The Manhattan Institute, where I work, held a public event this week at a downtown venue. Titled “Rent Regulation in NYC,” the panel was exactly the sort of wonky C-SPAN-ready confab that it sounds like.
Joining Howard Husock, our housing expert, were Ingrid Gould Ellen of New York University and Park Slope Councilman Brad Lander. Alyssa Katz, deputy editor of The City moderated the discussion, which was engaging and eminently civil. About a hundred people from the city’s policy community clapped politely.
As the event ended, a colleague informed me that a large protest, targeting the panel, had invaded the lobby of our offices in Midtown. Dozens of people, representing a variety of organizations, banged on pots and pans and chanted slogans. “The @ManhattanInst thought they could talk about affordable housing without us. #OKBillionaires #MakeBillionairesPay,” tweeted New York Communities for Change, the radical successor organization to the disgraced ACORN.
When asked why they were there — not where the event was taking place, in any case — one of the protesters reportedly said, “Brad Lander told us to come.”
I asked Lander if it was true that he had organized a protest targeting the same gathering at which he was a participant. “Oh,” he responded, “they went up there? It was supposed to be here.” I commented that it was rude to orchestrate a disruption of a function at which he was a guest, and Lander smirked before scurrying off.
This isn’t unexpected behavior from Lander, if indeed he encouraged the protest, which he didn’t deny. He has a long history of staging protests and getting arrested in choreographed episodes of risk-free civil disobedience. And he recently had to apologize for using his office to fundraise on behalf of a non-profit group he leads.
“Local Progress” is a “network of progressive local elected officials” affiliated with the Center for Popular Democracy, which in turn is closely tied to city-funded Make the Road New York, one of the groups that invaded the MI offices.
Still, it would take chutzpah to sit on a panel and engage in a collegial debate about the implications of housing policy, while simultaneously preparing for the arrival of protesters whose intention was to interrupt and overwhelm the occasion.
In a way, it’s a shame that the protesters got the wrong address, because if they had showed up at the right place — assuming they put their pots and pans down and listened to the discussion — they might have been surprised by what they heard. In fact, they might have agreed with a lot of it.
Husock pointed out that limiting the ability of landlords to pass on the cost of major capital improvements to their tenants would, like it or not, result in the “shabbification” of our housing stock as building owners defer upkeep and renovation. And a corollary effect of a decline in the value of housing would be a decline in property-tax revenue — which is what the city uses to pay for schools, parks, streets and other public goods.
Rent regulation, we heard, makes it unlikely for older people to leave apartments that are bigger than they need, because the price is lower than what they would pay for a smaller place. As a result, young people starting families or moving out find themselves with limited housing options and are forced to move away.
And the whole panel — Lander included — reached consensus on the need for more development, particularly in less dense, transit-rich areas of the city that could support many thousands of new units, and open up space for people of various incomes to find a place to live.
There was really no reason to encourage unruly protesters to disrupt an exchange of views that was open to everyone in the first place — we even had sandwiches. Let’s hope that even our ideological opponents can come to see us less as their enemies and more as their partners in the mutual experiment we call society.
Seth Barron is associate editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. Twitter: @SethBarronNYC