I want to save affordable housing. Sign me up for the DC 37 Housing Committee's Rent 2002 campaign. Rent 2002 Campaign If you are interested in or will be affected by changes in the current rent regulation guidelines, please return the coupon below by March 15 to: Attn: Ginny Kuzminski DC 37 Housing Committee, 125 Barclay St., 5th floor New York, NY 10007 Yes. I am interested in extending rent regulations to 2006. Please send additional information to: Name_____________________________________ Address____________________________________ __________________________________________ Apt.________________ City________________State_____ZIP__________ Home phone (_____)________________ Work phone (_____)_________________

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

The DC 37 Housing Committee needs your help to wage the Rent 2002 Campaign, a drive to get the Legislature to renew the rent control laws this year.

Working with housing advocates citywide, the committee is pressing state lawmakers to act during the 2002 session to extend the laws to 2006.

Although rent regulation and eviction prevention laws will expire in 2003, the committee says the issue should be addressed in 2002, when the entire Legislature is up for election.

Elimination of the rent laws would cancel controls on over 1 million apartments and wipe out the jobs of hundreds of state employees represented by DC 37.

"We have made rent control laws and tenants' rights a part of this year's political agenda. We have to keep this issue on the radar screen to know which candidates are on our side," said Barry Jamison, Housing Committee Chair and Local 154 president.

"If politicians are not clearly for the people on the rent laws issue, then they're in the landlords' pockets. It's that simple," he said.

New York City is in the grip of a decades-old housing crisis. September 11, the floundering economy and rounds of job losses have compounded the problem. If the existing rent laws are allowed to sunset next year, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers will no longer be able to afford a decent place to live.

The push to make this a political issue for the 2002 elections is a concerted effort to counteract the power of a group that holds tremendous influence over these laws: landlords and their political allies.

DC 37 and Tenants & Neighbors, an advocacy group, say this is no time for lawmakers to subject renters in New York City and Nassau, Rockland and Westchester counties to another assault of panic.

Rent control and stabilization protect the few existing units of regulated housing in New York. The proposed bill to extend the laws into 2006 would also repeal so-called high-rent vacancy decontrol.

The current law lets landlords set whatever rent they want on any vacant apartment where the regulated rent exceeds $2,000 a month. Crafty owners have been using this provision to circumvent the rent laws and jack up rents citywide in tony neighborhoods and tenements alike.

"It is important to realize that the expiration of the rent laws not only will result in the loss of 1.2 million units of affordable housing in New York City," said Ralph Carbone, president of Rent Regulation Services Employees Local 1359, "but will also result in the loss of about 450 jobs in my local, whose members administer this law."

The DC 37 Housing Committee is working to maintain affordable housing for its 125,000 members and 40,000 retirees. If you or family members are affected by the rent stabilization laws, the Housing Committee urges you to get involved in the Rent 2002 Campaign by completing the coupon.