Average Renovation Index Score (Neighborhood Characteristics)
A higher mean score indicates the presence of buildings in gentrifying neighborhoods, creating a stronger incentive to deregulate rent stabilized units to subsequently rent at high and increasing market rates. The baseline for comparison is the city-wide average score.
Percent of buildings in various neighborhood typologies defined by the Displacement Project (Neighborhood Characteristics)
The Displacement Project defines gentrification and displacement differently than the Renovation Index, focusing more on demographic factors rather than development-specific factors (which the Renovation Index is focused on). The interpretation, however, is similar: more buildings in neighborhoods identified as gentrifying result in a stronger incentive to deregulate rent stabilized units to subsequently rent at high and increasing market rates.
Percent of units in portfolio that are rent stabilized (Building Characteristics)
If more units in the building are rent stabilized, there is more financial opportunity through the conversion of these units to the market rate. The baseline for comparison is the percent of units in the city that are rent stabilized.
Change in rent stabilized units between 2007 and 2016 (Building Characteristics)
If the percent change is substantial and negative, a landlord may have already seized upon the financial opportunity described above. The baseline for comparison is the change in rent stabilized units for all buildings in New York City that had at least one rent stabilized unit in 2007.
Percent of buildings in set of flagged streeteasy listings (Building Characteristics)
According to housing rights advocates, buildings are advertised with language like "value add," "high upside," and "upside potential" as a signal to predatory equity investors. The presence of even one building on the list of streeteasy buildings characterized with this language may indicate the landlord's interest in predatory equity investments. The baseline for comparison is the percent of residential buildings in the city appearing on the list.
Buildings in portfolio with a loan underwritten by a bank known to work with predatory equity investors (Relationship to banks identified as bad actors)
The presence of banks known to loan to predatory equity investors on a loan sheets may be an indication of a predatory equity investment. Our list of banks fitting this description was taken from the list of banks identified by the Public Advocate for NYC as loaning most to landlords on their "Worst Landlords Watchlist" of 2017 (all banks on this list were used besides JPMorgan Chase and Capital One, the only two national banks with assets of greater than fifty billion dollars).(PA James Unveils the...) The baseline for comparison is the percent of residential buildings in NYC with one of these banks on a loan sheet.
Percent of buildings with construction complaints more than one standard deviation above city average (Construction as Harassment)
A large portion of buildings with a high outlying amount of construction complaints may indicate the use of construction as a systematic tactic for tenant harassment.
Percent of buildings with top 5 over-represented complaints in Kushner + Croman portfolios more than one standard deviation above city average (Construction as Harassment)
A large portion of buildings with a high outlying amount of complaints over-represented in the Kushner + Croman portfolios may indicate a similarity to these two known bad actors in terms of construction-related tactics for harassment.
Evictions per unit in portfolio (Evictions)
A high amount of evictions per unit may indicate the use of evictions as a tactic for tenant harassment and unit deregulation. The baseline for comparison is the total number of evictions per unit for all residential units in New York City.
Percent of buildings with at least one eviction (Evictions)
A high amount of buildings with evictions may indicate the use of evictions as a systematic, portfolio-wide tactic for tenant harassment and unit deregulation. The baseline for comparison is the percent of residential buildings in New York City with at least one eviction.
Percent of buildings in portfolio suspected of engaging in illegal deregulation through the misreporting of rent stabilized units (Illegal Deregulation)
A large portion of buildings suspected of under-reporting the number of rent stabilized units may indicate the use of misreporting as a tactic of illegally deregulating rent stabilized units. The baseline for comparison is the percent of all rent stabilized buildings in NYC suspected of engaging in illegal deregulation through misreporting. The list of suspected buildings was generated using a pattern detection algorithm described in Appendix A.
These indicators are calculated in our analysis for the portfolio of a given landlord to help facilitate a holistic understanding of a landlord's relationship with tenants. Information about the extent of a financial motive for deregulating units can be combined with indicators of predatory equity to generate an intuition about whether a landlord is a predatory equity investor focused on the deregulation of rent stabilized units (through coercion or otherwise). And this intuition can be synthesized with indicators showing the likelihood landlords are engaged in various tactics of tenant intimidation to get a sense of how landlords are treating tenants based on the financial incentives underlying this relationship.
To help motivate a more intuitive processing of these varied indicators, we created a radar chart with each indicator above as one axis. City-wide baselines are visualized together with the portfolio-specific output to motivate an understanding of how much a portfolio is deviating from the city-wide norms of landlord behavior.