Skip to main content

New York City Approves Rent Increases for Regulated Apartments - The New York Times

posted onJune 28, 2017
>

Article snippet: Many tenants in New York City’s roughly one million rent-regulated apartments will see their rents rise for the first time in three years after a city panel voted on Tuesday night to allow landlords to increase rents on one-year and two-year leases. Under pressure from political leaders and tenant activists, the Rent Guidelines Board had voted two years in a row to freeze rents on one-year leases, and to permit increases of just 2 percent on two-year leases. The board had never before frozen rents, and the decision was seen as a sign of how punishing the housing market had become for so many New Yorkers. But as the nine-member board weighed the positions of officials, tenants and landlords in recent hearings around the city, it became clear that another freeze was unlikely. The vote Tuesday night at Baruch College in Manhattan confirmed the board’s intentions, to the dismay of tenant activists. The board’s 7-2 vote to allow the modest increases — up to 1.25 percent for one-year leases, and 2 percent for two-year leases — brought loud jeers and chants of hundreds of tenants who have demanded not only a freeze but also a rollback in existing rents to erase the steady increases imposed during the Bloomberg administration. The increases take effect Oct. 1. Althea Matthews, 58, a resident of the Bronx who said she was homeless for two years, said the board refused to consider tenants’ hardships despite stagnant incomes and gentrifying neighborhoods. “I’m angry and it’... Link to the full article to read more

Emotional score for this article