Story at a glance
- New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted to increase rents by 3.25 percent for one-year leases and 5 percent for two-year leases during a rowdy meeting earlier this week.
- The rent hike will affect millions of New Yorkers still reeling from the financial costs of the pandemic and squeezed by a 40-year-high inflation.
- Nearly 2.3 million housing units in the Big Apple are rentals, 44 percent of which are rent stabilized.
New York City’s rent-regulated apartment dwellers will now have to cough up more money to live in their homes.
On Tuesday, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board (RGB), which sets rent adjustments for the Big Apple’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, voted to increase rents by 3.25 percent for one-year leases and 5 percent for two-year leases.
The panel voted 5-4 to approve the rent hike, the largest increase in rent for stabilized units since 2013, in keeping with what the board approved in a preliminary vote last month, according to Bloomberg.
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The board voted for the rent increase as a means of helping landlords facing higher property taxes and rising cost of managing buildings as inflation reaches a 40-year high.
Millions of New Yorkers will be affected by the vote since nearly 2.3 million housing units across the five boroughs are rentals, 44 percent of which are rent stabilized, according to the RGB’s 2022 Housing Supply Report.
The vote took place during a meeting at Cooper Union where members of different tenant organizations called for a rent freeze or rollback, The New York Times reported.
New York City dethroned San Francisco as the most expensive city in the country last year, after the pandemic caused rental prices to soar after an initial drop. Now, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city is $3,590 a month, according to the real estate website Zumper.
The panel votes every year, but this week’s meeting was more rowdy than in years past given the thousands of New Yorkers who struggled to pay for rent amid the pandemic and who recently lost potential protection from evictions during this year’s legislative session.
Tuesday’s vote marks a shift from former mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, who kept one-year rent increases to a maximum of 1.5 percent and froze rent on stabilized apartments for four years out of his eight-year tenure.
Current Mayor Eric Adams, a landlord himself, has expressed support for small landlords in the past and has defended rent increases.
“While we raised our voices and were successful in pushing the increases lower, the determination made by the Rent Guidelines Board today will unfortunately be a burden to tenants at this difficult time — and that is disappointing. At the same time, small landlords are at risk of bankruptcy because of years of no increases at all, putting building owners of modest means at risk while threatening the quality of life for tenants who deserve to live in well-maintained, modern buildings,” said Adams in a statement.
“This system is broken, and we cannot pit landlords against tenants as winners and losers every year.”
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