On June 24th, the NYC Rent Guidelines Board adopted renewal lease guidelines for rent stabilized apartments, lofts and hotels.
One million rent-stabilized city tenants caught a break last night when the Rent Guidelines Board voted to hike rents by 2.25 percent and 4.5 percent for one- and two-year lease renewals, the lowest increases since 2002.
According to the NY Post, "They threw a bone to the tenants and threw the owners into the water," fumed Jack Freund, executive vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 landlords.
Despite the small victory, veteran tenant advocate Michael McKee was angry stating “It's a disgrace. There should have been a rollback. At a minimum, there should have been a rent freeze, and the numbers show that."
McKee and other tenant leaders pointed to the rent freeze imposed in Westchester and the near-freeze in Nassau County -- zero percent the first year and a half percent the second year -- as proof they had gotten a raw deal.
New York City is an expensive city to live in and according to Steven Schleider interviewed in the NY Daily News, who wanted a two-year increase of 8.5% “It's expensive to provide housing in this city.
The increase passed by a 7-2 vote, the first time in memory that the board's two tenant members joined the five public ones to approve higher rents. Two landlord representatives voted no.
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Comments
As a rent stabilized tenant I am affected by this. Every year I have lived in NYC I have had a rent increase. This is despite jobs not offering any kind of a cost of living pay raise. In addition, MTA and other essential services (groceries, gas, etc.) have increased steadily. While 2 percent may not seem like much to someone making over $100K a year, those of us who work in careers that don't pay that much (teachers, cops, etc.) are left holding the bag. We keep getting less services for more money. If the economy weren't actually worst in other cities, many NYers would turn in their "I survived New York" cards for greener pastures. As it is, New York is actually doing better economically than most places job-wise. Now if only employers would get up off of the cost of living pay raises people would be more willing to deal with the always escalating cost of living!
Without rent stabilization, many people could not have lived in NYC allthese years, worked here and supported NYC's economy. We cannot let NYC become elitist and only allow the wealthy to live here.
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