it was easier to just walk away and let the building rot than to take any action to repair it and continue to collect rent-controlled rents.My parents and I lived in a rent-controlled apt in Manhattan in the early 1970s. Rent was $80/month. The 1973 oil embargo happened and heating oil prices went up. Oh, did I forget to mention that the $80 rent included heat?!!!!
Basically things were so bad for the landlord that it cost as much to heat the average apt in the building as that apt paid in rent. Clearly not a sustainable situation.
We moved out of the city the next year. But in retrospect we should have bought our apt (for about $7,000) when the building went coop/condo.
So the tenants not only enjoyed below market rents for decades, but after the landlord was bled dry they were able buy their apts for a pittance.
Hmmm ... 12 apts, maybe two voters each, vs an older couple, the landlords, only two votes. I wonder why rent control existed for so long? (that was sarcasm, I know exactly why it existed!).
As Maggie Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. I'm sure the tenants saw some large cost increases once they went coop, because now they had to pay 100% of all the building costs. But that only moved them into fair value territory. All the money they "stole" from the old landlord in the previous decades would never be paid back.