The council hereby finds that a serious public emergency continues to exist in the housing of a considerable number of persons within the city of New York and will continue to exist after April first, nineteen hundred seventy-four; that such emergency necessitated the intervention of federal, state and local government in order to prevent speculative, unwarranted and abnormal increases in rents; that there continues to exist an acute shortage of dwellings which creates a special hardship to persons and families occupying rental housing; that the legislation enacted in nineteen hundred seventy-one by the state of New York, removing controls on housing accommodations as they become vacant, has resulted in sharp increases in rent levels in many instances; that the existing and proposed cuts in federal assistance to housing programs threaten a virtual end to the creation of new housing, thus prolonging the present emergency; that unless residential rents and evictions continue to be regulated and controlled, disruptive practices and abnormal conditions will produce serious threats to the public health, safety and general welfare; that to prevent such perils to health, safety and welfare, preventive action by the council continues to be imperative; that such action is necessary in order to prevent exactions of unjust, unreasonable and oppressive rents and rental agreements and to forestall profiteering, speculation and other disruptive practices tending to produce threats to the public health, safety and general welfare; that the transition from regulation to a normal market of free bargaining between landlord and tenant, while still the objective of state and city policy, must be administered with due regard for such emergency; and that the policy herein expressed is now administered locally within the city of New York by an agency of the city itself, pursuant to the authority conferred by chapter twenty-one of the laws of nineteen hundred sixty-two. The council further finds that, prior to the adoption of local laws sixteen and fifty-one of nineteen hundred sixty-nine, many owners of housing accommodations in multiple dwellings, not subject to the provisions of the city rent and rehabilitation law enacted pursuant to said enabling authority either because they were constructed after nineteen hundred forty-seven or because they were decontrolled due to monthly rental of two hundred fifty dollars or more or for other reasons, were demanding exorbitant and unconscionable rent increases as a result of the aforesaid emergency, which led to a continuing restriction of available housing as evidenced by the nineteen hundred sixty-eight vacancy survey by the United States bureau of the census; that prior to the enactment of said local laws, such increases were being exacted under stress of prevailing conditions of inflation and of an acute housing shortage resulting from a sharp decline in private residential construction brought about by a combination of local and national factors; that such increases and demands were causing severe hardship to tenants of such accommodations and were uprooting long-time city residents from their communities; that recent studies establish that the acute housing shortage continues to exist; that there has been a further decline in private residential construction due to existing and proposed cuts in federal assistance to housing programs; that unless such accommodations are subjected to reasonable rent and eviction limitations, disruptive practices and abnormal conditions will produce serious threats to the public health, safety and general welfare; and that such conditions constitute a grave emergency.
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