Trump Revealed: on Welfare & Poverty
1970s: opposed rent control but lived in rent-controlled apt
In 1971, Trump moved into a Manhattan apartment on the seventeenth floor of a building on East Seventy-Fifth Street.
He parked his Cadillac convertible in a garage next door and each day drove the sizable distance to work at the Trump Management office on Avenue Z.
The Upper East Side apartment had a certain appeal for a young man, in part because it was rent-controlled; city law prohibited the landlord from increasing the rent substantially each year. (In 1975, Trump handed the apartment over to his brother
Robert. About that time, Donald spoke out against rent-control laws: "Everybody in New York gets their increases but the landlords, and we are going to put an end to that practice.")
Source: Trump Revealed, by Michael Kranish & Mark Fisher, p. 58-9
Aug 23, 2016
1981: Rent-control tenants are "millionaires in mink coats"
Trump pushed for a massive condo complex on the southern edge of Central Park. In 1981, he bought two grand old buildings--the Barbizon Plaza Hotel, and a 15-story apartment building next door--for $13 million. Trump bought them to demolish them, but he
ran into hard resistance from tenants eager to keep their rent-controlled units. Trump decried his opponents as "millionaires in mink coats, driving Rolls-Royces." Some of the residents were seniors on fixed incomes; others were indeed well-to-do.
Trump, tenants said, tried to force them out by annoying them. He proposed to move homeless people into at least ten vacant apartments. Maintenance workers ignored leaky faucets and covered up windows of empty apartments with ratty tinfoil. A tenants'
group accused Trump of harassment, but he denied all. "The rich," he said, "have a very low threshold for pain."
After a 5-year standoff, Trump dropped his demolition plans and renovated into luxury apartments. The existing tenants could stay.
Source: Trump Revealed, by Michael Kranish & Mark Fisher, p. 91
Aug 23, 2016
Page last updated: Mar 19, 2019