That’s what happened to Amauri Vasquez, who was paying $700 a month for a rent-stabilized two-bedroom apartment in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn when his landlord raised the rent to $1,025. “I can’t afford that,” said Vasquez, 36. “But this is reality. This is what happens every day in Bushwick.”

The combined impact of these efforts has been severe: 284,301 New York City apartments were deregulated between 1994 and 2017, according to city data. During the same period, rents soared. Together, these two trends have put enormous financial pressure on poor and middle-class New Yorkers and helped push some 60,000 people into city homeless shelters. As of this month, that figure included more than 22,000 children.

Even a casual follower of America’s corrupt politics would not be surprised that lawmakers who voted to benefit wealthy interests at the expense of their constituents raked in money from those interests. From 2005 to 2013, the New York real estate industry contributed at least $44 million to state candidates, committees and PACs. Such largess was made possible in part by a loophole the state Board of Elections created in 1996 that treats limited liability companies as “individuals,” allowing them to donate up to $65, 100 a year to any state candidate instead of forcing them to abide by the $5,000 corporate limit.

The money grubbing has been bipartisan, but the Republican-controlled State Senate has been the landlords’ most reliable friend. So the best chance to strengthen rent laws and protect affordable housing is to deliver the Senate into Democratic hands in November, and elect reformist Democrats in the primary on Thursday.

Then, here are some actions lawmakers can take:

Overturn the Urstadt Law

Return control of the rent laws to New York City, where it belongs. The city should be able to decide how it wants to regulate rents without getting approval from the state Legislature.

End High-Rent Vacancy Decontrol

Once an apartment’s rent hits $2,733.75, it no longer falls under any rent regulation once the current tenant moves. A fairer system would keep the apartment under rent stabilization and allow for gradual increases t hat reflect owners’ costs and rates set by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board.

End Vacancy Bonuses

Landlords’ ability to raise the rent by 20 percent every time an apartment is vacated is a perverse incentive for continually displacing tenants to boost an apartment’s rent until it is deregulated. It’s no coincidence that tenant harassment is pervasive in New York City. The company owned by the family of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, for example, has been accused of such misconduct. Lawmakers should scrap this incentive entirely.