Cuomo--who served as secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development under the Clinton administration--explained that more than 238,000 apartments have been removed from rent regulation since 1994, estimating over 130,000 more apartments could be lost to decontrol in the future. “As New Yorkers we need to work together to protect the quality of life for all our people and we need our state legislature to act,” he said.

But responses from New York City’s real estate community were mixed. Frank Ricci, director of government affairs at the Rent Stabilization Association, a New York City-based trade association representing 25,000 property owners and agents responsible for approximately one million units of housing, tells GlobeSt.com that the state should move in the opposite direction. “The laws are very restrictive now and most building owners in the city of New York provide the bulk of affordable housing,” Ricci says. “Because of all the constraints put on by government, it makes that job harder everyday. If anything, they should be loosening up the regulations to give owners the flexibility to provide quality housing for people who need it.”

Steve Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, voiced support for extending the laws in its current form, but says the governor’s position is “too far” in terms of expanding the program further. “There could be a little tinkering with it to clean up some problems, but basically it should be extended,” Spinola tells GlobeSt.com. “But the concept that rent regulations should be enhanced to protect tenants is a concept that doesn’t make sense,” he says, explaining that rent control was created to deal with an emergency post-war housing shortage 65 years ago, which does not apply any longer. “As a result, we’ve got terrible abuses.”

And while REBNY supports families in need of affordable housing and Cuomo’s 2011 fiscal year budget, Spinola says rent regulations predominantly protect people in Manhattan due to easy accessibility to subsidies. “The difference in rents between a rent-regulated apartment and a market-rate apartment in the boroughs is somewhere around $100 a month, and there’s not a significant difference,” he says. “But in Manhattan, there are people living in $4,000 or $5,000-a month market-rate apartments and they are paying $1,500-a month. There’s a fairness question here.”