A couple of observations jump out from these charts:
- The amount of rent stabilized units in almost all of these portfolios is quite high, hovering at around half of the units managed by these owners. Is this standard for residential building owners, or is this high share indicative of owners interested in profiting through the transformation of rent stabilized units to market rate units?
- Most but not all of these portfolios saw a significant fall in both the number and share of rent stabilized units. It is hard to tell whether this was accomplished through legal or illegal means, but does suggest that many of these landlords acted on their economic incentive to reduce the number of rent stabilized units. The increase in units is a result of new residential developments that add rent stabilized units in return for a 421-a tax abatement (Fig. 15).
While these charts are not conclusive evidence of tenant harassment, they do indicate that a) these known bad actors have a strong financial incentive to harass rent stabilized tenants out of their units, and that b) for many portfolios the number of rent stabilized units has decreased, suggesting that many landlords have been able to capitalize on this financial opportunity: whether this capitalization was achieved through illegal means or not is hard to say, however.