Rent Guidelines Board Votes to Hike Rents Again

The rent is too damn high – and it’s about to go higher still for the 2.4 million New Yorkers who live in more than 950,000 rent-stabilized apartments.

To a chorus of boos and jeers, New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted yesterday for a preliminary recommendation to increase one-year leases by 1.75% to 4.75% and two-year leases by 4.75% to 7.75%. The final decision on the rent increases will be made later this summer. The tenant movement is vowing to fight on. For more, see Kathleen Hoban’s report below.

We were talking tenants’ rights on this week’s Indypendent News Hour. In our first segment, co-hosts John Tarleton and Amba Guerguerian spoke with journalist Steven Wishnia and Alina Shen, organizing director of CAAAV Voice, a group that fights against gentrification in working-class Asian communities, about the history of rent control and why a rent freeze is needed now. In our second segment, we spoke with two organizers from NYC-DSA’s Independent Working Class Organizing Initiative, which is organizing tenants to directly resist the landlord class. IWCO will be holding a citywide tenant assembly this Sunday from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Sixth Street Community Center in the East Village.

Speaking of class struggle, Happy International Workers’ Day! Dozens of labor unions, immigrants’-rights groups and other allied organizations will be holding a mass rally today at 5 p.m. at Foley Square as a part of a national day of protest taking place in more than 1,000 towns and cities against Trump and his billionaire profiteers.

And finally, a reminder that supporting media outlets like this one is itself a powerful act of class solidarity as we face a fascist movement in this country and all the lies and repression that come with it. To make a one-time contribution or become a monthly sustainer, click here.

Despite Protests, NYC Tenants Face Hefty Rent Hikes After RGB Votes on Preliminary Recommendations
By Kathleen Hoban

Hundreds of New Yorkers gathered at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center in Queens Wednesday evening to protest higher rents on stabilized units. Disregarding the adamant demand by tenants to freeze the rent, the Rent Guidelines Board voted 5-4 in favor of increasing the rent adjustment of rent-stabilized apartments for one-year leases by 1.75% to 4.75% for one-year leases and by 4.75% to 7.75% for two-year leases.

The vote was preliminary, and the board will not vote to approve the range for another two months. If passed, it would be the fifth consecutive increase since June 2020.

Bracing for the worst, tenant organizations mobilized to protest the potential hike in rent, chanting “Freeze the rent!” and “People united will never be defeated!” outside the center. New York State Tenant Bloc, CAAAV Voice and the Rent Justice Coalition rallied their members for a press conference before the meeting to advocate for tenants of rent-stabilized units, most of whom come from low-income and immigrant backgrounds.

Joanne Grell, co-chair of the Rent Freeze Campaign with the New York State Tenant Bloc, spoke at the press conference. As a Bronx native and rent-stabilized tenant, she emphasized the importance of having affordable housing for New Yorkers of all different backgrounds.

“We are the people who built this city, and we are the people who keep this city running,” Grell said. “And yet, year after year, for the past four years and now five, the Rent Guidelines Board consistently [adjusts] our rent.”

The RGB has nine members, all of whom are appointed by the mayor. The city’s rent stabilization laws cover around 2.4 million tenants who live in roughly 961,000 apartments. Of those, 434,000 households earn less than 50% of the area median income, according to the Community Service Society.

The preliminary vote to increase rent comes in the home stretch of the New York City mayoral race, with six candidates now supporting a rent freeze in light of data showing landlords’ operating income increased by 12% last year.

CAAAV Voice, an organization that fights against gentrification in working-class Asian communities, has publicly endorsed Zohran Mamdani for Mayor due to his support for a four-year rent freeze. According to a recent report by the Community Service Society, a four-year rent freeze would save tenants $6.8 billion over four years and boost the local economy as tenants spend their savings on food, child care and more.

“We want a mayor for the people,” said Irene Hsu, a spokesperson for CAAAV Voice. “The rent freeze is actually a vehicle for us to elect a mayor who answers to renters, working-class, immigrant renters.”

One of CAAAV Voice's tenant leaders is Huaying Xie, an immigrant who moved to Chinatown in 2015. She called on the city to create more affordable and public housing, highlighting the importance given the current economic stresses of daily life. “Over 30% of my income goes to rent, and I rent only a small room,” said Xie. “At the same time, vegetables, milk, eggs, are going up [in price] — what I am facing as a rent stabilized tenant is not just rent hikes, but how expensive everything is right now.”

The beginning of the board meeting was overshadowed by the eruption of shouting and jeers from protestors. One of the people shouting was Rains Reilly, a disabled tenant from Flushing, Queens, who started a tenant association in her building after her landlord shut the gas off for five months and refused to issue rent rebates. “It’s been a nightmare,” Reilly said of her landlord. Reilly also explained that the owner of her building lied about her apartment not being rent-stabilized and took Reilly’s Human Resource Administration (HRA) payments while asserting she was not paying rent.

Not all members of New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board supported the rent hike. Adán Soltren, a tenant member of the board and a supervising staff attorney at The Legal Aid Society, advocated for an increase range of zero to 1.75% for one year leases and zero to 3.75% increase for two year leases.

“Tenants deserve a rent freeze,” emphasized Soltren before telling the crowd they will not be receiving one. “Considering the compensation of landlords in the last 40-plus years justifies only course correction.”

The annual battle over the Rent Guidelines Board’s decision on rent increases comes with certain rituals. One of them is the board throwing out an alarming rent increase number like 4.75% for one year and then later revising it downward to appear reasonable. In that spirit, Chairman Doug Apple told the audience that the board is still weighing what its final decision will be and that it was looking forward to hearing responses from tenants over the next two months.

The board will hold five public meetings in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan from May 22 to June 17. The date of its final vote has not been announced.