Millions of New Yorkers Might See the Largest Rent Increases in Years; 2 to 5 Percent on One Year Leases 

Millions of New Yorkers Might See the Largest Rent Increases in Years; 2 to 5 Percent on One Year Leases 

Edited by: TJVNews.com

The New York City panel charged with regulating rents across nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments gave preliminary approval on Tuesday to some of the largest increases in years, the New York Times recently reported.

The nine-member panel, the Rent Guidelines Board, voted to back increases on one-year leases of between 2 and 5 percent and increases on two-year leases of between 4 and 7 percent, the report stated.

The final increases, which the board is expected to approve with another vote in the coming weeks, will almost certainly fall between the ranges put forward on Tuesday, the NYT reported.  It is the second year in a row that the board has endorsed significant hikes, presenting another challenge for people struggling to afford living in the city.

In April of 2022, TheCity.nyc reported that the staff at the city’s Rent Guidelines Board had recommended a range of hikes, all at higher levels than New York’s rent-regulated tenants have seen in nearly a decade. In 2022, the board’s four-person staff led to a recommendation of suggested rent increases between 2.7% and 4.5% for one-year leases and 4.3% to 9% for two-year leases, TheCity.nyc reported. Their proposals which were outlined in a presentation to the nine-member board were the first in a series of steps toward the board’s final determination of rent.

“Each of these formulas may be best thought of as a starting point for deliberation,” Andrew McLaughlin, executive director at the RGB, told the board in April 2022.

Property owners were feeling optimistic about their chances for a rent hike in the era of Mayor Eric Adams, as was previously reported by TheCity.nyc.  Representatives of landlords insisted the board’s recommendation wasn’t enough.

“These numbers are inadequate and have to be much higher than this for building owners to recoup from the financial losses they have suffered from the 2019 rent law, the low rent increases of recent years and lost revenue from the pandemic,” said Vito Signorile, vice-president of the Rent Stabilization Association in April of last year.

This time around the board’s meeting was disrupted when a group of tenant advocates, including several left-leaning members of the City Council, ran onto a stage where the board was seated and began leading the audience in chants calling for a rent decrease, the NYT reported. The group then began marching around the board members.

The board examined factors that affect renters, to determine the level of increase, as was reported by the NYT. That included employment trends and wages, and ones that affect landlords, including rising fuel and insurance costs. The NYT also reported that as in past years, the increases track inflation — which has been high during the rebound from the worst of the pandemic — but are not directly pegged to it.

Any increase would affect leases beginning on or after October 1^st, the NYT reported.

The NYT reported that according to city estimates, rent-stabilized apartments make up about 44 percent of all New York City rentals, and are home to roughly two million people. The median rent in rent-stabilized apartments is $1,400, more than 20 percent lower than that of unregulated apartments, according to a recent city survey, making the homes a crucial source of lower-cost housing in one of the most expensive cities in the nation, the NYT reported.

And the median household income of people living in rent-stabilized apartments is around $44,000, more than 33 percent lower than that of tenants in unregulated apartments, the NYT said.That makes the board’s annual vote a tense flashpoint in the long-running dispute between renters and landlords over the cost of living.

In March of this year, legislators in Albany introduced a bill which would, for the first time, control rental prices on market-rate buildings.

As reported by the NY Post, the proposed bill, named the Good Cause Eviction Bill, written by Socialist-minded lawmakers, would sneakily impose rent controls on market-rate buildings throughout the five boroughs of New York City.  Critics say the bill, which guises as an eviction-prevention measure, would put small landlords and minorities out of business, by dictating how much they can charge for rent at their buildings.  “This bill is universal rent control,” said Sharon Redhead, an immigrant who owns five small buildings in Brownsville and East Flatbush, Brooklyn.  “The sponsors don’t believe in free enterprise.”

“If this bill comes to pass, a lot of small housing providers will have to sell,” added Cynthia Brooks, who owns a four-family brick house at 2181 Strauss Street in Brownsville.  “You have to be in control of your building,” she said, adding that the measure may not allow her to charge enough rent to manage the building. “My name is on the deed, but am I the real owner or not?”  Many of the small landlords say the bill will force immigrant and minority-group owners out of business and leave their buildings to be bought up by large real-estate companies and well-heeled developers, who will demolish the smaller buildings and replace it with new construction.

The proposed bill, which will need to be passed by the State Assembly and State Senate, would be the first to impose rent controls on NYC’s 1.4 million market-rate apartments.  It would cap rent increases on market-rate units at 3% or 1.5% of the consumer price index, whichever is higher.  Per the Post, till now, limits on rent increases were only for rent-stabilized and rent-controlled apartments.  This new bill would also require landlords to offer tenants new leases when the old lease expires, regardless of the reason for not renewing them.  Currently, the law allows owners to decline to renew a lease, as long as 30-90 days of advance notice is given.  The bill also has other controversial provisions, including stopping legal conversion to market-rate rents by making improvement to certain vacant rent-stabilized units.  Landlords who make improvements to apartments could now only increase rent by 2%, instead of 6%.  Critics say this will just discourage any improvements and lead to a drop in the standard of living for tenants.

As per the Post, the bill was sponsored in the Assembly by Pamela Hunter (D-Syracuse) and in the Senate by Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn), who calls herself a “Democratic socialist”.  The bill has 54 co-sponsors in the 150-member Assembly, and 22 co-sponsors in the 63-seat Senate.  The progressive Legal Aid Society and socialist-oriented organizations have called the bill a “priority.”

Homeowners for an Affordable New York, a coalition which includes the Real Estate Board of New York and other landlord-advocacy groups, said the bill is “an ideologically-driven pursuit by far-left socialists that does nothing to address the housing supply shortage and would, in fact, make finding an apartment more difficult and impossibly expensive for new renters.”