NYC Rent Board Ends Two Year Freeze, Passes Hike

NEW YORK, NY — New York City's Rent Guidelines Board voted Tuesday night to hike rates for the city's rent-stabilized housing stock, ending a two-year freeze.

The board voted seven in favor with two opposed to increase rents by 1.25 percent for one-year lease extensions and 2 percent for two-year lease extensions for rent-stabilized lofts and apartments. The two dissenting votes were cast by board members representing rent-stabilized landlords.

The new guidelines for rent-stabilized lease extensions will take effect on Oct. 1 and end Sept. 30, 2018, according to the Rent Guidelines Board proposal.

The Rent Guidelines Board came to its vote quickly — after delaying the start of the meeting by more than an hour to allow hundreds of activists to fill Baruch College's Mason Hall — and with very little discussion between members. Board members representing landlords — Mary Serafy and Scott Walsh — did not speak at the meeting except to cast their votes.

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The results of the vote — a 1.25 percent increase on one-year lease extensions and a 2 percent increase on two-year lease extensions — were criticized by tenant activists and landlords alike. As usual tenants wanted a reduction in rent and landlords wanted larger increases.

For many rent-stabilized tenants even a one percent rent hike can mean the difference between making rent and homelessness, Ruth Riddick of the Flatbush Tenant Coalition told Patch. Riddick, a rent-stabilized tenant of more than 30 years, told Patch that some tenants spend as much as 80 percent on rent and often have to chose whether to eat or make rent.

"The landlords are not hurting the way they say they are," Riddick told Patch. "But tenants aren't seeing increases in their salary. Struggling to make rent is better than homelessness."

The Rent Stabilization Association — an organization which represents 25,000 landlords owning about one million rent-stabilized units — panned the board for passing the first resolution it heard Tuesday night. The resolution was proposed by the board's tenant representatives and passed seven to two, which is a rare occurrence, RSA spokesman Jack Freund told Patch.

"It's a fourth year of totally inadequate rent increases" Freund told Patch after the vote. "Which means that owners are not going to be able to keep paying their real estate taxes and maintain their buildings for the very tenants who were yelling and screaming tonight."

Freund told Patch that the board's decision to pass the first vote proposed Tuesday night is "an indication of the tenant steamroller that Mayor de Blasio is driving."

Studies commissioned by the board calculated that the price of operating rent-stabilized buildings increased by 6.2 percent in 2016 and is projected to increase another 4.4 percent in 2017. The numbers were likely driven by large increases in the price of fuel, which were low in 2015, according to the board's data.

The increase in operating costs for landlords likely swayed the board to vote for a rent hike, but board members representing tenants said that the data doesn't reflect the realities of New York's rent-stabilized tenants or landlords.

Many rent-stabilized tenants and housing activists questioned whether landlords of rent-stabilized buildings were really hurting financially Tuesday night. While introducing the board's resolution, tenant representative Harvey Epstein noted that no big-name landlords that own hundreds of rent-stabilized buildings testified at any of the Rent Guidelines Board's public meetings prior to Tuesday night's vote.

Australia Gonzalez, a 24-year rent-stabilized tenant of the northwest Bronx, told Patch that she was hoping tenants would get a rent rollback or at least get a third consecutive rent freeze.

"I am very disappointed with what happened tonight," Gonzalez told Patch. "The landlords say they have lost because we've had a rent freeze the past two years but in reality rents are rising."

Photo by Patch