NYC Rent Board Approves Increases for 1M Apartments

New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) narrowly gave its final approval this week to rent increases that will apply to leases signed on or after Oct 1. 2023 for NYC’s 1M rent-stabilized apartments.

In a 5-4 vote at Hunter College’s Assembly Hall on Wednesday, the board approved a maximum rent increase of 3% on one-year leases, and a maximum rent increase of 2.75% in year one and 3.2% in year-two on two-year leases.

The two-year maximum extrapolates to slightly less than the 7% maximum the board said it was considering last month. In a preliminary vote last month, the board recommended rent hikes of 2% to 5% on one-year leases and 4% to 7% on two-year leases.

The switch to the lower two-tiered rent increase for two-year leases came after Mayor Eric Adams criticized the preliminary recommendation, issuing a statement that said “a seven-percent rent increase is clearly beyond what renters can afford and what I feel is appropriate this year.”

“I recognize that property owners face growing challenges maintaining their buildings and accessing financing to make repairs; at the same time, we simply cannot put tenants in a position where they can’t afford to make rent,” Adams said last month.

After Wednesday’s vote, Adams said in statement that “finding the right balance is never easy, but I believe the board has done so this year.”

“We also know that the real solution to the affordable housing crisis requires building more housing,” the mayor added.

Landlords groups said this year’s increases are inadequate to cover their rising costs.

“The RBG ignored their own data and instead played to the intimidation of radical politicians and activists, depriving the largest providers of affordable housing of the revenue they need to keep up with skyrocketing costs,” said Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 property owners, said in a statement just after Wednesday’s vote.

“Tenants in economic distress have government programs to support them, while stabilized building owners—the private providers of a public benefit—are at the mercy of arbitrary politics instead of sound policy,” Strasburg said.

Earlier this year, the RGB issued a report which indicated that rents would have to rise by as much as 8.35% for one-year leases and 15.75% on two-year leases to maintain net operating income at current levels for landlords.

The 2,100 seats in the Assembly Hall at the RGB meeting on Wednesday were filled with protestors and tenant advocates who opposed the rent increases and demanded a rent rollback, The City reported.

“With tonight’s vote to increase rents for some of our most vulnerable neighbors, more New Yorkers will find themselves displaced from their homes and communities onto the streets or in local shelters,” said Adriene Holder, chief attorney of the Civil Practice at The Legal Aid Society.

Holder cited an RGB report released in April that said the majority of tenants in rent-stabilized units are spending more than 40% of their household income on rents.

During the pandemic, the rent board froze rents on rent-stabilized units multiple times. Last year, it increased rents in stabilized units by 3.25% on one-year leases and 5% on two-year leases. During Mayor Bill de Blasio’s two terms, board members voted for a rent freeze three times and never voted for a one-year hike of more than 1.5%.

“The data clearly shows that 100-year-old buildings in the outer boroughs are struggling with skyrocketing costs. When revenues don’t increase at the same rate as costs, then buildings are defunded and they begin to deteriorate,” Jay Martin, executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program, an association of rent-stabilized property owners and managers, said in a statement.