New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted Tuesday night to allow landlords of rent-stabilized apartments to charge increases of 1.5 percent for one-year leases and 2.5 percent for two-year leases.
The increases were seen as modest given the history of the nine-member board. Still, the permitted increases were the steepest since 2013 and were met by a barrage of loud jeers from the crowd at a public hearing inside the Great Hall at Cooper Union.
The increases will be in effect for any of the city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized tenants who renew leases after Oct. 1.
After the meeting, Leah Goodridge, a board member who had proposed a freeze for one-year leases, said data indicated that landlords would still have been able to profit had one been implemented. An official with a building owners’ group did not immediately return a phone call requesting comment.
Lena Melendez, a tenant of a rent-stabilized apartment in Washington Heights, said that these days, when many stabilized apartments rent for more than $2,000 a month, even low-percentage increases can be a hardship.
“It could send people over a financial precipice,” she said.
A report by the rent board found that the cost of operating and maintaining rent-stabilized buildings had risen by 4.5 percent this year, spurred by a 16.4 percent increase in fuel costs.
Another board report earlier this year found that net revenue for landlords of rent-stabilized buildings had risen for 12 years in a row, including by 4.4 percent in 2016, the most recent year for which information was available.
The guidelines board, which includes members appointed to represent landlords, tenants and the public, is often seen as reflecting the priorities of the mayors who appoint the members to staggered terms. Because rent laws that dictate how apartments can legally be deregulated are controlled by the state Legislature, the board is one of the few means by which the mayor can directly influence how much some residents pay in rent.
While serving as public advocate, Bill de Blasio had supported a rent freeze, something the board had never instituted since its formation in 1969. In 2014, his first year as mayor, the board announced its lowest increases ever: 1 percent and 2.75 percent for one-year and two-year leases. In the next two years, the board froze rent for tenants with single-year leases and authorized 2 percent increases for those with two-year leases. Last year, the board approved increases of 1.25 percent and 2 percent.
A landlords group, the Rent Stabilization Association, had called for increases of 4.5 percent and 7.25 percent this year. The group said it was a “misconception” that all landlords were doing well, adding that smaller owners faced particular difficulties. Increases in operating costs and “vastly improved economic conditions for tenants” had given landlords reasonable arguments for greater increases this year, the group said.
But tenant groups had pushed for a freeze. One, the Rent Justice Coalition, said landlords had been “overcompensated for decades” while more than 30 percent of rent-stabilized tenants paid 50 percent or more of their income for rent. In addition, members of the group said, some landlords had resorted to unlawful means to oust rent-stabilized tenants and charge market rates for apartments that should be regulated.
There were 966,000 rent-stabilized apartments in 2017, comprising 44 percent of the rental stock in New York City, according to a city survey published in February.
Although there was a net gain of nearly 4,400 rent-stabilized units in 2017, mainly because of tax incentives, the city’s rent-stabilized housing stock has seen an approximate net loss of 147,500 units since 1994, according to the Rent Guidelines Board.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Tags:
World News