Freeze over – rents to rise
TENANTS IN THE city’s 1 million rent-stabilized apartments won’t see another rent freeze this year, after a board voted to allow increases of 1% to 4%.
The Rent Guidelines Board approved a 1% to 3% hike for oneyear leases and a 2% to 4% hike for two-year leases in a preliminary vote Tuesday night.
The hikes will apply to leases signed or renewed between October and September 2018.
For the past two years, the board appointed by Mayor de Blasio has frozen rents, the first freezes in city history.
Landlords sued in an attempt to overturn the freeze last year, but a judge last month upheld it, ruling it was fair for the board to consider affordability to tenants in making its decision.
Landlord members proposed a 4% increase for one-year leases and 6% for two years, while tenant reps proposed reducing rent up to 4% or allowing an increase of 0% to 2%, depending on the landlord’s situation.
Both those proposals were voted down.
Tenants at the meeting greeted the 1%-to-4% range, approved by a 5-to-4 vote, with boos.
“They just caved to the real estate industry. There is no justification for a rent increase,” said Delsenia Glover of Tenants and Neighbors.
“We’re struggling, literally, for our lives,” said Caitlin Shann, 38, who lives in a rent-stabilized apartment in Ridgewood, Queens.
“We have a lot of people flooding in who can pay more money,” she said. “It disgusts me that the people who have control do not see us as humans. They only see dollars.”
Landlords said their costs have jumped more than 6%, and the increase is not enough.
“It’s inadequate,” said Rent Stabilization Association President Joseph Strasburg, who expects the board to settle on the 1% number. “By the RGB’s own data, there is no rationale for a third consecutive rent freeze, other than carrying out Mayor Bill de Blasio’s political agenda in an election year.”A City Hall spokeswoman disagreed.
“We will never go back to the days when the landlord lobby got big rent hikes regardless of what the data said,” a spokeswoman for the mayor said after the vote. “Sometimes the board’s decisions will be popular, and sometimes they won’t — but we’ve charged members with grounding decisions in the facts, including tenant affordability.”
The board will hold public hearings, and settle the rates for the increases with a final vote in June.