Prayer for ConEd

I hear ya, Matt. I recall trudging up 11 stories in pitch dark, beastly hot hell trying to get home after the last blackout. No shower the next day before work cause water wasn't yet back up and running. Yuck.

If everyone leaves their AC thermostats in the mid 70s, rather than cranking them down to arctic levels, that will help prevent a black- or brownout.

Well, if that doesn't do it I will become a Buddist.

That is why AC is the greatest invention of the last century. We conflate WANTS with NEEDS (computers, cell phones, etc.), but *bearable* temperatures are a must! ;)

"If everyone leaves their AC thermostats in the mid 70s, rather than cranking them down to arctic levels, that will help prevent a black- or brownout."

lol, sentences that start with a "if everyone" are non-starters

this is a stimulus Obama should be thinking about, "the unlimited AC", cause every American deserves to be as cool as he is.

would this one be the 4th or 5th round of stimulus!? i've never experience an economy so stimulated as this one.

Never was there a more perfect partner for solar power, air conditioning.
The sun burns brighter, more solar rays. More solar rays the more a/c you need and the more power you have. It doesn't get any simpler.

Drink Brawndo, coz it's got electrolytes.
>What are these electrolytes? Do you even know?
They're... what they use to make Brawndo!
>But *why* do they use them to make Brawndo?
Because Brawndo's got electrolytes.

"but *bearable* temperatures are a must! ;)"

Can you inform my parents of this development?

The water department could have used your prayer too.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/07/its_a_beautiful_weekend_to_kay.html

Shaping up to be a shi**y weekend

Bramstar: Mid-70s. Nah, when the more heat-sensitive person in our family is not here, we set the thermostat to 80 and have fans on. I've been a little OCD on the UWS today, going round and making sure that store doors are shut tightly.

Truthskr: Yes, that and green roofs and better insulation.

Air conditioners are not really the culprit here. They've been in wide residential use since at least the '60s. They've been cheap and affordable to most everyone since the '80s. The REAL upswing in our electrical demand over the past 10 years or so are our electronic gadgets and gizmos.

Flat-screen tvs and computers are the biggest energy hogs among them. A typical 42-inch flat-screen television set sucks up as much power as a refrigerator. Add that to our ever-more power-hungry computers, and perennially-charging iPhones, iPads, Kindles, etc., and you've got another massive blackout just waiting to happen.

Every apartment with a flat-screen TV and iMac in use is the equivalent of running THREE refrigerators.

Yup, the Kindle will be known as the straw ...

on top of the "ever-more power-hungry computers". My new ENIAC uses twice the power of my old desktop.

they're obviously all not on all the time, but it is amazing how much electricity a blow dryer and small kitchen appliances use. turn on the coffee pot, heat up the waffle iron, put some bacon in the microwave and go blow dry your hair. with a couple of air conditioners going many older systems will trip.

http://www.absak.com/library/power-consumption-table

Again, we've been using hair dryers, toasters, waffle irons, and microwaves for decades without a problem.

The real energy suckers now are electronics in each and every household that equal two or three EXTRA refrigerators.

The iPad will be the end of us.

matt, your math skills are not so good. things add up.

we've had energy-sucking computers for decades as well. the IBM clone was a monster.

yeah, but there are way more computers/per capita now than there were in the mid 80s. A huge user of energy are cable boxes - particularly DVRs. which are basically screen-less PCs that are always on.

there's also a lot more a/c per capita. look at the chart, a/c is a massive energy suck

obviously there are a lot more electronics. EM production coupled with easy credit led to an explosion in consumption, from second and more homes to flat screens to air conditioning in every room in ever bigger homes. it all adds up. but as a single source on a 104 degree day those a/c's will make or break the system

"we've had energy-sucking computers for decades as well. the IBM clone was a monster."

You're missing my point.

TODAY'S computers easily twice as much electricity as anything we used 10 years ago. And we didn't use computers in the home as extensively as we do today ... and today we've got multiple computers in the home (desktop and laptop).

Again, we've had air conditioners for half a century now.

Who the hell owns a desktop? Only cheap, selfish energy hogs own desktops. Does Dell even make them? Haha, people with desktops deserve to have their power cut.

Um, excuse me, I use my iMac for work, thank you very much.

oh, ok, like most New Yorkers.

ar, isnt your electricity free in that quasi hosing project you call home?

is that true?

of course this is matt, of the "there were no microwaves in the soviet union" fame.

absolutely. electricity is included in our rent. although those who started out RS have to pay a certain surcharge, while those of us who simply fell into it don't (although our rent is generally a fair amount higher than the old-timers, and many new RS people are actually now paying the equivalent of market for their RS rentals).

btw, honesy, it's not a "hosing" project, at least not yet.

matt, you're missing the point. whatever uses the most electricity is what will cause the system to go down. yes we have more computers. we also have much more a/c. look at the chart. a computer uses approx. 100 watts per hour. central a/c uses 2000-5000 per hour per home. an a/c unit uses 1000 per hour to cool the standard room. in the past people might have had one or two a/c units. now they have central or many (hell, we have seven upstate, for a 4000 sf home, although we never use more than two or three at a time). 100x3 for computers, vs. 1000 x 3 for a/c.

"Add that to our ever-more power-hungry computers, and perennially-charging iPhones, iPads, Kindles, etc., and you've got another massive blackout just waiting to happen."

An iPhone charger sucks 5 watts. A single window AC does 1000 watts. So yes, it's definitely the iPod charger.

Random trivia question, no peeking on Google. How much less or more energy does it take to heat vs. cool down a room?

Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure. THE MATRIX

test 123

Just to make everyone feel a bit better. It was 97 in the hamptons yesterday. There was no escape. That was without e heat index tacked on. My dog acted lay down in the street and I had to carry him home from his walk. Remarkably LIPA didn't crash and I can just imagine how much ac those mansions take to keep cool.

Okay just saw the figures heat index out here was 107. Let's all hope today is better

ar, i think that if you dont pay an electric bill you should shut the fuck up about power usage.

honesy, i think since you so no signs of intelligence you should shut the fuck up. period.

you two are like brother and sister kids.

Well. They should meter Stuy-Town. Just the thought of blasting a/c units left on by rent stabilized renters while they go out for the day or a few hours....

"TODAY'S computers easily [use] twice as much electricity as anything we used 10 years ago."

Simplistic answer to a broad-based concept. Not all current TVs are as power-hungry as Matt describes, and ditto for computers. Our 60" LED-LCD TV uses 0.1 watts in standby mode, and 220W when on full-tilt.

I know it's easier to spew out simplistic statements than to actually research the numbers, but I'll ask you anyway.....Matt, what are the numbers for your air conditioners?

Well big sets use more than smaller ones. PLASMA'S in particular use a fair amt of electric. The new LED's are better.

i for example don't own a car. i never make a comment about the price of gasoline.

why, are you too simple to understand the ramifications of high gas prices because you don't own a car? if you're not gay should you not lobby your politicians for the right to gay marriage, if you believe that is correct?

and of course i do pay for electricity, at the upstate house. fail.

i understand it, but i dont pretend to empathize with others who actually pay the bill. it's tacky. like you.

not that i really concern myself all that much with my own electric bill, though with a baby and nanny home all day it is surprising how much higher it is. see, that isnt anything you have a right to comment on.

except, stupid, i actually pay an electric bill.

where was the pretend empathy? or any empathy, for that matter? i was merely discussing wattage.

but never mind my comment(s), i shouldn't be encouraging you to comment on anything.

you pay an electric bill upstate on a part time residence. thats similar to commenting on gas prices when yourent a car on vacation.

Families with two residences, requiring electric and fuel be run on both residences and gasoline to and from is certainly not green or eco-friendly. As a society it's interesting how we force green initiatives on utilities without ignoring obvious source of energy waste and green house emissions.

This is a useful discussion.

We have a woman bragging that she uses and pays for electricity. Whopee! But not ashamed that, despite her husband being an equity partner at a top NYC law firm, that she's taking up a rent regulated apartment from someone else more needy.

sounds lucky. certainly nothing that should make her feel shame or guilt or anything like that.

Lucky? Instead of rent stabilization being used for those who need it? This is one of chief the reasons that rent regulation gets a bad name from some - it being used by those who don't need it at the expense of those who do need it.

RS is not that simple. Unfortunately, if someone gave up an RS apt, and even if it stays RS, RS doesn't come with low enough income limits to someone who needs it.

On the UWS, there remain few apts that are both RC/RS and the stuff of RE dreams. So I don't know if I buy the argument that if all those apts went free-market, that rents would substantially decrease.

It is classic economics nyc10023 that supply and demand curves will meet at a single point to satisfy both, but that if you allocate some x% at a below threshold price the remaining supply and demand meet at a higher point.
We've all heard stories about the person in the West End Avenue spacious apartment renting for a fraction of it's worth being inhabited by some lucky person who could afford to pay more. I think Seinfeld may have dedicated an episode or two to this. It's utterly ridiculous to propose this promotes some greater good other than that of the renter who receives the hand-out.
And that people who would never qualify under a means test for rent stabilized some how get one talk about how the system is broke. Rather than attach the benefit to the unit it could go to the renter as a voucher or tax credit.

Forget economics and some long-term theoretical crap.

Keep the unit stabilized. But it should be stabilized for someone needs needs it. Someone who doesn't need it is taking from some family who does.

my apartment has no income limits at all. if i were to leave they could lease it to anyone, including someone making more than us. they certainly will not look to lease it to someone "in need." and they will add 25% for vacancy, and the newly adjusted 1/60th for repairs and redoing the bathrooms, and it will certainly not be within the price range of someone "in need."

this apartment was not in any RS program when i rented it, i did not steal it from the needy. virtually all of the one bedrooms and most of the two bedrooms here (that reentered RS after being luxury decontrolled) are at or very close to market. a few, including mine, are lower but most are not.

but don't let facts get in the way of ideological rants.

Riversider: maybe. You can't have it both ways with supply and demand - i.e., that prime Manhattan is a niche market so that outside sales don't affect it and that deliberate undersupply of free-market apts everywhere in NYC drives up prices on the UWS. Which is why I prefaced with "On the UWS". Most of the desirable and larger apts on the UWS have long been deregulated. You hear stories about WEA lucky renters and on Seinfeld, but in reality, most RS/RC (yes, not ALL) are studios or one-brs in walkups. How much does that affect the rental market for larger apts? There are 3 very large rental bldgs left with any population of RS/RC renters - and much of that (Langham aside) is accidental.

my apartment has no income limits at all. if i were to leave they could lease it to anyone, including someone making more than us

..even worse

nyc10023.

OK, let's stick with studios. Someone looking to rent one who isn't lucky enough to get the r.s. unit will compete for the non r.s. units and pay more. Maybe $100, maybe $500 but there is that effect. Rationing out resources just doesn't make much sense in my book. Price is the best way to allocate a resource. Where you might get me to change course is with the very lowest of wage earners and things like health insurance or housing. That we have entire housing developments with rent stabilization and people living in them that in no shape or form need the assistance makes no sense to me.

As in the case of other price ceilings, rent control causes shortages, diminution in the quality of the product, and queues. But rent control differs from other such schemes. With price controls on gasoline, the waiting lines worked on a first-come-first-served basis. With rent control, because the law places sitting tenants first in the queue, many of them benefit.

Economists are virtually unanimous in concluding that rent controls are destructive. In a 1990 poll of 464 economists published in the May 1992 issue of the American Economic Review, 93 percent of U.S. respondents agreed, either completely or with provisos, that “a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.”1 Similarly, another study reported that more than 95 percent of the Canadian economists polled agreed with the statement.2 The agreement cuts across the usual political spectrum, ranging all the way from Nobel Prize winners milton friedman and friedrich hayek on the “right” to their fellow Nobel laureate gunnar myrdal, an important architect of the Swedish Labor Party’s welfare state, on the “left.” Myrdal stated, “Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision.”

Rent control has destroyed entire sections of sound housing in New York’s South Bronx and has led to decay and abandonment throughout the entire five boroughs of the city. Although hard statistics on abandonments are not available, William Tucker estimates that about 30,000 New York apartments were abandoned annually from 1972 to 1982, a loss of almost a third of a million units in this eleven-year period. Thanks to rent control, and to potential investors’ all-too-rational fear that rent control will become even more stringent, no sensible investor will build rental housing unsubsidized by government.

In fact, many tenants, usually rich or middle-class ones who are politically connected or who were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, can gain a lot from rent control. Tenants in some of the nicest neighborhoods in New York City pay a scandalously small fraction of the market price of their apartments. In the early 1980s, for example, former mayor Ed Koch paid $441.49 for an apartment then worth about $1,200.00 per month. Some people in this fortunate position use their apartments like hotel rooms, visiting only a few times per year.

Then there is the “old lady effect.” Consider the case of a two-parent, four-child family that has occupied a ten-room rental dwelling. One by one the children grow up, marry, and move elsewhere. The husband dies. Now the lady is left with a gigantic apartment. She uses only two or three of the rooms and, to save on heating and cleaning, closes off the remainder. Without rent control she would move to a smaller accommodation. But rent control makes that option unattractive. Needless to say, these practices further exacerbate the housing crisis. Repeal of rent control would free up thousands of such rooms very quickly, dampening the impetus toward vastly higher rents.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html

Especially when so many with the advantage of RS apartments own vacation/ second homes elsewhere and brag about how little of their income they spend on their RS housing.

"In the early 1980s, for example, former mayor Ed Koch paid $441.49 for an apartment then worth about $1,200.00 per month. Some people in this fortunate position use their apartments like hotel rooms, visiting only a few times per year."

And then you've got people like Charlie Rangel who is OPENLY BREAKING THE LAW by hogging not one, not two, but THREE rent-stabilized apartments, none of which he would qualify for in the first place.

meow.

once again, you nasty hag, i rented a market-rate apartment. do you think i should leave my home because tishman lost their court case? i bought my second home well before this unit reverted to RS.

it seems only fair that i pay so little to live in the projects, no? with their embarrassment factor and such.

but again, don't bother with facts when your venom can carry you so far.

you prefer people who brag about their foliage, whether it be the trees in the hamptons or oversized potted plants on their terraces.

No, I do not. If you weren't taking advantage of the situation, then someone else would step in and fill the void. We need to fix the system to prevent the abuse. You could argue many tax credits or deductions don't serve pass the sniff test, but that doesn't stop people from claiming them, nor should it.

We just need to end this bad policy.

look ma, I can pay the electric bill at my second home because of all of the savings I get under rent regulation which includes electricity.

you are as popular as bedbugs or head lice ar. how does that feel?

toddle? is that what drunk people do? aboutready, do you toddle? When is your next vaca?

Actually AR you're the one usually gratuitously throwing expletives at me (the "outer bitch" was a quote from you).

Your obvious nagging sense of insecurity where I am concerned would be funny if it weren't so pathetic, as in I mention Macchu Picchu, and you feel compelled to post about skiing in the Alps (btw, been there, done that several times) with note made of altitude sickness problem, as if explaining why you haven't been to Macchu Picchu yet. And then some gratuitous comment about my "tour" to Turkey. Yes, a Stanford "Suitcase Seminar" going off the beaten path is technically a tour group, though very small and one which you can't join.

Can't you just stop being so touchy and insecure?

Oh, there are pills that are prescribed to prevent altitude sickness. Check it out .

She didn't ski in the alps. She got altitude sickness. But she managed to brag about that.

oh please, westelle, give it a rest.

"one which you can't join." just can't stop it, can you?

Yawn- you're pathetic

well, that was witty and insightful. you're toxic.

stay cool everyone, it looks like the a/c is safe for now at least.

What is westelle?

what's the opposite of power top? mr. slave? can i use that in conversation?

But the "default" creation of apts as RS HAS ended. When new housing stock comes on the market, it isn't RS unless there's a give-and-take w/ the developer.

ar, you are so clearly despised by many many posters. because you are a horrible shrew of a woman.

RSer: in general, sure, maybe. But you haven't explained to me just how RS/RC causes the price of a 3br rental s. of W96th to be north of 6k and closing in on 10k for the most part. There just aren't that many people living in RS/RC places that would be worth 6k+ on today's rental market in my neighborhood. The 3 exceptions are the Langham, Belnord and Apthorp with RS/RC of any presence in that market.

And isn't there an inherent contradiction in your (I think) theory that the Manhattan niche markets are isolated enough from each other that a 20+% crash in humdrum 1brs don't impact the other markets? For sale, that is.

jim, you're love the gays, can you answer my question?

ok, let's just talk about the Apthorp.
Why do we need laws and regulations that benefit someone who happens to be at the right place at the right time to strike such a deal. The list of rent regulated tenants who have lived at the Apthorp is a whos who in America.
In either case, I suspect we won't convince the other. Like I said , I'm very much opposed to price controls. It didn't work under Richard Nixon, and I argue it doesn't work now.

i only love them for that great little parade they have. so colorful. otherwise i have no idea.what you are talking about.

Apt23, If' we're talking about only a few rent controlled non-means tested 3 bedrooms on the upper west side, then again don't see the societal benefit at all and a government interference in basic contracts for no apparent reason.

Now if we're talking about something like Peter Cooper, then you've provided the least incentives for the owner to maintain the property. And while it may not be directly responsible, I'm not surprised to read that the project continues to have issues with racist graffiti amongst other problems.

jim, nothing, just trying to get the right terminology to make sense of a very curious episode i witnessed recently.

actually this place was very well maintained prior to tishman. spent decades being well maintained under rent stabilization. the place is fairly well maintained again under rose, virtually a miracle considering that it is essentially bankrupt and the only owners are the bondholders.

not a good example.

Speaking of ConED...is there a way to access the utility bill record of a condo unit on the market to see the monthly energy cost?

it seems odd, but i seem to recall that ConEd will provide that information.

it is a fairly clean place for a housing project