stabilized apartment becomes vacant. It encourages owners to oust stabilized tenants.


 * Reforming the Rent Guidelines Boards in New York City and the surrounding suburbs so that its members are accountable to the local city councils and come from a broader range of people.


 * Home Rule - restoring control over the rent laws in New York City to New York City. That control was removed by the Urstadt Law of 1971.

Contact information
Email: realrentreform@gmail.com

Twitter: @realrentreform

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