NYC Rent Guidelines Board Votes to Increase Rent-Stabilized Tenants' Rents to Maintain Buildings Properly

By Yehudit Garmaise

NYC’s Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) voted to raise the monthly charges of rent-stabilized tenants by some of the biggest margins in nearly a decade.

Many of the nine mayor-appointed board members say the rent increase is necessary to pay for maintenance, repairs, and taxes, Gothamist reported.

Robert Ehrlich was one of the board members who voted against the motion: but only because he would have raised rents by even more: as much as 8.5% for two-year leases, instead of the 4 to 6% increases for two-year leases that the board endorsed.

For one-year leases, the RGB board endorsed rent increases of between 2 and 4%.

“We need to make sure that buildings have the money to pay for those costs,” Ehrlich said. “If we don't get this right, a large number of buildings could get quickly slipped into dilapidation. We could return to the horrifying days of the ‘70s and ‘80s: very quickly.”

Although Thursday night’s vote was only preliminary, such votes often predict the how the board will vote when it makes its final decision in June.

The jump in rent will affect the approximately 2.4 million rent-stabilized tenants who live in more than 940,000 apartments citywide.

Last month, the RBG board proposed a range of potential rent increases, which Mayor Adams told the board to slightly decrease.

"I believed that the numbers initially reported were much too high, so I called for a better balance: and it is good the board moved lower," said Mayor Adams, who added that he would continue to push for more housing vouchers for low-income tenants, a bigger earned income tax credit, and more government spending on childcare.

"If rents and the other costs of living are going to go up with inflation and other economic issues, then so too must government support."