Rent Guidelines Board Votes to Freeze Rents/ Albany Passes Rent laws

Adriano Espaillat

June 30, 2015

Housing

The Rent Guidelines Board, which determines rent increases for more than one million rent-stabilized apartments in New York City, voted on Monday night for an historic rent freeze on one-year leases and a two percent increase for two year leases.

While I believe a rent role back is appropriate, the Rent Guidelines Board's historic decision to freeze rents for one year leases will help keep New York affordable for over two million tenants. Who are being asked to pay an ever increasing percentage of their income towards rent, while landlords have increased their profits due to relatively flat operating costs.

In addition, to the Rent Guidelines Board vote, Albany also passed new legislation which impacts tenants of rent stabilized housing .

Specifically the Rent Act of 2015 includes the following:

-- Vacancy decontrol limits will be increased by $200, and annual increases will be indexed to the Rent Guidelines Board. This was less than we had hoped for and unfortunately this legislation fails to repeal Vacancy Decontrol which would prevent the loss of thousands of additional regulated units in the future.

-- Lowers the allowable rent increase for Major Capital Improvements (MCI's), but unfortunately still allows them to be permanently added to the rent.

-- Penalties for landlord harassment of tenants has been increased by approximately $1000 to better prevent renters from being pressured to leave their homes

While this is overall a welcome relief, we had certainly hoped for more. Please know that I will continue to fight for tenants as well as for more affordable housing for working families.